Clue

[zaphod73491]

Now THAT, Banjo, is exactly the sort of thing Jenny would do! Very nice lateral thinking on your part. Heaven knows I'm not getting anywhere with a 52-letter keyphrase, though to be fair I've tried every length from 20-80.

[cw]

Hey guys,

Jumping in the deep end here.. I just got the book a couple of days ago, but I read up in here on what the process of solving the code entails. 

Since I know what is left to figure out (I know the code is SVRWYULOKKOZMIEAYULFUTIITYWBLBHKAVCAZUAUMWXCLLQFRMJMYPJLSVLCUSOKLLICTXBXACUHRBVG and that it needs to be deciphered and then re-ordered), here is what I have done:

1. I scanned into my computer all the pages of the third section of the book and converted it to text. I also removed all non-alphabetic symbols and spaces so that only the letters a-z show up.

2. I plugged that into an Excel workbook that decodes Vigenere ciphers and then built a macro that generated a 52-character keyword and rolled it one letter at a time through the entire text. I generated just over 167,000 possibilities in the original order. I also reordered the "decoded" characters based on the code in the back of the book and thus generated another ~167,000 possibilities.

Here's where I am stuck.. Based on the clue Jenny gave a couple of days ago, I assumed that, "The final location goes with" was the first part of the correct solution. After searching my results, the word "location" does not appear at all.

This leads me to believe that any or all of these conditions may exist:

1. There are typos in my text from the OCR conversion.
2. The keyword in the book we are looking for needs to be "fixed" (since we know it is not word for word) before it can be run through the Vigenere decoder.
3. "The final location goes with" is not part of the final message.
4. The keyword is not 52 characters long.

I am sure there are other possibilities for the malfunction but these are the first that come to mind.

[thebluffman]

CW, could you send me your excel workbook? I have been using online sources, but I am much better and faster with excel. I just never took the time to create macros for it.

[cw]

Jenny,

There is a person over at chasechat saying the de-coded words are "A searcher must go to the site to find the treasure." I realize this phrase is not 80 characters long, but I suppose you could have added some filler (e.g. aaaaaaa) to the end of the phrase to make it 80 characters long. 

Would you care to clarify if this person over at CC is being less than honest?

Thx,

-CW

[zaphod73491]

cw: that's definitely not it. The final message will be 80 letters (or 79 if Forrest ended the message classically with a single F). Furthermore, read Jenny's interpretation of Forrest's message as it relates to the final location. It's going to be more specific than the generic phrase you quoted (a phrase, by the way, that Forrest has previously provided). The phrase he gave Jenny will be something new.

[cw]

zaphod,

I certainly agree. IMO it is always better to ask and rule out than to continue to wonder. 

After Jenny's clue the other day, I really think it starts with "The final location goes with", but my imagination is having a hard time finishing that phrase in a cohesive manner.

On a side note, I worked out the kinks in my macro. I still need to re-read the input text from the book for typos, but after that is should just be a matter of figuring out exactly the length of the keyword/keyphrase.

[foolsgold]

That's the problem with interpreting poems - Jenny's or Forrest's alike.
Everyone sees different things in them and interpets them in his own different way.
Should one over- or under-simplify? Think in or out of box?


"March has ended and the jokers can go too"

March - the month or the verb? At face value, it's Just Jenny fulfilling her promise to
release the hint at the end of the month. But do the numbers 3, 31 come into play?
Jokers can go, TOO. Is it a reference to the Deck in the next line or an allusion to
April Fool's Day? Do numbers 4/1 come into play? Does number of jokers (2) matter? Is it 4/2 instead?
Do we add those numbers, multiply, substract, divide, ignore?


"Play with a standard deck that is your clue"

Standard deck (sans jokers) is 52. Is it the length of the vigenere key phrase that were waiting for?
Or, perhaps, it's the length of the quote from the book before changing some words in it? Is number 52
final keylength or are we supposed to combine it with other numerical allusions from Line 1?
Coincidentally, though unlikely possiblity, since 52 is the exact double of number of letters in the
English alphabet - does it imply double Vigenere? Double Straight? A-Z then Z-A?


"The first word is seen hidden and so is the fifth"

Since the key phrase is "not word for word", should this line be interpreted as omitting the 1st and 5th
words of the phrase that is either 52 characters long or WILL BE 52 letters long after dropping words?

Alternatively, is this a riddle or anagram? Is first word simply "SEEN" or is it IN "HIDDEN?", e.g. "HI",
"DID", "END". Is "SO" the fifth word or is it "IF" hidden inside of it? Even correctly guessing the
right 1st and 5th words we're not sure as to where they go? Key phrase? Decoded words?

In case this line is a riddle, there also exist multiple possibilities.
What is hidden? Treasure? Chest? Secret? Clues? Hints? Words? Feelings?
Does "SEEN hidden" change the meaning? Decipher, Decode, Discover, Search, Find?


"The message revealed? The final location goes with"

Is this a reference to the message inside Forrest's Words refer to? If we have succeded we'd
already know what they are about and if we failed it doesn't really help us.

Is the "final location" to be interpreted as BLAZE? Map? Grave (final destination)?
Once again, is it part of Vigenere Key Phrase or part of Decoded Message?


Apologies for the wall of text.

TL;DR Vague poems are hard

[ironwill]

I'll be perfectly honest here. I don't understand why the person who helped Genetic Blend solve the Vigenere phase is so worried about the rest of us knowing Forrest's message... that the person made her promise not to tell anyone. There are at least 4 people who know what the message is: Forrest Fenn, Jenny Kile, Genetic Blend, and the person who helped Genetic solve it. There might be one or two more but it remains to be seen. It seems "unfair" that a message that is so important to understanding the EXACT LOCATION of the treasure, if you have been to the spot (according to Jenny's belief), that such a message in the Chase should be held hostage from all but a handful of people. We have paid for the book. We tried to solve all of her puzzles. Only a small group of dedicated people are actually watching this part with interest. I'll bet 80% of her book purchases could care less if she had encoded his message or not.

So given that...there are only TWO POSSIBILITIES(throughout the realm of logic):

1. The message is not relevant. It was never meant to be. His coded words are just a general enigma about the Chase that has encapsulated everyone over and over and was meant just for that...for fun.

2. The message is important to one or a few (unknown how many at this point..though my bet is on 3). And if that is the case, then this distraction is created out of foolishness. During June of 2017...three to four men died looking for Forrest's treasure. Mike Peterson June 7th, Jeff Murphy June 8th, Paris Wallace June 14th, and Eric Ashby June 28th. Now take into consideration... what if... the lead searcher was at the final location of the chest at the beginning of May 2017, yet could not discern the final spot it rested at? If that searcher had found the chest there...they could've saved those four lives.

I know what some are saying right about now... "How could the person know that... at the TIME!?" And when you see this, you will understand my point. If that encoded message is important, then it has been done so by people who can only see in three dimensions. Everything matters...even time. Take it from someone who understands the unfortunate consequences of not factoring it in.

[fennster]

It does get a little frustrating on this end too. We have a poem riddle that allows for a few options. (I would hope that Jenny would make it as simple as possible) This was a clue to help narrow down the near infinite possibilities of one step of many in a search to find one small clue in an extremely complex search.

I suppose we know the keyphrase is near 52 words but we don't if it is exactly. We really got next to nothing from this clue.

Maybe it is the simplest explanation, but with as many people as have tried to find the 52 letter phrases, it does appear we have to modify it first.

[zaphod73491]

Apr 5, 2019 18:12:07 GMT -5 cw said:

zaphod,

I certainly agree. IMO it is always better to ask and rule out than to continue to wonder. 

After Jenny's clue the other day, I really think it starts with "The final location goes with", but my imagination is having a hard time finishing that phrase in a cohesive manner.

On a side note, I worked out the kinks in my macro. I still need to re-read the input text from the book for typos, but after that is should just be a matter of figuring out exactly the length of the keyword/keyphrase.

cw: regarding: "I really think it starts with 'The final location goes with'", it would seem rather unlikely. If you've put together a macro to play with this, surely you can see that the letters produced by a Vigenere cipher starting with that keyphrase have nothing approaching a normal distribution of letters in English. The first word of Jenny's keyphrase is unlikely to be THE, because a first word starting with T would require a Z to appear somewhere in Forrest's message. Not impossible, but pretty unlikely.

[justsomerando]

If April represents the deck and we take away the top two jokers, wouldn't that lead us to a date of April 3rd instead of April 2nd?

[fennster]

We're going to need a clue for the clue please!

[ironwill]

Apr 6, 2019 11:24:26 GMT -5 fennster said:

We're going to need a clue for the clue please!

lol

[mcb]

This is how this clue works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAt2_9Z5h3U

[foolsgold]

Apr 6, 2019 12:13:48 GMT -5 mcb said:

This is how this clue works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAt2_9Z5h3U

Brilliant, McB! I get it now:
"and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began" - 52 letters

See the first and fifth word hidden and it's:
"the end of our exploring will be to arrive where we began" 

Are we there yet?