Stars, Fold-Ins, and Compass Roses

[wgardner]

Each of the image pages has four 5-pointed stars with multi-colored points by the corners (and the two double-image pages also have one extra star on a border).

The map page and the back cover both show a 4-pointed compass rose with only red and yellow points. Oddly, the map page's rose has the red points pointing north-south while the back cover's rose shows the red points pointing east-west.

Here's the new part (I think).

On pages 5(?), 11, 19, 32, and 47, the pages can be folded, Mad Magazine fold-in style, to fold together two of the 5-pointed stars to make a 4-pointed compass rose with the correct red, yellow, red, yellow star coloring.

Two of these pages are the pages with the "multicolored U shapes" and for each of these pages, the folding brings together two sides of the U-shaped border. On page 19, it brings together the left and right borders. On page 47, it brings together the top and bottom border. On both of these pages, the fold-in line for the 4-pointed compass rose seems drawn exactly in-line with the multicolored borders.

[It's possible that page 7 could have a foldin-to-create-a-4-pointed-star, but folding it together would yield a red, orange, blue, yellow 4 pointed star so I discounted this.]

I tried for a bit to see if the borders that were folded together were somehow easier to decode someway, but I wasn't able to come up with any decoding.


As always, please accept my apologies if this was noted somewhere else. I've tried my best to read through the 100s of threads on various forums, but sometimes I miss things and/or forget.

[goldwatch]

Nice work, wgardner.
The compass roses and the lines from the stars certainly indicate something.
And who doesn't like to fold the pages?

[wgardner]

One further note on this: each pair of stars that fold together to make a compass rose appear on both sides of a particular border saying (e.g., on p.11 "A GIFT FOR THE WIND"). Another possibility is that these particular sayings are important in some way (e.g., decode in some way to make a master riddle, etc).

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Further thoughts on this:

For the 3 pages where it seems crystal clear that the 4 pointed compass roses are made (pages 11, 19, and 47) which are also some of the most important pages (the Key/Mosaic page and the two pages with the colored U borders), the 3 sayings between the roses are:

A GIFT FOR THE WIND
FOREVER HELD
ROUND AND ROUND

(and the other 2 questionable pages, page 5 and 32, the sayings are:

FOLLOWS HIS NOSE
RISE IN A QUEST )

The first 3 sound like they could be clues to, say, a weathervane somewhere? Wondering if there's maybe a fox-shaped weathervane on the island somewhere, like this one?

-------------
Yet further down the rabbit hole:
RISE IN A QUEST has a single red "I" in it. An anagram for the rest of the letters is EQUESTRIANS.
A quick search for Equestrian and Mount Desert Island turned up the Willowind Therapeutic Riding Center, founded in 1998. The yellow points on the compass rose on the map page draw a line right to it...

[pumalion]

Interesting observations, wgardner!

One thing I noticed long ago is that lines through the exact center of the Nikon page (p. 19) touch the letters R, O, S and E in the border. On the Harley Quinn page (p. 30), the first and last letters of the top and bottom lines are R, O, S and E. The Fop has a rose on his coffee pot and possibly another in his vase (p. 17) and the old lady (p. 40) has a Red Rose tea bag.

Maybe you have discovered one way that "roses" (compass roses) are created in the book, and these other roses represent different but related parts of a rose solution.

[astree]

Jun 9, 2019 17:19:07 GMT -5 pumalion said:

Interesting observations, wgardner!

One thing I noticed long ago is that lines through the exact center of the Nikon page (p. 19) touch the letters R, O, S and E in the border. On the Harley Quinn page (p. 30), the first and last letters of the top and bottom lines are R, O, S and E. The Fop has a rose on his coffee pot and possibly another in his vase (p. 17) and the old lady (p. 40) has a Red Rose tea bag.

Maybe you have discovered one way that "roses" (compass roses) are created in the book, and these other roses represent different but related parts of a rose solution.

As well, the upper NW corner piano key code on p. 11 came out to

GO ROSE / OR GO SE

while for the bottom SE corner code i got

NW

because i was picking up a number of additional SE pointers, i held the ROSE also as OR SE (and ROWS, as in the red rows)

[wgardner]

Jun 9, 2019 7:41:44 GMT -5 wgardner said:

The first 3 sound like they could be clues to, say, a weathervane somewhere? Wondering if there's maybe a fox-shaped weathervane on the island somewhere, like this one?

More on the weathervane idea:

I was looking at page 23, the Lobsterman page, with NORTH WEST SOUTH EAST on the top and bottom borders. Sure sounds like a weathervane.

I look at the picture. As many folks have noted, the Lobsterman is pointing up. There has been much debate about what he's pointing at.

If you forget the borders for a second and just look at the picture, it kinda looks like he might be pointing to the top of the roof of the shack with the buoys. Like maybe where a weathervane would be if it was on top of the shack.

So I figure I'll search google for images of "lobster shack with buoys"  Sure enough, among the first few images that show up, is an image like this one, of a lobster shack in Bar Harbor with buoys on the side and a big weathervane on top.  !?!?!

Or this one from Lubec that almost looks like it could have been the model for the shack painting, with a weathervane right on top where the Lobsterman might be pointing...

[pumalion]

More interesting insights!

I think the Lobsterman "IS" a weathervane. Maybe Fandango becomes a weathervane in this chapter, too. Notice phrases like "I'm in a whirl" and "a jolt ... burst in me." (I think weathervanes double as lightning rods.) The man "just looked to sea and then swung 'round" and says "I know the weather."

But Fandango might also "be" a lobster in this chapter - he eats the lobsterman's fish (like bait) and then the lobsterman grabs him by the neck and tells him not to mess with traps. He also drops Fandango and cusses, as if he got pinched?

[pumalion]

wgardner, what did you discover about yellow/blue "compass star" combinations? (Although, I guess I can answer my own question as easily as you can!)

I'm wondering whether the mile signs on p. 44 are a hint that "blue = red" because of the blue Roque Island, Ellsworth and Duck Cove signs spelling out RED with their initial letters.

Just before you posted the thread with new ideas about star points, I had tried to look at stars where the red and yellow points were at or near 180 degrees. I was also thinking of the compass rose on the back cover, but hadn't had your brainstorm about folding pages.

I believe there are more yellows in this straight line (or near straight) configuration than there are reds, so the blue star points might fill in some gaps.

[pumalion]

Jun 10, 2019 17:29:51 GMT -5 pumalion said:

wgardner, what did you discover about yellow/blue "compass star" combinations? (Although, I guess I can answer my own question as easily as you can!)

I just took a quick look at the blue star points and their potential to form compass roses. Didn't see any that lend themselves to the "fold in" strategy.

However, I did notice another potential red/yellow compass rose on the right border of p. 40 - framing the "Pass the time" border phrase.

So pages 5, 11, 19, 32, 40 and 47 all have that possible star configuration to match the compass rose on the back cover.

[pop]

Bump. OP by wgardner was on the right track!

[Jenny]

And that he was! Congrats to wgardner!

And to Pumalion who notice there was an additional page....

[seamus]

/agree ☺ if it was a snake it would have bit him lol

[wgardner]

Yeah, I even put together images like those shown on page 3 of the solutions document, but then got nowhere. The 3 kind-of looks like a 3. And maybe the 7 kind-of looks like a 7 (in the midst of a lot of yellow 1s). But I never would have seen the "real" 1s. And then there were pages that folded to 4 pointed red/yellow stars that had nothing in them (why bother doing that??).

And then adding only the seconds of the clocks as GPS DMS seconds (but not doing the minutes in the same way)??

I wish Pel would have released hints (maybe once a year?) ala The Oracle to slowly push us solvers in the right direction. Without them, this seems like it was unsolvable. Well, actually, I guess I can say it really WAS unsolvable since nobody solved it!