Free Treasure Hunt from TAOHM coming soon!

[roundabout]

These are just some simple observations about the weird cursive letters. They might not help with anything!

- The writing resembles something that comes up in a Google search from another reference. I don't know what to do with that yet.

- I seem to count 32 total letters, and I also seem to count 32 horizontal squares in the faint background grid. I haven't tried to count how many vertical squares are in the grid...I think only the horizontal squares are possible to count.

- There are clear divisions between the groups of letters.

- There seem to be only two positions where I can see plain, clear letters. (1. Turned upside down and then flipped horizontally (i.e. looking at it through a mirror, with the mirror positioned above). (2. Turned upside down and *not* flipped horizontally. Between these two, some of the letters change to different letters.

- There's a loop in the long squiggly line shapes exactly like the loop in the writing.

- I thought about whether the writing itself says nothing but contains a a Morse code or something. But I think the writing itself probably spells something out, because there seems to be about the same proportion of consonants to vowels as there is in normal English. But there is only one E, so I don't think it's a regular transposition cipher. So is it a substitution cipher that uses a key?

There's probably something really, really simple with the letters that I'm not seeing.

[artofhiddenmessages]

WE HAVE A WINNER! Congratulations to SHREK from the UK for being the first to solve the armchair treasure hunt! BUT...he is passing on receiving the prizes, so don't give up! Thanks to Shrek, there will be a second place winner!

[roundabout]

Wow, great job, Shrek! Congratulations!

[artofhiddenmessages]

Shrek was our first place winner. He passed on the prizes. Laura McKey (Roundabout) came in second, and she will be receiving the prizes! Congratulations to the winners! Thank you to everyone who played. A Wizard of Oz Hunt will be coming soon.

[roundabout]

Wow, thank you for this really fun hunt! Congrats again, Shrek! Thanks for giving me a chance to win the 2nd chance prize.

It was a long long road for me to get to the meerschaum pipe. Did anyone else besides me think they might actually be able to get a message from the Seafoam motor treatment bottle? Auto.... Motor.... Fleet... I even found a chemical formula for it on the internet. That's what I was thinking for a while yesterday!   I know that sounds crazy....it would have been a very funny solution!  I finally got past the Seafoam Motor Treatment route.

When I researching "seafoam" last night I noticed somewhere that "meerschaum" is German for seafoam.  And I read "The Purloined Letter" and saw that they were making "eddies" with the pipe smoke.  So I realized that's what the swirling lines are.  Then I remembered that a meerschaum is also mentioned in "The Lighthouse".  Then this morning, I remembered that a meerschaum was used as a key in the movie "National Treasure".  Otherwise I wouldn't have thought to try a Vigenere with that keyword.  

This was really fun.  Thanks Art of Hidden Messages!

[artofhiddenmessages]

The solution is posted on the facebook site, and Jenny will post it here too, but later tonight. I sent Jenny the pdf of the solution and also pictures of the prizes. So you will be able to see those here soon.

Thank you to everyone who played! I had fun reading your posts and listening to AJ's live youtube broadcast last night.

I will soon have a Wizard of Oz armchair hunt. But that one will be a pay-to-play hunt with a small fee. I hope to see you all signed up for that one as well.

[vitta]

Congratulations!!

[shrek]

Aug 6, 2019 15:46:19 GMT -5 roundabout said:

Wow, thank you for this really fun hunt! Congrats again, Shrek! Thanks for giving me a chance to win the 2nd chance prize.

Hi Laura, Congrats to you too, I had the keyword for a while, but I had various letters wrong in the script like a U for a V and more G's instead of the Q's, so took a bit longer to decode. I wanted everyone to see the different layers of Beth's hunt after I completed it so decided to let the prizes run on, Enjoy them.

And thanks again Beth for a thoroughly enjoyable hunt.

Nick (Shrek) 

[roundabout]

Thanks Shrek!  I like the way one layer leads to the next.  There are many images I couldn't understand  until I figured out the layers before it.

Those long swirling looping lines in the background mystified me until the end when I finally realized, "Oh, that is pipe smoke!" I like how this was used as a confirmer that the meerschaum is the key. At first when I noticed that "meerschaum" is "seafoam" I didn't think it was that important. I thought that it was just leading us to another story, "The Purloined Letter", because in that story, the characters are making "eddies" and "whirlwinds" of pipe smoke. I thought that something in that story was going to be used for the letters. I kept reading "The Purloined Letter" looking for something in the story that had to do with a chemical formula. Then I suddenly remembered that a meerschaum pipe was used as a key in the movie "National Treasure". That's what got me to try using a Vigenere with meerschaum as key. I didn't really expect that it was going to work!

[inatimate1]

Well done roundabout and Shrek, I honestly thought I was ahead of you having got the Poe reference pretty quickly, but I couldn't for the life of me get the key word.

Another reason why this place is the leader when it comes to ATH's.

Now back to the Digital buried treasure hunt and hopefully some success this time 🙃

[artofhiddenmessages]

I thought that once the Poe references were figured out, that everything would fall into place. But I knew that it might take some time to find "meerschaum" as the key word. I know that when I read a book, or story, if I come across a strange word, I try to look up the definition. And ESPECIALLY if I were doing a treasure hunt, I would look up an unfamiliar word. If people figured out SEAFOAM from Poe's Gold Bug Code, and saw that meerschaum meant the same thing, I thought that a light would go off!

A strange coincidence that happened, was that the Gold Bug symbols were almost all numbers for the letters CHEMICAL FORMULA. So that made it easy to stump people with all of the "math", that really wasn't math. I hid two of the Gold Bug symbols, that weren't numbers, under the journal paper. This came up on AJ's YouTube discussion---that there were two symbols hidden under the paper.

I had some complaints about the script letters being difficult to read, but that is part of the game too. I didn't purposely make it hard to read. It just happened that the Vigenere cipher put gqq together, which looked a bit weird, as well as a x and j.

I am currently putting the final touches on the Wizard of Oz Hunt. I think I will start taking pre-orders soon, for a release date around the 16th, 17th or 18th.... So watch for an announcement. This one will be FUN. But it will be a pay-to-play hunt with a small fee to cover the costs of the prizes. Hey, where can you find something this entertaining for under five bucks??!!

Thanks again to everyone who participated! More to come SOON!

[artofhiddenmessages]

The Wizard of Oz Armchair Hunt will be released on August 16th. It will cost $4.00. I have asked Jenny to post the details here on the MW Forum, so I am sure that the instructions of how to pre-register will soon follow. They are on The Art of Hidden Messages Facebook page if you want to check there, and the rules are there as well.

There will be a grand prize, as well as several smaller prizes awarded throughout different stages of the hunt. I think the subject matter will be fun, but there will be a level of difficulty to it also. This one will not be solved in two days!