From the Tone in the Tree FB Page: SOLUTION w/GRAPHICS
Mar 11, 2020 14:48:28 GMT -5
tinaj likes this
Post by Jenny on Mar 11, 2020 14:48:28 GMT -5
A message from the winning team of The Tone in The Tree 🌲 and solution :
Anonymous no more, we are the group that solved the ciphers, had one of our members go BOTG to find the key, and to search several times for the treasure chest:
Beth Hovanec
Tina Jones
Brian Poeppleman
Suzanne Shelley
We want to thank Natalie Nelson and Nick Spera for a great treasure hunt. We had a good time working together and solving it, and hearing all about Suzanne’s adventures after her many trips to the site. The most challenging part of the hunt was retrieving the treasure chest. It’s location was made for a movie script. It was found near Cooksey Drive Overlook, on Mount Desert Island. Suzanne took her son with her on her last two BOTG trips, and made him do the hard part. To reach the chest, the finder had to lower themselves down a ledge near the edge of the ocean. Walk across slanted rocks, climb up rocks to a ledge, do a belly crawl on that ledge, then enter a cave where the chest was hidden. Unfortunately for us, a pirate had gotten to the treasure chest before we did. We had the correct location, but the treasure was missing!
We do have the key, which is a reminder of our adventures. Suzanne found that herself, but she had to climb on top of a rock, and reach up into a tree to get the well-hidden key.
Natalie Nelson has graciously offered to give us a new treasure in place of the missing one, but we are declining the prize. We feel badly that the prize was no longer there. Rather than give us new prizes, we would rather see those prizes go towards a new hunt. This hunt was definitely an adventure, even for those of us who couldn’t go BOTG. We would like to see more armchair treasure hunts for not only us, but the community. This is our way of giving back and promoting armchair treasure hunts, while saying thank you to Natalie Nelson.
SOLUTION:
1)Pink letters: Caesar shift
FOLLOW YOUR VEINS
2)Roman Numeral Polybius:
THE KEY IS IN YOUR BLOOD
Number Letter Sub:
GO DOWN
3)Blue letter Hill Cipher:
(Key is the Blue 4 digit number)
A TALE OF LAND AND SEAZ
(Az at the end is a hint to the alphabet on the colored bar cipher)
4)Mirror ciphers (Vignere Cipher)
Use the animal tails to find the two animals associated with the island that are both land and sea animals, then use them as key words: SEAL, OTTER. Result: SEAL HARBOR OTTER CLIFFS
5)COLORED BARS
26 colored bars represent the alphabet Z-A(hinted by the Z and A in the border letters).
Pull the pink bars and sub to the proper letters. For pink bars with orange berries, use the Roman numeral orange berry to pull that many of the same letter. Example: O has an orange berry, the berry assigned to it from the bush has a Roman V. So pull 5 O’s.
Result is an Anagram for:COOKSEY DR OVERLOOK
ONCE AT OVERLOOK: (all visual - need map)
Map with explanations to the best of my ability at bottom of this post.
The “MATCHSTICKS” as people have called them were meant to be a simple nod to going at low tide to ensure a complete path to the chest, at high tide it breaks in two sections. A “green means go” when the water is low vibe.
