My solve was USAFA because.....

[nkown]

I'm sort of glad it was found... sort of not.  I have a lot of notes but here is why I think it's at least related to the USAFA -->  the place where Mr Fenn will be buried and his bones will rest:


Glenna Goodacre

Three SB’s talk about Glenna Goodacre and FF’s mentorship (at first) and friendship with her: SB’s 31, 129, & 129.1.

Glenna made the statue, below, of General Hap Arnold, the founder of the USAFA in 1993. It sits just off the Cornerstone and Arnold Hall in the publicly available area of the USAFA. No mention is made of this work by her -- you’d think that FF would mention that as being important to him.


8.25 Miles North of Sante Fe

This clue is quoted everywhere as fact. Logically, though, it’s not much of a clue unless FF is just trying to keep people away from his home -- the entire US Rockies is 8.25 miles north of Sante Fe, NM. So I wanted to dive into this one… why say something so useless?

Diving into this, however, produces the actual original quote and that is from this blog: mountainwalk.org/2012/04/16/forrest-fenn-land-surveyor/

66,000 links is equal to 8.25 miles… but that’s not what he said originally. Why?

The story in TTOTC about the ball of string -- the Clew -- gives the structure of one ‘thread’ of the puzzle. Whenever there is something with chains, links, knots, etc. it is pointing out a puzzle that needs to be solved.

So here, rather than just say -- it’s 8.25 miles north of Sante Fe -- he puts the distance in links.

What’s to solve? Forrwst is spelled wrong. That’s another tip-off structure throughout the puzzle -- mistakes are not errors…. And spelling mistakes are tip-offs.

In this case: ‘w’ is the substitute for ‘e’ -- which means perhaps that ‘north of Sante Fe’ would mean that it’s actually south of Sante Fe.

Looking 8.25 miles north of the USAFA and zooming in I found, without knowing ahead it was there,

-- can't post a pic here but maps will show that 8.25m north of the Hap Arnold Statue is the Sante Fe trailhead.


[continued]

[nkown]

Scrapbook 180

A story about Sam Snead beating Jimmy Demaret in the 1949 Masters. While true, Demaret did not factor in that tournament. Talks about a drunk guy who used binoculars as a ruse for his alcohol consumption.

Still need to solve: the initials on the ‘flask’ which is really a perfume bottle appear to be ATC (T being the big middle one). And the phrase: “If it were a Russian icon you’d have to call it an Oklad, but this is different.”

Jimmy Demaret and Snead actually did play a one on one match at the USAFA Blue course in 1966. The course is located just below the USAFA cemetery. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell%27s_Wonderful_World_of_Golf

The Thrill of the Chase -- Gardiner’s Island

Right after FF presents the poem near the end of the book he tells of a dream he had about going to Gardiner’s Island like Captain Ahab but he couldn’t find the treasure and was jarred awake.

Gardiner’s Island is NOT Captain Ahab’s -- which is Gardiners Island. Googling the USAFA and Gardiner’s resulted in this:

Google USAFA + Woodman Sanitarium and read the article

The Sanitarium of Charles Gardiner resided at what is now the South Gate of the USAFA. It was built by the Woodmen of America… their old logo looks like this -- note the stump, dove, axe at the top.

[nkown]

Scrapbook Numbering System

The scrapbooks are numbered from 1 to 184 (at present) but include non-integers as well. At first I thought these were perhaps radio frequencies. However, plotting them in two columns -- the SB numbers at left and the ones with an odd -2 URL at right revealed this:

98, 99, 99.5, 100, 101… 122, 123, 121.5, 124, 121.7, 125, [Title:126 / html:106], 117.5, 126.1, 126.2, 127, 127.1, 128, 129, 129.1, 130, 131… 162, 163, [Title:163.5 / html:164], 164, 165

This chart is a bit off (ruined it in copying for this doc) but the plots correlate to Ursa Major (the big dipper / aka the big bear) and point at the North Star at bottom left… Polaris.

The USAFA has Polaris EVERYWHERE…. Polaris Hall, the Polaris Society, etc.

For a long time I thought that the solve had to do with Stellar Navigation… and wasted weeks -- literally -- learning how to do that (poorly). Now I think it’s solely to point you at the Big / Small dippers (see also SB 87 -- small bear… and the star spins 87 times as fast as the sun) and that Polaris is the point of the Bear references and the SB numbering code.

I hypothesize that the Polaris is ‘the blaze’ but an earthly one below.

[nkown]

The USAFA Carillon at the Cemetery [most important??]

Googling Polaris + USAFA eventually lead to an obscure document about the Carillon that was moved from the Chapel area to the Cemetery. In my mind this is the most important clue of all.

A full article about the bells is here: www2.usafa.org/Documents/Heritage/67CarillonBells.pdf

The lyrics from Binyon are what Bruce McDonald used to write the song. That Dal quoted it directly points to the Carillon at the USAFA.

The Carillon was moved in 2002 -- 14 years after Fenn had cancer, fits perfectly -- and dedicated in 2012… just after he would have hid the TC.

In Questions with Forrest here: mysteriouswritings.com/questions-with-forrest-fenn-and-the-thrill-of-the-chase/ we get this:


Crean is a hard word to find -- but Google Crean + Carillon and you get:

www.ocregister.com/2016/03/30/bells-will-ring-musician-will-climb-14-stories-to-play-carillon/

Tallest Carillon in the US is the Crean Tower Carillon.

Same Questions link we also get:
[pic didn't post]

And that is also a Carillon - - Castor Carillon:

[nkown]

SB 152-- Information please

An old Reader’s Digest story is reprinted almost verbatim. The original is here: www.telephonetribute.com/a_true_story.html Two interesting tidbits:

Protagonist name is changed to “wayne” -- like the missing SB32 which I posit to be a Hardy Boy’s story about a treasure hunt.
This is the ONLY SB that links to a comment instead of the top of the page. That comment says Thanks for the 411.

FF says at the end of the SB: Life should be an illustrated search for hidden treasures not just a guided tour. Illustrated means he is drawing a picture.

The link to 411 and the USAFA?



This lead me to believe -- a year ago -- that Stanley Canyon was the actual hiding place, not one of many such clues. This strange result of a Google search seemed to confirm:

Steven North (polaris) reviewed every one of those hikes on the same day… someone created an account, added in a few hikes. Only one review had text. The rest were related to Fenn-isms. Rainbow, waterfall, and Forrest spelled capitalized with two r’s.

Fenn also mentions Stanley Marcus in SB 147 (Stanley Marks Us?)... and says that a painting of a chief costs about $7,500 and maybe he’ll go back and visit it. Stanley canyon is right at about 7500ft. elev.

The family headed to Stanley Canyon and realized that this would be a very hard place to find anything. Given everything else above, I now believe that this is just another reference to the USAFA area, especially as Stanley Canyon is not open to the general public.

[nkown]

SB 177

Jimmy Doolittle is pictured with Neal Armstrong in a post about Eric Sloane.

USAFA has a building named after him which is where the Vietnam Memorial is located.






FF Mention of Pinion

"If I was standing where the treasure chest is, I'd see trees, I'd see mountains, I'd see animals. I'd smell wonderful smells of pine needles, or pinyon nuts, and sagebrush, ..."


He then tried to clarify the Pinion nuts as not having a smell… etc.

Pinion is a street off Academy drive.




Small College in Colorado Comment

Here’s a bronze with a link… and just below a comment about a small college in Colorado…. USAFA is indeed a college.

[nkown]

I believe the SB's pointed to a general direction... and to a general -- Hap Arnold.


I can post more about the actual poem and the chapters of the book. Highlights:

•  no place for biddies ==>  No place for b's and d's.... mirrored.
•  brother being skippy -->  must skip by Pi -- pi caper + 1314 Main Street
•  X out the letters, don't collect them
•  Cody the buffalo -->  code 

lot's more.

Obviously I did not find the chest in the end... but if it isn't near the USAFA then I'll be damned and the 25+ links I've found make me an idiot.

But -- I think it was found in the eye of a weaver's needle.... the carillon holding a polaris at the USAFA.

[Apple]

N, your USAFA idea is wonderful, thanks for letting me play with you. Here's my synthesis on why it might be the location of WWWH.

Hypothesis #1

The United States Air Force Academy can be "where warm water halts." The name "Colorado" derives from the red sandstone in the Pikes Peak region, including the red coloration of rivers from the sandstone, and is related to the Spanish word "calor," or hot. Therefore, "warm" could refer to "Colorado." The "Springs" portion of Colorado Springs refers to the many springs located below Pikes Peak (e.g. Manitou Springs) in the region. Therefore, "waters" could refer to "Springs." Where "warm waters," or Colorado Springs, "halt" is at its edge, including the United States Air Force Academy at its northern edge. Additionally, Fenn's statement that "if you don’t have" the first clue "nailed down you might as well stay home and play Canasta" could refer to Pikes Peak, the very prominent mountain above Colorado Springs, as a pike is a spike or point and thus similar to a nail.

Hypothesis #2

Remembrance through memorials is a major theme of TTOTC. This concept is raised early in the book within Important Literature but it is most fully developed in My War for Me, Gold and More, Dancing with the Millennium, and the Epilogue. Fenn introduces this idea with "sooner or later each of us will be nothing but the leftovers of history or an asterisk in a book that was never written" (Important Literature p.15) and begins to write his book with the flourish of an asterisk. Later in the book Fenn creates durable mementos in order to try to memorialize himself; these include buried jars and bells of his creation in Dancing with the Millennium as well as the treasure hunt in Gold and More. Importantly, some of these durable mementos contain his autobiography.

This theme of TTOTC is reinforced in several scrapbooks. Scrapbook 17 (untitled) discusses organic change and loss over time ("fancy gadgets," "faster and better ways to communicate," "Clark Gable," "countless humans" who are "unknown to us now," and "their bones are dust") and contrasts this with durable stone mementos that remain ("stone threshold worn smooth" and an "arrowhead"). Scrapbook 18 (untitled) unambiguously reiterates the discussion of bells found in Dancing with the Millennium.

Bells are one type of memorial discussed in TTOTC. This is overt in Dancing with the Millennium wherein Fenn describes an inscription that he puts on bells that he buried on BLM land: "if you should think of me, a thousand years from now, please ring me bell so I will know" (p.137). Bells are involved with two indicator errors in TTOTC. In the first, the incorrect synopsis of For Whom the Bell Tolls is provided in Important Literature, in conjunction with a braid, or clew, in the form of the saleswoman's hair. The title of that Hemingway book derives from a John Donne sermon involving death knelling, a form of memorial. In the second of these indicator errors, Fenn tells us incorrectly that 17th century Spanish galleon copper spikes instead of more likely bronze spikes are used as "clankers" in his Dancing with the Millennium bells.

Scrapbook 172 (The Sounds of Bells) unambiguously links a memorial bell tower to Fenn's grave site and treasure chest. In this scrapbook Fenn describes a "bell tower" he created at his Santa Fe home and asks "if the owners of [his] home a hundred years from now will appreciate" it. Read literally, Fenn's home in 100 years will be his grave site and this "bell tower" will be "east of" that site. The "dichotomy" of his "bell tower," which refers to a stone-age tree post topped by a more modern "cast iron" bell, is reminiscent of his hidden "riches new and old" that he "plotted" to die beside. He links his "bell tower" to a memorial through "the curiosity" it will elicit; this harks back to the meditation about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in My War for Me: "in another generation or so most of those names will be but an asterisk in the history of a forgotten war, a curiosity to wonder about" (p.76). This "bell tower" is thus linked to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Lincoln Memorial of that chapter; although the Vietnam Veterans memorial "is constantly being washed clean by the tears of a million visitors" in time it will end up like the French Indochina War graveyard where "no one cries anymore" (p.95).

Bells are the subject of several other scrapbooks, albeit with less certainty. Scrapbook 115 (Proper Dental Hygiene) is possibly and subtly about bells through their metaphorical representation as a toothbrush cup and toothbrushes. Scrapbook 126 (Personality Galore) is tenuously associating a bell with Fenn's grave site through the use of mostly visual cryptic crossword types clues. Scrapbook 205 (untitled), possibly and subtly about a funeral and published on the day that Fenn's friend from childhood Edard died, conjures an image of a bell in the sentence "his words contained a serious bite as the sound slowly tapered off and was dissipated in the wind;" this sentence is closely followed by the word "belay," containing the phenogram "bell," that is used in relation to that "irritation" he expressed. Nails, associated with bells through their use as "clankers" in Dancing with Millennium, are stressed in Scrapbook 49 (Sweet Fragrances) through the repeated image of cloves. Scrapbook 99.5 (untitled) makes a passing reference to nails in the form of a "nail fetish," which if read as "bell fetish" is an appropriate characterization in Fenn's game world; in a similar vein, the "claw hammer" "talisman," or fetish, secreted below the cabin in Scrapbook 207 (Absarokee Hut) is a tool associated with nails. Through this associated hammer image, the concept of bell arises in Scrapbook 107 (People Just Don't Understand), through the "driver's licence" (as a hammer is a driver) and, through parallel meaning, when Fenn's father's principal sign was "hammered...into the ground" (First Grade p.16). The hammer as driver associated with bells is found again in Scrapbook 205 (untitled) several lines before the statement discussed earlier: "as I backed, the car bumper tipped over a large tin garbage can" which "made a moderate racket, and its contents spilled all around the local periphery." Finally bells are associated with telephones through "ringing" in the subtle Alexander Graham Bell joke in Scrapbook 172 (The Sounds of Bells) and the lament about change in Scrapbook 17 (untitled).

Given the above discussion, the first clue, "where warm waters halt" (from New Zealand Radio interview), may be related to bells and, in particular, memorial bells. "Warm waters" could metaphorically be the tears over and, by extension, organic memories of the dead, and these "halt" when the dead are no longer remembered. Fenn often describes warmth in the positive context of comfort and community and coldness as pain and isolation (see, for example, The Totem Cafe Caper and the conclusion of Tea with Olga). As tears, and their absence, was central to the discussion of The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and French Indochina War graveyard in My War for Me, and as these were associated with the bell tower in Scrapbook 172 (The Sound of Bells), it is not too much of a stretch to associate a bell memorial with "where warm waters halt." Finally, the nail reference in "if you don't have the first clue nailed down you might as well stay home and play Canasta" (Mysterious Writings 2014 Questions with Forrest Fenn) may relate to bells, as discussed above.

If "where warm waters halt" is indeed related to bells and, in particular, memorial bells, then given the multitude of location pointers to the United States Air Force Academy (for example, Scrapbooks 4, 23, 29, 31, 33, 107, 125, 129, 129.1, and 180) we may suppose that this first clue refers to the American Legion Memorial at the United States Air Force Academy Cemetery, an open air carillon composed of 25 bells and topped by a star.

[nkown]

Jeff was the only person I collaborated with in this... simply met through here b/c his ideas were sound and, as you can see, he's a grinder!  Documents everything.  Thanks Jeff!  Was fun and look forward to meeting someday soon... great to build trust off little more than a few emails and ideas. That was the fun of the chase.

I posted up about 20% of what I have on the USAFA. If it turns out to be relevant, I'll post a lot more to tie everything together.

The other work was based around TTOTC and the use of homonyms and skip codes, sometimes mirrored.  But I look forward to a full solution and really really hope it's elegant and self contained without random metaphor.

[nkown]

I might add that Deadman's Creek (you're a dead man if you have no paddle up your creek) borders the USAFA cemetery.

Parade Loop Road is right there -- his hit parade.

His hero is buried there.... best fighter pilot ever, Oldes.

Bronzes everywhere.

411 Drive.... 'information please'

Falcon Trail... 'no human trail' -- it's an 'animal trail' -- also, Mummy Falcon story.


Many of the other SB's tell you how to begin decoding the poem. The mirrors / mirrored images. The chili lines.

[goldilocks]

Paul Paul's solve was in Pike National Forest in CO. He talked about his solve last June so if he is the finder you are in the right area.

[edgewalker]

Jun 14, 2020 7:29:57 GMT -5 goldilocks said:

Paul Paul's solve was in Pike National Forest in CO. He talked about his solve last June so if he is the finder you are in the right area.

Paul Paul is also saying not to give out your solves, hinting that there is an element of the hunt that will continue.

[zaphod73491]

Jun 14, 2020 7:29:57 GMT -5 goldilocks said:

Paul Paul's solve was in Pike National Forest in CO. He talked about his solve last June so if he is the finder you are in the right area.

Okay, then that eliminates Paul Paul from consideration in my book. I'm still curious about ken on Dal's (lower case ken, missing-tooth cowboy avatar). He's been silent the month of June, which is atypical for someone who was clearly heavily invested in the Chase intellectually since its earliest days. He's also apparently from "back East," though I would never have thought him "shy" based on the content and volume of his posts.

One thing I can say is that if ken ~was~ the solver/finder, then my solution is 100% wrong. The reason for that is that ken made the following post on Dal's in August of last year in response to my mentioning past armchair treasure hunts like Masquerade:

"Zap… I don’t believe this Chase is based on or similar to any of the armchair hunts."

Ken is informed enough to know the underlying solution to Masquerade, and so he would not have made that statement if he believed Gallatin or Gallatin W MT was Forrest's intended keyword/keyphrase in the poem. The extraction of that key would clearly be an acrostic variant of Kit Williams' solution. So that tells me he wasn't using Gallatin as a keyword, and therefore his solution and mine cannot possibly be the same. Since I'm 99.9% sure I've got the correct WWWH, that means I'm at most 0.1% sure than ken was the finder.

[goldilocks]

Jun 14, 2020 15:53:32 GMT -5 zaphod73491 said:

Jun 14, 2020 7:29:57 GMT -5 goldilocks said:

Paul Paul's solve was in Pike National Forest in CO. He talked about his solve last June so if he is the finder you are in the right area.

Okay, then that eliminates Paul Paul from consideration in my book. I'm still curious about ken on Dal's (lower case ken, missing-tooth cowboy avatar). He's been silent the month of June, which is atypical for someone who was clearly heavily invested in the Chase intellectually since its earliest days. He's also apparently from "back East," though I would never have thought him "shy" based on the content and volume of his posts.

One thing I can say is that if ken ~was~ the solver/finder, then my solution is 100% wrong. The reason for that is that ken made the following post on Dal's in August of last year in response to my mentioning past armchair treasure hunts like Masquerade:

"Zap… I don’t believe this Chase is based on or similar to any of the armchair hunts."

Ken is informed enough to know the underlying solution to Masquerade, and so he would not have made that statement if he believed Gallatin or Gallatin W MT was Forrest's intended keyword/keyphrase in the poem. The extraction of that key would clearly be an acrostic variant of Kit Williams' solution. So that tells me he wasn't using Gallatin as a keyword, and therefore his solution and mine cannot possibly be the same. Since I'm 99.9% sure I've got the correct WWWH, that means I'm at most 0.1% sure than ken was the finder.

One caveat... if he is the finder the solve he put out on his channel one year ago could’ve been altered/updated/changed...no jumping jacks yet Zap.

[zaphod73491]

Hi goldilocks: I assume you're referring to Paul Paul and Pike National Forest, not ken. If that was Paul Paul's spot just one year ago, then in my opinion he couldn't possibly have started from scratch and solved the end-to-end solution in another state in just one year.