Post by 0o The Puzzler o0 on Oct 22, 2020 15:21:03 GMT -5
This. I really do think they are simpler than people have generally let themselves believe.
Think about Cleveland.
Once we find the shape of Ohio, we're looking at that state's major cities...
1) Main image is Centaur. Identify the building and you have the starting location. Cleveland Trust Company Building with roof that perfectly matches the odd "helmet" and scrollwork that perfectly matches the tail.
goo.gl/maps/GZFuAqaUpsgy3XbR6
goo.gl/maps/rU9n3cKWY7qwFkg29
and just now I found that the lion's head is also from that same building:
goo.gl/maps/1AnqVbyUDZRLLQFs5
So that's 3 (!) image reference directly for the starting location.
2) Where to from here? Follow the centaur's gaze, to the ball marked with a triangle. Geometry. Euclid avenue, which that Cleveland Trust Company Building is situation on (900 Euclid Ave). Ok, so we're travelling along Euclid Avenue now.
If you happen to go West first, you soon hit Cleveland Public Square, and after searching for clues and coming up empty, we try the other way, East.
Where do we want to end up? Need another reference...
3) Liberty Bell and Flower. It's a bit cryptic, but not terribly. At the time of the casque burial, MLK Jr drive was name Liberty. I believe this is the intended route.
But also, it's possible he intentionall had Bellflower road which is a less direct route but encourages you to use East Blvd instead of Liberty.
4) If you were observant enough to find Bellflower road, then you end up at East Blvd and head towards the gardens only to find that you're staring right at the central part of the image, the dig site (see link below) !
If you took Liberty, which I think most would do / would have done, then you need the first lines of the verse to know where to turn. "Beneath 2 countries as the road curves", which is what the finders used to identify that they were driving past the raised Italian and Greek gardens, and took the curved road into the park.
From there, the verse gives the specifics of where to dig. The reason the finders were digging on the wrong side at first was that they came from the wrong direction. They walked through the park, but the first 2 lines of the verse were meant to send you to the other side of the park, out the other end to East Blvd, where you find this:
goo.gl/maps/7fuv2J2yFKNXRyn86
Unmistakeably the dig site, just follow the instructions.
So, in the case of Cleveland, it was surprisingly simple if you managed to find all the references.
Many of the proposed solutions are WAAAAAAAAY too complex if the idea is that these puzzles were all about the same difficulty.
I believe the reason Boston is still a strange solution is that much of it was wrong an the finder got lucky about guessing Langone park. I never really bought his solution as being the intended one.
Steps = those oddly shaped wharfs is totally ridiculous in my opinion.
I think it's much more likely that the library reference was a to get to Boston, but not to start at the library.
The figure doesn't actually look like the Columbus statue. A little but not really. Much more likely it's a likeness of Paul Revere or someone else, but the key element there was the baseball diamond shape and home plate on the sleeve, which JJP confirmed. On the EU Secret Boston episode he said he's told he must have channelled the image of Columbus somehow, confirmation that it simply wasn't correct or intentional. Not part of the solve, the finder just used it in combination with another incorrect piece of info (the wharfs) and happened to end up at the same place as if he'd navigated through the Paul Revere ride area instead, which is what I assume was intended.
The verse clearly references Revere's ride, and so the starting location was meant to be the Paul Revere house or mall or statue, much closer to the dig site than the library or Columbus statue, and the first instructions tell you to take his route ending up at the stairs across from Langone Park. The proper solve was much more direct than the finder's convoluted accidental find. I still can't believe his luck LOL.
Chicago is also pretty straight forward.
Image gives us landmarks in Chicago
"Where M and B are set in stone and to congress R is known" takes us straight to Grant Park.
For many of the other solves, people are trying to make the verse take them several blocks or across the city.
I strongly believe that every image depicts something critical to the starting location and the direction we are meant to travel from there, but the verses start somewhere close to the dig site, or within 1 or 2 lines we can see it and follow the instructions to the specific spot.
People are over-complicating it, when I think the way the next one gets found (if ever) is by someone taking a full reset, starting over, and just using the visual clues to get near the dig site, where the verse picks up the trail...then we're looking for an image reference for the final spot (greek gardens wall and pillars, grant park fence, langone park baseball diamond/home plate).
It's all there, and not nearly as complicated as we're making it.