THE solution in our opinion!

[cowlazars]

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPruNJGHqe0


The Lat Long numbers in the poem cannot be denied but you be the judge! 

What do you think?

~ Cowlazars

[cowlazars]

Here is the back story to the solution and how it was sent to us.

youtu.be/nm75S4Pu2aU?t=1558

It has been quite a interesting couple of weeks.

[dalby2020]

Please just write up (or copy and paste) a brief summary.
I'd rather not sit through 2.5 hrs just to see what you are referring to.

[zaphod73491]

Oct 17, 2020 10:19:50 GMT -5 dalby2020 said:

Please just write up (or copy and paste) a brief summary.
I'd rather not sit through 2.5 hrs just to see what you are referring to.

Hi Dalby2020: I can answer your question. Their solution is based on 9 of the 24 poem lines containing either a homophone of a number (e.g. to, for), or letters actually spelling out a number (e.g. "one", "ten"). If a line contained more than one number, the numbers were added together. So:

1. As I have gone alone in there   --> 1 + 1 = 2
2. Not far, but too far to walk   -->  2 + 2 = 4
3. From there it’s no place for the meek   --> 4
4. Look quickly down your quest to cease   --> 2
5. And leave my trove for all to seek?   --> 4 + 2 = 6
6. I’ve done it tired and now I’m weak   --> 1
7. So hear me all and listen good  --> 10
8. Your effort will be worth the cold  --> 4
9. I give you title to the gold   --> 2

So: 2442611042. (Side note: the "for" within effort is really a combination: it's a homophone of letters within a word.) Now, they (arbitrarily) decided to assume the question mark is the divider separating longitude and latitude (24426, 11042), and they also allowed the coordinates to wrap around from the end of the poem back to the beginning. (I suppose they could argue that the word “Begin” in the poem signals the beginning of the latitude coordinate.) So they decoded it this way:

Longitude: 110 deg 42.2' W

Latitude: 44 deg 26’ N

This isn’t the only way those digits could have been interpreted. The coordinates could have been given in decimal rather than degrees and minutes, in which case you could come up with:

Longitude: 110.422    Latitude: 44.26

Or it could have been degrees/minutes/seconds:

Longitude: 110 deg 42' 02"  or 110deg 04' 02"

Latitude: 44 deg 02' 06"

No matter how you interpret the digits, there isn’t great precision in either of these coordinates. In particular, the precision on their latitude is only 1’ which is over 6000 feet. The longitude is better but still not great: 0.1 arcminutes of longitude at that latitude is around 132 meters (435 feet).

They went to these coordinates and presumably found what they believed was a pit of a size that would accommodate a 10" x 10" chest. I haven't watched all of their videos on the subject, so I don't know if their pit was precisely at there (to the precision of GPS) or off by some distance. If it really was at longitude 110 deg 42.200' W and latitude 44 deg 26.000' N, then the only conclusion you could draw from that (assuming this was where the treasure really was) is that Forrest CHOSE the spot specifically for its coordinates, not because he found the location special. And if so, that would be in conflict with a number of past ATFs from Forrest.

[dalby2020]

Thanks for the detailed write up.
It is intriguing and I always try to keep an open mind.

My initial thoughts are:
It really doesn't jump out as an "I should have thought of that" solution.

The actual words must mean something - Brown? Creek? Blaze? Tarry Scant? in the Wood? The solution just throws them all away.

I always thought that 9 clues would be 9 distinct clues that can lead a searcher to the location. With this I assume they are calling each of those lines as one of the clues.

As noted, the precision isn't there. Having to wander back and forth through a 6000' x 435' grid doesn't really allow one to walk up to it with confidence.

Of course - what do I know? Maybe that is the solution.
I sense the answer will come out some day (though I won't hold my breath).

An answer that we may never get is: Why Collected Works Bookstore?
I can accept or understand any solutions thrown out there, but this one I just can't wrap my head around.

[zaphod73491]

Hi Dalby2020 -- I share your skepticism. Since there are so many ways to pull coordinates from the poem, I would never commit to BOTG armed only with what they had. I also don't like that this doesn't address the issue about all the nouns in the poem being potentially important (can't ignore them) -- not one of those numbers pulled from the poem involves a noun.

Now if there had been coordinate redundancy within the poem, or the words of the poem themselves echoed the path one would take to get there, then that would help. But that's not the case. I wouldn't say they even had a WWWH that they were 100% confident in (they assumed it's Isa Lake -- "As I" backwards -- since it's not too far away and on the Continental Divide). But if you go with Isa Lake, there isn't a "canyon down" at that location to take you "contiguously" to the next clue. De Lacy Park is where they need to park to access their final destination; only there could one say they're starting to follow a canyon down. But at that point you're hiking, so there is no workable explanation for "Not far but too far to walk" nor "home of Brown." It's just a bad solution in so many different ways.

[bdalameda]

I know how easy it is to want to believe that you've found the right location but... The pictures, though similar simply do not match. There is no way that these pictures of the trees and log are the same.