Towards the solution

[TxTH]

I was thinking with all of the hunts going on these days who has time to work on this already solved puzzle?  It is time I start releasing information over the next few weeks that will lead to the solution.

When I released the book I told buyers that I would release additional clues.  Here are some of those clues that I released.  If you don't have a copy of the free book Jenny has provided the link in the folder above.

The clues:


ibb.co/JFpDvvs

[TxTH]

To help you out if you have been working on this, there are two Vigenere codes, a typewriter shift, a couple of simple one letter Cesarean shifts, a very important Beale code, two Atbash ciphers with one of them including numerical digits 0-9, an acrostic confirming Beale, acrostic showing redherring, several items hidden in plain sight in the text, concealed letters in pictures that mean nothing, page 13 (to save you time) was nothing but the serial numbers on the bars of silver buried in the treasure, the Cairo font from my Apple IIGS I wrote the book on (yes, an Apple IIGS lol) Font was insignificant until last four letters., a map of the exact final location (it's not a machine), and several things that were just out right incorrect information like Mt Rainier.

An interesting side... writing chapter 6 "Wizards and Craters" actually helped me solve one of Jenny's scroll puzzles many years later. :-)

[TxTH]

Hmmm....isn't Gabriel an "angel"?  Didn't we read something about a blue angel in the book?  Maybe that word would be useful in solving a clue?  Which one is the question!

[TxTH]

Page 45 "ELDK" Would you believe this clue will help find the book needed to decipher the Beale code? If you read the message inside the quotes right above this clue and the three sentences below, you are told how to solve the clue and where to use it.

[susb8383]

Have you ever thought of offering a small prize for the second solving?

[TxTH]

There are too many people that know the solution that participated back in 1990, even here on this forum.   Also, my book was featured with the finders in a short segment of a major TV program.  I will reveal a lot more next week.

[TxTH]

Spoiler ahead!





The letters on the airplane on page 43 (CNNZTQZ) can be solved with 1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ OVER ZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA0987654321 This should be an ID number many of you will recognize immediately. It ties to the theme of the puzzle as well as provides a key word to one of the Vigenere cyphers. If this is not enough then the page with the Cairo font will also point to another source for this exact same word.  I made a mistake on the image I created for the Cairo font clue that I sent out.  Anyone that checked it out would discover this discrepancy very quickly.  There is a different set of characters for the numbers when the shift key is pressed.  It only mattered for the last symbol which is a small house that represents the number "5".  The entire Cairo clue is alternating back and forth from the lowercase symbols to the uppercase symbols.  It was a clue that needed to be completely solved.  If you quit half way through, as the message seems to be suggesting, you would not find the clue.

[TxTH]

Ok, so from the above you now have NCC1701 (STAR TREK!) and CV65 (US Navy aircraft carrier), both of which are "Enterprise" vessels. Seeing two or three possibilities from the book for Vigenere codes you just have to start trying. To save some time, try the one on page 26. And while we are practicing Vigenere codes try the one on page 42 with the key word that you were given a hint to on page 38 and discovered on page 40. These two messages will get you going on the right track.

You also might start looking at page 21 for some more helpful clues.

See you next Wednesday!

Dr. Dan D Alamos

[TxTH]

I thought I would start with a quick explanation of how the Vigenere code worked on page 26. You started at the beginning of the bottom line and started repeating the word ENTERPRISE, placing one letter over each letter in the cipher. When you reach the end of the line you move up a row and go to its start and continue with the next letter of the word ENTERPRISE from the end of the bottom row which happens to be N. Just continue this pattern and apply it to the Vigenere code palette and you should get:
IN THE LAND OF THREE FIRES
CLOSE BY THE ROARING SOUND
LIES THE PLACE OF ALL DESIRES
OF TREASURES WAITING TO BE FOUND
A HOWLING IN THE DISTANCE OVERSEES THE PLACE
TO BE THE FIRST YOU HAVE A CHANCE (there was an error in spelling of FIRST)
IF TIME YOU DO NOT WASTE

Page 42 the keyword was ANGEL and start on the first line. The message: A FISH TALE NOT ABOUT A FISH WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU EAGERLY WISH

I am pulling things to look at in no specific order. As you solve different puzzles you will need to piece it all together into the main theme to come up with the solution to the BEALE code on page 20 and maybe the final solution.

Now lets look at page 21. There are three separate clues here. The first one is an acrostic...1st letter first line, second letter second line, etc. This is a confirmation that there is indeed a BEALE code. Gold is underlined because the prize is stated as being silver but I also placed a $20 gold piece in the treasure as well that you can see on the cover of the book.

The second and third clues are a bit more of a challenge. The second clue is a Caesar shift one letter up. The message:

CLEAR YOUR MIND TO YOUR YOUTH
OF FIELDS FIRST USED TO LEARN THE TRUTH
LEAD BY STEPS TWENTY FIVE NORTH
OF YOUR MARKS YOU PICKED THE FOURTH
RED IS THE SUN AS IT SETS
IN THIS LAND OF MIDNIGHT BETU

So, two things are notable here. twenty five steps north of the fourth mark and the last 4 letters don't make sense. Looking at those last four letters I now realize the last letter should have been an S. People working on this book found out it wasn't all that it appeared to be. The text of this message is directed at the character, not to the searcher. The twenty five steps and fourth mark have nothing to do with the solution as does the land of midnight bets (Nevada?) so look closer. You will find the name of a state hiding here somewhere. This revealed cipher began showing that the solution to the ciphers alone was not enough. You also had to examine those solutions sometimes to see if there was more hiding there than first appeared.

The last clue on this page was fun to create. You definitely have to be thinking outside the box to solve this riddle as it will give you a critical piece of information to recovering the treasure. We know that George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Benjamin Franklin were all American Revolution figures. But that is not what this riddle refers to at all. It is something else completely.

Next week we will dive into the solutions here. We will also look at the symbols on page 30 and discuss how it is solved. Think "Picket Fence".

[TxTH]

Last week, the first letters of the first 5 lines in the second clue spell out COLOR and the R starts the color RED. What state's name means red? COLORADO. We now have a state identified but we're not quite ready to go dig up the silver and gold.

Okay, its time to look at page 30. The solution is really quite easy once you see what I did. The solution has 14 letters. There are 28 symbols. So what I did was I took the 14 letters and then picket fenced them with the even letters making up the bottom line. But wait, as you look at the page there are only four columns of symbols and we need 7. Well, turn the page sideways counterclockwise and now you have 7 columns. But there are 4 rows, not 2. What I did was take the top row of letters and cut them in half, top half and bottom half. I did the same to the bottom row of letters. I then moved the bottom half of the top row letters down so they were in the third row. That makes the 1st and 2nd rows the top half of the letters and the 3rd and 4th rows the bottom half of the letters. Now that I have all the letter pieces in the right location I just started rotating the individual pieces 1/8th of a turn. I left the first alone and then rotated the second 1/8th a turn and then the next 1/4 of a turn and then the next 3/8ths of a turn and so on. You can pretty much tell what the letters are without knowing that and reassemble them to get the message. Since they are picket fenced you have to reinsert the bottom row letters where they go and you will now see: BYTHETHIRDFIRE

So at this point we know something is by the third fire in Colorado but what?

Page 34 - check out the next to last letter of each line and that explains that clue.

Page 12 - The most difficult part of this page was just figuring out what the letters were in this Old English font. But once you did using the alphabet forward over the alphabet backward gave you the key for solving it. there was nothing that helped with the puzzle as this was a clue to the character again, not to the searcher. -

TO THE HOUSE OF THE AUNT
WITH THE GOLDEN HAIR
LOOK THERE WITHIN
FOR THE SECRET WE SHARE

That's it for today.

Next week we will look at the final cipher clue on page 36. It is based on the keyboard. See if you can figure it out before next Wednesday. See you then.

[TxTH]

I need to start off today by going back and covering something I skipped over that is very important to the final location. On June 30th I mentioned George Washington, Ethan Allen, and Benjamin Franklin. If you search to see what weapon they might have all carried during the American Revolution you probably will come up empty handed. However, if you search those three names and how they might be linked to gether with a specific weapon you would find that there were three classes of submarines in the United States Navy with those names. These three classes of submarines all carried "polaris" missiles which, thank heavens, they never fired in anger. So now we have polaris, which as you know is the north star, mixed into the solution somehow.

Now for page 36, did any of you come up with a solution? As I stated it uses the keyboard of a computer or typewriter. Lets take the first five letters - YJRTR - and look at the keyboard. If you look and substitute the key to their right you get UKTYT. However, if you substitute the key to the left you get THERE so that is encouraging. Be aware that if you are at the first letter (or number) on a row of the keyboard, to get the key to the left you must "wrap" around to the letter (or number) key on the far right of that row. Now, if you continue your decoding you get -
THERE LIES THREE TREASURES IN A ROW
TO THEIR NORTH IS THE WAY TO GO
ABOVE SEE ONE BEFORE 62 AND 66 FROM 2000 BELOW
IS THIS A CLUE OR JUST A SHOW
JUUHVQMEEUE.... Wait! What happened? Start using the key to th RIGHT now...
LOOK NEXT TO THE JEWEL OF SAN JUAN
FOR THE MINE TO WHICH YOU ARE DRAWN
193 DEGREES

So now we have all the codes solved. What do we have? Lets take a look at all of them together and see if we can start piecing them together.

Page 12: TO THE HOUSE OF THE AUNT
WITH THE GOLDEN HAIR
LOOK THERE WITHIN
FOR THE SECRET WE SHARE Nothing was found here that could help us solve anything.

Page 13: No code, just serial numbers and the date on all the silver one ounce coins.

Page 20: The Beale code we need to solve.

Page 21: Confirmation that there is a Beale code

B EHINDEVERY
R E MAINSMANY
TH A TBOOKS
TEL L STALES
SILV E RAND

State clue:

C LEAR YOUR MIND TO YOUR YOUTH
O F FIELDS FIRST USED TO LEARN THE TRUTH
L EAD BY STEPS TWENTY FIVE NORTH
O F YOUR MARKS YOU PICKED THE FOURTH
RED IS THE SUN AS IT SETS
Not needed - IN THIS LAND OF MIDNIGHT BETU

I was carried first by George Washington,
Etan Allen, and Benjamin Franklin
but was never fired in anger.

"Polaris" missiles

Page 22: Cairo font

Last 4 letters: CV65 = US carrier Enterprise

Page 26:

IN THE LAND OF THREE FIRES
CLOSE BY THE ROARING SOUND
LIES THE PLACE OF ALL DESIRES
OF TREASURES WAITING TO BE FOUND
A HOWLING IN THE DISTANCE OVERSEES THE PLACE
TO BE THE FIRST YOU HAVE A CHANCE
IF TIME YOU DO NOT WASTE

Page 30: Letters cut in half

BY THE THIRD FIRE

Page 34: Next to last letter in each line from top to bottom spelled out RED HERRING

Page 36:

THERE LIES THREE TREASURES IN A ROW
TO THEIR NORTH IS THE WAY TO GO
ABOVE SEE ONE BEFORE 62 AND 66 FROM 2000 BELOW
IS THIS A CLUE OR JUST A SHOW
LOOK NEXT TO THE JEWEL OF SAN JUAN
FOR THE MINE TO WHICH YOU ARE DRAWN
193 DEGREES

Page 42:

A FISH TALE NOT ABOUT A FISH WILL TELL YOU WHAT YOU EAGERLY WISH

Page 44: ELDK ...I'll leave this one for a little while longer because it was so critical.

There is everything together. I will give you until next week to look it over and then we will look at the pictures and start scouring the text as well.

See you next Wednesday.

[TxTH]

This will be a good time to cover the second clues that I sent out in the first post above. It started with a warning not to waste your time going out and searching until you have solved the Beale code on page 20.

So here are the clues...

Have you rented a movie? Back in 1990 Blockbuster and local video tape rental stores were the main way to get movies without buying them. There were no DVDs at this point. So what movie do we need to watch? maybe we can figure that out today.

Page 13 Does anyone know? I guarantee the winner will! This is the page that contains the serial numbers on the silver bars that were buried.

Page 15 A vague clue 33 words apart. So start counting and see if any pair of words would help you locate a treasure location.

Watch, listen, read, and listen! (emphasis on the words listen.) This will have to do with two things that will help to solve the puzzle.

Ire = wrath So where in the book is the word "ire" used?

A rose could be eros, sore, ores, or eors This clue with the one above will finally give you a major revelation! ire was use in the book like this - ire of Hank - so replacing ire with wrath we get wrath of Hank. Then we see from the second clue that a 4 letter word could be rearranged into something else and we find out that Hank can become Khan so now we have Wrath of Khan! We know from the airplane that we had a hint to Star Trek and here is a Star Trek movie. So now we know which movie we need to watch. But don't forget to also LISTEN for a clue as you watch it. There are clue in the dialogue.

In bridge: A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and 2 of any one suit. I had to really think back of what this clue meant. I knew it didn't have to do with trumps and then about two weeks ago I finally remembered what it meant. We will save this for later to see how it fits the final puzzle.

Gabriel ...was an angel

The icons are the Cairo font on an Apple computer. These are in alphabetical and numerical order with the error I mentioned earlier about using the wrong symbols for the upper case numbers.

Deseret I had originally planned on hiding the silver in Utah but had to change my plans when the BLM told me I could bury it on BLM land but it would be a matter of public record because an archeological survey would have to be done at the burial site. Okay, forget that so moving on. Deseret is found in the letters in the pictures scattered throughout the book and then use a 1 letter Caesar shift.

ELDK is a cypher. Yes it is.

Now how does all of this work with the clues we have? We can see that CV65 and the NCC1701 not only gave us the keyword ENTERPRISE for a cipher but also pointed at Star Trek. Now we know the movie we need to watch. Why? Well, as the movie opens, Chekov is on the surface of a planet and discovers a building that he enters. The camera pans a bookshelf with several books on it! That is the first thing we are looking for. Not "A Tale of Two Cites" but one identified in the text of the book on page 44 containing ELDK. In the third sentence below these four letters it tells you how to solve the letters..."I came up just short of the correct answer." ELDK is just short so the correct letters must be FMEL! What? How does that help? Now look at the riddle above the letters and read..."Do your homework now where imaginations run wild and minds are held in check. Remember!" This is a double clue. The first tells you there is a location where imaginations run wild and minds are held in check. If you think about it for a while, it is a perfect description of a library! So now we know that the FMEL must have something to do with a library. Book call letters: F for Fiction MEL for the author. Now go back to the Wrath of Khan bookshelf and look at the books and you will see one by Melville! "A fish tale not about a fish" since a whale is not a fish. Now we have the book! MOBY DICK!!! But! That is an awful thick book. Where are you going to start? "Remember!" In Wrath of Khan Spock tells Dr. McCoy to "Remember" while doing a mind meld with him before entering the contaminated area of the engine room. Another reference to Star Trek but also a line in one of the Star Trek movies.

I will mention now that Inside Edition did a short feature on my book featuring Tony Castenade and Nick Boone, the two men that found the silver. I will talk about that next week as well.

Other things in the text...

ire of Hank
superior capacity for knowledge... "superior intellect" - used by Khan's son to describe his dad.
page 15 words 33 words apart = bench mark
page 17 "it turned out to be only two yards away" 2 yards = 6 feet away.
page 23 three degrees above freezing = 35 degrees
page 29 some intentional wrong information here about the Navajo Indians. They were not in the Warm Springs Reservation. The actual clue: "My trail to cross the Navajo"

I had sent out another page of clues and just found it. Here are those clues:

"I just finished watching a movie"
"Beam me up Scotty" - reference to Star Trek again
A reference to a twenty dollar gold piece that I included in the treasure.
The treasure is within 300 feet of a four lane US Highway
A rose by any name
10129, 11742, 11910 - revealed next week
rtfughuktxpffpffpwwp - typewriter shift "West of the Mississippi" (River or state didn't matter. It was still west.)
Gen. 1:14 - Another reference to the stars to keep you thinking of Star Trek.

PICTURES that mattered:
Page 19 is a mark I cut into a rock at the burial site.
page 39 is a map of the final location.
page 43 the airplane

All other pictures had references to Utah or no clue at all.

Next week I will wrap it up. See you then!

[TxTH]

I am posting this a day ahead of time because there are two solutions coming up...
1. The solution to the book
2. The solution to the Beale code...where does it lead?

So as mentioned last Wednesday we have everything we need. We just need to put it together.
We know we have the movie and the book that will give us the final solution. (Or will it?) There is a clue to the particular chapter in the book that was released in the second set of clues.
Do you remember the clue A, K, Q, J, etc? In bridge, all four suits are used for a total of 52 cards. No jokers or any other extraneous cads are used. In my clue there are 13 cards which happens to be 1/4th of 52. In other words it is a "quarter" of the deck = the chapter Quarterdeck in Moby Dick.

Now I had to have a clue to a specific piece of the text and I couldn't use page numbers because of all of the different versions of Moby Dick there would most probably be different numbers of pages due to insertion of images or whatever. This is where Khan comes to the rescue. He just found out Kirk is alive and well on the Enterprise and he is going to go after him. His son pleads that they already have Genesis (another clue I gave) and don't need Kirk. It is here that Kahn quotes Moby Dick, but in space terminology..."He tasks me. He tasks me (and I'll have him) I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round perdition's flames before I give him up." In Moby Dick Ahab says... "Aye, aye! and I'll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition's flames before I give him up."

I wish you could see what Inside Edition did with this.  They brought up the scene of Khan in the movie beginning the quote and rolled it into the Gregory Peck movie picking up the remainder of the quote.  They put into pictures exactly what I imagined!

There are 114 letters in the quote from the book. Using the code numbers on page 14 you get the final message and have solved all of the clues in the book.
I'll type this by the rows of numbers:

IFYOUGOTHEW
AYYOURMEANT
YOULLREADATAL
EOFTREASUREO
LODTHREEHUNDR
EDMENOFFREN
CHDESCENTTH
ETALESATALE
OFLOSTFRENC
HGOLD

You now have everything so go dig up the silver! (REMINDER: THE SILVER IS GONE> IT WAS SOLVED IN 1992.)

But wait! You thought the Beale code would tell you exactly where to dig! You already had everything you needed to get to the exact location without the Beale code. Tomorrow I will let the two men that solved The Inheritance Part 2 tell you how they did it!

[TxTH]

I hope you enjoy this read. Please feel free to post any comments... HOW THE TREASURE WAS FOUND -

HOW THE TREASURE WAS FOUND -