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Post by forgottenhistoryhunt on Feb 5, 2022 20:39:48 GMT -5
Great hunt! Thank you, again! I may have been able to put a lot of things together if I had only searched for "Ichabod" together with "train". I had searched so many combinations, but that one escaped me. I love the tie-in's, very clever and well thought out. The only one I do not get is the "A fraid is a group of ghosts!" I found one reference in Quora, but if you try to find it in a dictionary, there is no mention of ghosts. Please let me know where I can find that reference?
Also referenced on a couple of of other websites:
Someone named Oliver Jeffers, a visual artist, has a series of 'photos' of ghosts that he called A Fraid of Ghosts.
I don't know if it's just slang, but you are right, I don't see it in a dictionary, so probably not anything official. I like it though!
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Post by forgottenhistoryhunt on Feb 5, 2022 20:44:27 GMT -5
One question...what did screenplay represent? (I tried to find the collective noun for films, scripts, etc). The screenplay did not represent anything. I was going to change it to "script" or something else, but I had already posted the teaser picture, so had to stay with that! Just one red herring isn't too bad...! |
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jrrag
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Post by jrrag on Feb 5, 2022 21:47:09 GMT -5
Wow!! First of all, thanks for the congrats. Now for the things that fit so well but were total coincidences: Bird Imagery Throughout: The three books all had to do with a falcon, the fourth with eggs. The fish is a tetra *cardinal* The connection between April 21 and a train: On April 21 a black congressman was asked to move from First Class to the Jim *Crow* section of the train. Sleepy Hollow References Throughout: The story took place in a Dutch community. The fish was striped blue, red, white which is exactly the flag for the Netherlands. The cliff looked to me like a hunk of wood: Ichabod encountered the headless horseman in the woods. All the bones: Ichabod's nemesis is named Brom Bones. Sounds of Silence: the Headless Horseman was silent. Misc: *Art* Garfunkel was superimposed with skulls: Ichabod was a graffiti artist. Here are things that I totally got wrong: I did look at 1 Samuel in the Bible (the Catholic Bible because of tetra cardinal) but was was trying to solve the cipher with it. I did get CSX and knew it had to do with trains. But I thought the departure time minus the arrival was significant. I went down the Son of Sam rabbit hole (offspring and Sam from the books). That was a dark hole to fall into. I identified the picture of Ichabod as the cover of an obscure Czech book translated as "Happy and Scary." And the Czech flag is also red, white, and blue (but not striped): www.databazeknih.cz/knihy/stastne-a-hruzostrasne-antologie-stedrovecernich-hororu-479653I figured out the hint as all being collective nouns but thought the collective noun for the missing thing was a hint at how to solve the cipher. So since books can also be anthologies, I thought the missing thing was the picture of the man. A group of men? A set of men? From this line of reasoning I thought the cipher was not a book cipher but something that needed to be grouped into sets. So I spent a LOT of time coming up with a total of how many times each numeral appears, then by column, then how many times a unique total appears. Then I thought maybe the missing thing is just drawing attention to one of the items; the books. I noticed four books and each of those books including the comic book can be found online. So I thought maybe each different book is used to solve just one column. That took a while! I made no headway at all until the hint. I thought it was obvious that the words themselves had no significance. So I counted letters in each line (nada), words in each line. That seemed promising when it started to look like a real sentence: MILL HELI but then went south. I finally realized the words reminded me of The Raven, especially the tapping at the door. When I saw the poem had 18 stanzas and referenced a prophet, I knew that was it. It was only then that I remembered thinking early on that the cipher looked like it went with a poem because of the small middle number which probably represented lines in a stanza. Phew!!! Great fun! Congrats Stercox and Forest Blight! And a big thanks to FHH!! (Hope your dog enjoyed her walk). Thanks for sharing and congrats again! I was only missing The Raven connection. I did not think Ichabod the rail god was actually THE answer, but led to it. I was missing there was a quote at Skull Cliff, and then I guess you back into Poe. Otherwise, it seems like it would've been hard to solve without the clues. My paths and rabbit holes: Books: Sam and falcon. No falcon in Seuss. However Green Eggs and Ham is a not-uncommon name for rock climbs => CLIFF => rock faces => S&G ? Marvel Falcon is Sam Wilson. Real Sam Wilson is Uncle Sam and delivered meat to troops in war of 1812, same time real Ichabod Crane was a colonel. Lots of time spent there looking at their family trees (OFFSPRING) and if they were connected other ways. Crane's son Charles was an attending at Lincoln's autopsy. Lincoln's funeral TRAIN departed on APRIL 21 for Springfield. Lots of time spent there too. Actually found listings of stops and times all along the way. No dice...
Bulletin: Got the I SAMUEL 4:21 for ICHABOD. Got CSX, did not get the other numbers. As above, was looking at Lincoln funeral train connections. Fish: I had this as a NEON TETRA with ICH. Neon gods, neon signs in Sounds of Silence. Red, white and blue tied to Uncle Sam = SAMUEL WILSON = FALCON Album: Skull ART, Words of the prophets on subway walls = graffiti tied into Ichabod the rail god and when I saw the pictures and found the cliff in Lynnfield that clicked with the background, but I did not see the quote. Ugh. Cipher: Figured was a book or Beale cipher, so was surprised it could be solved without solving for source in other clues. Did not get Conspiracy of ravens connection. Offspring Conspiracy of One, check. Line mentions red over white => fish. Spent tons of time analyzing the numbers to reverse engineer where it could come from. 1-18 had me looking at Joyce's Ulysses and a few things. 1-5 in middle numbers had me trying to figure out a way to chain the sequence like a CONSIST of train cars so I could get an order of the 1-5's to decode via Polybius. Last numbers were 14 max. Somehow I came up with sonnets. OFFSPRING = "Son", SCREEN = "Net" (yeah I'm stretching it...). One kind of sonnet, the kind Shakespeare used was FOURTEEN lines of iambic PENTameter. There's my 14 and my 5. What of the first numbers from 1-18? 18th sonnet is the familiar "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day..." so I tried using the first 18 sonnets, line by last number, foot by middle number. Much time wasted. Cliff: Rock face, Green Eggs and Ham, Ichabod Range in NV. Thought this was best candidate for what was missing in clue 1. Range, chain, array. Was trying to apply that to cipher. Nope. Seaweed: John GREENLEAF Whittier wrote a poem ICHABOD. Weak. Clue 1: Got collective noun connection, but kind of went reverse on what was intended. Was trying to find what in picture couldn't be put in those nouns and was having trouble whittling that down per the earlier post I made. Thought either range or chain of mountains or cliffs, or maybe cabinet or directory of files or folders. Had fraid of ghosts, anthology of poems and music, consist of train cars, school of fish, stack of papers, books, records, bag of bones, rocks, (sea)weed. I found a listing for collection of train schedules. No joke. It's called a "tragedy". Back to Shakespeare...again. What of the background colors? Spectrum of colors? Clue 2: Tried first letters and anagrams, neglected to try skip. Doh. Spent time counting words, punctuation of all types, phrases etc. Was able to get PONTOR via Polybius, so looked at Heracles for a while. Then I really thought I got it, but was very wrong, when I did a frequency analysis and found K,I,N,G were very overused. Looking in the text, KING appears many times in words, so I thought the hint was KING. Since people were beginning to solve it, I wanted to know what king had to do with it. MLK quote? Back to Shakespeare for kings? Henry IV part I has 18 scenes...could not stick the landing. The puzzle title contains letters for king, tried some anagramming. What was the background image of the hint? Saw the rhyming scheme, but did not connect to Poe. Thought there might be significance to the 'ore rhymes being alphabetical to start - anymore, before, core, door, explore, floor. Skips to ignore...what happened to g and h? Gabor? lol. Much fun and learning was had. These short term hunts kind of hit a sweet spot for me where they captivate for a while, but just as they begin to seem frustrating or stale, they are over. I am disappointed that I was so close though! Next time.... Thank you FHH. I look forward to your next adventure. jrrag |
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Post by forgottenhistoryhunt on Feb 6, 2022 7:17:05 GMT -5
Thanks to susb8383 and jrrag for sharing your processes, and your rabbit holes!
It's always amazing to see all the different paths that can be followed using the same set of clues. They all seem so plausible and take you in directions I never intended. Even though I do try searching a variety of combination of terms, I can't always anticipate all of the connections that can be found!
Thank you all for playing, and I hope it was more fun than frustration.
Up next: Last year, I had a "Who Am I?" poem. Coming Saturday is "Who Am I?, Part 2." It will be released Saturday (2/12) around 10am EST. I hope you will all be back to solve it. There will be three chances to win a prize! I'll post a teaser picture soon :-)
Thanks again for your support, and don't forget to sign up for the upcoming Masquerade Tribute Hunt. Six puzzles, lots of prizes, and all proceeds go to charity! With a much bigger prize, I can guarantee my hunt will be more challenging than the ones I have had so far! Masquerade started me down the treasure-hunting path, so it's an honor to be included in the Tribute Hunt alongside five other super-talented hunt-makers!
-FHH
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Post by OutkastSearcher on Feb 6, 2022 13:39:33 GMT -5
Congrats to the winners!!!
As always, great hunt FHH.
I was on the wrong train for this one. But like always, got to dive into some interesting history. Re-read Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, learned a lot about trains and model trains (Lionel Union Pacific Freight Set, #31924), learned about tetra fish...and the TETRA radio system used by railways in Europe. Listened to the sound of silence and conspiracy of one. I actually started filtering out The Conspiracy of One song by Offspring in my searches because it just kept coming up. Learned about the New York transit strike of 1966 (because that is when Sound Of Silence hit No.1 on the charts). Had zero idea that was a cliff in the picture, lol. Thought the books were spelling out "LOVE" with the corners of the books touching different letters.
Bottom line, fun hunt...it's what hunts should be, even if you don't win you still learn some interesting things.
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Post by forgottenhistoryhunt on Feb 6, 2022 14:10:59 GMT -5
Congrats to the winners!!! As always, great hunt FHH. I was on the wrong train for this one. But like always, got to dive into some interesting history. Re-read Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, learned a lot about trains and model trains (Lionel Union Pacific Freight Set, #31924), learned about tetra fish...and the TETRA radio system used by railways in Europe. Listened to the sound of silence and conspiracy of one. I actually started filtering out The Conspiracy of One song by Offspring in my searches because it just kept coming up. Learned about the New York transit strike of 1966 (because that is when Sound Of Silence hit No.1 on the charts). Had zero idea that was a cliff in the picture, lol. Thought the books were spelling out "LOVE" with the corners of the books touching different letters. Bottom line, fun hunt...it's what hunts should be, even if you don't win you still learn some interesting things. Thank you for sharing some of your searches! I've never actually listened to Conspiracy of One, did not know about the TETRA radio system, and still know nothing about model trains! I edited out the background of the cliff, which had some sky and trees below. And wow - I did not know I lined the corners of the books to spell LOVE. You have a good eye!
I'm glad you had fun - maybe with all you learned, you should try out for Jeopardy!
-FHH
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Post by Firefly on Feb 7, 2022 23:18:17 GMT -5
In addition to some of the above, here are a few more. Like Outkast, I saw the "Love" spelled out with the books and cipher text. It also pointed to the 2 in the Train Bulletin. I connected this to a song by Paul Simon called "Crazy Love Vol. II." In the seaweed, I saw "up" and "IV". #4 on that S&G album is "Kathy's Song" after a girlfriend of Paul Simon's. Since Ichabod Crane's love interest was Katrina, I wonder if there was a connection to a "Kathy." I see a key on one of the skulls... In the Dark of Night poem, letters next to punctuation, backward, spell Eddy Keene. This anagrams to "key needed." So I spent quite a bit of time trying to use a key cipher with words like "skeleton" (skeleton key). There is a book called, "Sam Wu Is Not Afraid of Ghosts", which connected to the idea of "Sam" as the character in the books. To me, the word screenplay looked like a Baconian cipher.  Some More History Rabbit Holes: April 21 - Mark Twain's death (Samuel Longhorn Clemens) April 21 - General Sam Houston Battle of San Jacinto - the final battle of the Texas Revolution The Death of Sam Cooke Phrenology/Skull Collection of Samuel Morton Europeans used to drink distilled human skulls as medicine. Aztecs created towers out of skulls. History's "dark days" (I had never heard of these!) Based on quote at the beginning of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," I decided that The Castle of Indolence must be the cipher text. Castle of Indolence anagrams to - Silence Falcon Dote (love). On the last day, I too realized that the cipher was from The Raven and decoded it. However, I couldn't find the original quote and to what it related. I think my biggest mistake was trying to connect the 'content' of the different clues (e.g. that it was a historical event connected to S&G, Washington Irving/Sleepy Hollow, a misquote, and a conspiracy). I had a ton of fun learning new things, jumping down rabbit holes, and partnering with some of you to chat about the puzzle. Thanks for being such a fun community!! |
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Post by forgottenhistoryhunt on Feb 8, 2022 8:00:01 GMT -5
In addition to some of the above, here are a few more. Like Outkast, I saw the "Love" spelled out with the books and cipher text. It also pointed to the 2 in the Train Bulletin. I connected this to a song by Paul Simon called "Crazy Love Vol. II." In the seaweed, I saw "up" and "IV". #4 on that S&G album is "Kathy's Song" after a girlfriend of Paul Simon's. Since Ichabod Crane's love interest was Katrina, I wonder if there was a connection to a "Kathy." I see a key on one of the skulls... In the Dark of Night poem, letters next to punctuation, backward, spell Eddy Keene. This anagrams to "key needed." So I spent quite a bit of time trying to use a key cipher with words like "skeleton" (skeleton key). There is a book called, "Sam Wu Is Not Afraid of Ghosts", which connected to the idea of "Sam" as the character in the books. To me, the word screenplay looked like a Baconian cipher.  Some More History Rabbit Holes: April 21 - Mark Twain's death (Samuel Longhorn Clemens) April 21 - General Sam Houston Battle of San Jacinto - the final battle of the Texas Revolution The Death of Sam Cooke Phrenology/Skull Collection of Samuel Morton Europeans used to drink distilled human skulls as medicine. Aztecs created towers out of skulls. History's "dark days" (I had never heard of these!) Based on quote at the beginning of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow," I decided that The Castle of Indolence must be the cipher text. Castle of Indolence anagrams to - Silence Falcon Dote (love). On the last day, I too realized that the cipher was from The Raven and decoded it. However, I couldn't find the original quote and to what it related. I think my biggest mistake was trying to connect the 'content' of the different clues (e.g. that it was a historical event connected to S&G, Washington Irving/Sleepy Hollow, a misquote, and a conspiracy). I had a ton of fun learning new things, jumping down rabbit holes, and partnering with some of you to chat about the puzzle. Thanks for being such a fun community!! Once again I am blown away by the connections hidden in my puzzle that I did not intend! Especially the skeleton key and the April 21 events that, unknown to me, tie in with my hunt!
The connections and rabbit holes everyone shared has given me an idea for another hunt. Thanks for playing and for sharing your discoveries!
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