Mysterious New World

[astree]

This is my first solve, which mainly occurred in a very short time. I will leave out some details, because it is on-going and for brevity.

Acrostic (perhaps hinted to by the cross in the 6)

First, the title A Piece O(pal)f the New World, has the capital letters for APO NW. Using the Greek pre-fix APO, this means away from the NW, or most likely South East.

APO NW = South East

Plaintext Alphabet

Next, noting that 65 is the highest number in the cipher text ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/65_(film)

The stand-out of this short article is the stand-alone, emphasized quote

An astronaut crash lands on a mysterious planet only to discover he's not alone

This quote is 65 letters long, so meets the suggestion of the most recent Niamo Speck comments

"if your source material is the alphabet, and your number is 4, then your letter is d. Does this make sense? Now locate the source material and them apply the string of numbers. I hope I'm making sense."

Using the astronaut quote as the alphabet, and making the direct substitution and noticing the peculiar "9" in the ciphertext, the 9th letter of each line gives

U
T
A
H

So far, the message is

South East UTAH

Author ?

As releveant notes at this point, one of the authors of the wikipedia article is "iamnoahflores"

Note that the first 5 letters are an anagram of NIAMO, and flores means "flower", which can be seen on the "64"

Caesar Shift

OPAL is a feature of the puzzle, and the background music begins measure of 4 rising notes. when OPAL is shifted up by 4, we get STEP. This is interesting because the "9" image contains a facelike image on the top, which could be said to STARE, and the bottom part could be STAIRS.

Similarly, if we continue the shift we get to HITE. This is an anagram of THE I, which is featured in a "6". So, now we have

South East UTAH HITE

and HITE is indeed a ghost town in southeast UTAH

Also, for Randy Valentine Goose, you may be interested that "65" was scheduled to be released on 5-13 (May 13) 2022, as you had noted (via Alexa) that 5 and 13 are the prime factors of 65.

[susb8383]

Interesting. But Niamo said the treasure is in the south.

[njarchhunter]

As well, this wikipedia post was created on 9/20/20, when this Cipher was released on 7/2/20.
Great thoughts though. Good luck to you and wish you well on this hunt.

[astree]

Feb 27, 2022 16:37:14 GMT -5 njarchhunter said:

As well, this wikipedia post was created on 9/20/20, when this Cipher was released on 7/2/20.
Great thoughts though. Good luck to you and wish you well on this hunt.

Hi njarchhunter,

I had seen that date discrepancy and wondered about it.  I found the same info (tagline) on other sites ( like www.imdb.com/title/tt12261776/ ) and wasnt sure when they were created, so let the issue remain a question mark on the solve.  I thought it was quite interesting how the coding techniques lined up to give a site in the information that I posted.  There is other information not posted that nails it even more, although Im not sure if its all coincidental.  Im getting other results with other source information .. for example, the first line decipher contains DOI.  Im not putting a lot of time into this.

oh, yesterday, on a drive south to Charlottesville, VA I went through Opal and took a quick drive around.  Just on a lark, as I wouldnt consider that southern US, but Hite is in the southern half of the US, i think. ( that “southern US” leaves some room for interpretstion)

What are you working on.  Best wishes.

[njarchhunter]

Feb 28, 2022 7:50:52 GMT -5 astree said:

Feb 27, 2022 16:37:14 GMT -5 njarchhunter said:

As well, this wikipedia post was created on 9/20/20, when this Cipher was released on 7/2/20.
Great thoughts though. Good luck to you and wish you well on this hunt.

Hi njarchhunter,

I had seen that date discrepancy and wondered about it.  I found the same info (tagline) on other sites ( like www.imdb.com/title/tt12261776/ ) and wasnt sure when they were created, so let the issue remain a question mark on the solve.  I thought it was quite interesting how the coding techniques lined up to give a site in the information that I posted.  There is other information not posted that nails it even more, although Im not sure if its all coincidental.  Im getting other results with other source information .. for example, the first line decipher contains DOI.  Im not putting a lot of time into this.

oh, yesterday, on a drive south to Charlottesville, VA I went through Opal and took a quick drive around.  Just on a lark, as I wouldnt consider that southern US, but Hite is in the southern half of the US, i think. ( that “southern US” leaves some room for interpretstion)

What are you working on.  Best wishes.

Opal, VA has been on my radar. I have a ton of arrows pointing in too many directions. Once I get some traction, I will definitely reach out. Best of luck.