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Cask 3 Update: I've received sufficient confirmation to the effect that my theory on Chicamacomico will not lead to a successful recovery. There's been too many changes to the immediate environment to make any recovery possible. Consider my theory proven false. Urban Smurf fucked around with this message at 21:55 on Jul 24, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 18:51
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Cask 9, Montreal This was brought up before, right?  Not too convincing by itself, sure, but it's located on the side of the George Stephen House, giving visual clues on both lapels of our figure in image 9 directing you to this location. 
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Jul 6, 2013 |
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Jul 6, 2013 21:29
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New York Could the "isle of B" be one of the parks formed by Broadway slanting through the grid of the city ("one branch of the v")? Gershwin ("rhapsodic man") is famous as a Broadway songwriter. Times Square (from the painting) is one such traffic island park. Herald Square is another and is "in the shadow of the grey giant", the Empire State Building. I've never been to NYC so I don't know if this is plausible or not but I thought I'd throw it out.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:14
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OK, I've used Adobe Acrobat's OCR feature to convert the scanned images of the text into actual text and put it in the Wiki. I've added "The Tale, Simply Told", "The Passage To The New World", and "The Vanishing". I corrected the mis-scans I could find. Unfortunately, I'm not at all versed in the embedded text-formatting commands the Wiki uses, so it's pretty rudimentary. Anyone and everyone can feel free to modify and reformat it to make it more usable. I don't know if any of that actually has anything to do with the locations of the casques, but it's always better to have more information available.
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Jul 7, 2013 03:27
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Merlot Brougham posted:Cask 12, New York So where exactly is this on Ellis Island? My first thought was that, since it's depicted in the drawing as flying rather than sitting, if that statue actually did get up and fly straight out, what direction would it go?
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Jul 7, 2013 03:38
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I think they are on every corner of the central tower, not in a single spot.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:01
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Deteriorata posted:OK, I've used Adobe Acrobat's OCR feature to convert the scanned images of the text into actual text and put it in the Wiki. I've added "The Tale, Simply Told", "The Passage To The New World", and "The Vanishing". I corrected the mis-scans I could find. Let's keep in mind copyright issues. I tried to duplicate only the relevant portions to avoid crossing the line.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:03
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Very Nice Eraser posted:Let's keep in mind copyright issues. I tried to duplicate only the relevant portions to avoid crossing the line. I think this qualifies as Fair Use, since we're not reprinting it for profit, the relatively few pages involved, and the effect on the market value of the book (nil, since it's out of print). This is largely educational at this point, as there is no profit to be made in finding the casks. It's nearly impossible to get ahold of the book, so there isn't really any other way for us as a group to study it. IANAL though, so I will defer to the judgment of others.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:28
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Very Nice Eraser posted:Let's keep in mind copyright issues. On the positive side, if Preiss rises from the dead (and re-instates his defunct publishing house that got auctioned off... with our gems and solutions, thank you very much), then we can ask him some "hard Questions in 3 Vols."
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Jul 7, 2013 04:48
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Nesetril posted:On the positive side, if Preiss rises from the dead (and re-instates his defunct publishing house that got auctioned off... with our gems and solutions, thank you very much), then we can ask him some "hard Questions in 3 Vols." Agreed! He can re-unite with his family later, there's 10 casks out there somewhere! I think we're fine with what's in the wiki, and I imagine the copyright itself is in the ether since the publisher is defunct, so it's not really a pressing issue. Just thought I'd note it.
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Jul 7, 2013 04:59
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Hosting extensive stuff from the book would probably be illegal, but I doubt that whoever owns the rights to the book would care at this point.
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Jul 7, 2013 05:38
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Cask 12, New YorkFrilled Lizard posted:So where exactly is this on Ellis Island? My first thought was that, since it's depicted in the drawing as flying rather than sitting, if that statue actually did get up and fly straight out, what direction would it go? Nocheez posted:I think they are on every corner of the central tower, not in a single spot. There are three of them on top of the Ferry Building.   
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 06:34 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 06:29
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Urban Smurf posted:Cask 3
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Jul 7, 2013 06:45
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I think it's time for fewer heads in the clouds and more feet on the ground. How's the Houston campaign going?
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Jul 7, 2013 06:55
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I have added the list of common interpretations for difficult lines like "him of Hard word" to some of the verses. Verse 2 Verse 6 Verse 10 Hopefully, having them available in one spot will help someone.
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Jul 7, 2013 07:02
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:I think it's time for fewer heads in the clouds and more feet on the ground. How's the Houston campaign going? Well we've nailed down the date and event when he buried it. How much of an illogical jump is it to presume he buried the cask after the concert with the Moody Blues helping? He partied up with them, and they helped him dig that hole. Doubt if they'd remember right where, though.
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Jul 7, 2013 07:20
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Nesetril posted:I've written up the main page for C9 in the same style as the other casks: Cask 9. I would like to encourage everyone to branch off their favorite theory in the style of 'List of theories placing Cask 9 in ...' or 'X's theory placing Cask 9 in ...'. You might want to include the inner collar/river match for Montreal since that has been really well received whenever it's been posted. Our current theory is Dominion Square which was the name prior to being split in "twain" in 1967 (67 is a number that seems to come up a lot for for cask 9) and it's currently Dorchester Square and Place du Canada. The only reason that we gave up the Expo site was that New Orleans seemed close to cracking that verse, though, so it might still be valid. Also, more people need to read about the Indian pavilion at the '67 Expo since that was metal as all hell. I haven't put Dominion Square together with the verse since page 55 and there have been some better interpretations that other posters have made since then, so I'll try to do a general theory page this week some time with the updated stuff unless someone beats me to it. Merlot Brougham posted:Cask 9, Montreal I don't think that this has been posted before.
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Jul 7, 2013 08:16
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Cask 9, MontrealGuuse posted:You might want to include the inner collar/river match for Montreal since that has been really well received whenever it's been posted. Our current theory is Dominion Square which was the name prior to being split in "twain" in 1967 (67 is a number that seems to come up a lot for for cask 9) and it's currently Dorchester Square and Place du Canada. The only reason that we gave up the Expo site was that New Orleans seemed close to cracking that verse, though, so it might still be valid. Also, more people need to read about the Indian pavilion at the '67 Expo since that was metal as all hell. I am also working on a couple bigger picture type things to tie everything together, but the more I look at it, the more I have to put the cask right at the George Stephen House. There are a couple other features potentially matching on the house itself. I like the way the fibers of the vine and the leaf match up in a hairlike way.  This one's pushing it a little bit more:  Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 10:16 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 09:58
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Merlot Brougham posted:Cask 9, Montreal You can twist the verse to get you there. "But first across" could be telling you to move a block over to Drummond from Saint Geroges. I prefer the simpler interpretation, but the Mount Stephens Club can absolutely be taken as a final destination from the verse. I think the Ignace Bourget monument is probably a better match for that detail since both solves would likely originate at Marie Reinne du Monde anyways, ed: and it more closely references the sharp downwards kick that the hair takes it the top: 
Guuse fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 11:11
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Guuse posted:You might want to include the inner collar/river match for Montreal since that has been really well received whenever it's been posted. Our current theory is Dominion Square which was the name prior to being split in "twain" in 1967 (67 is a number that seems to come up a lot for for cask 9) and it's currently Dorchester Square and Place du Canada. The only reason that we gave up the Expo site was that New Orleans seemed close to cracking that verse, though, so it might still be valid. Also, more people need to read about the Indian pavilion at the '67 Expo since that was metal as all hell. Wikipedia suggests a slight correction here. While the square was split in 1967 with the southern portion renamed Place du Canada, the northern portion retained the Dominion Square name until 1987, when Dorchester Street was renamed Rene-Levesque. At that time the name of then northern portion was renamed Dorchester Square.
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Jul 7, 2013 12:44
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Verse 10 "The natives still speak Of him of Hard word in 3 Vols. " Sci-fi and fantasy author Poul Anderson (seven Hugos, three Nebulas) wrote a trilogy with Harald Hardrada (whose name means "hard counsel") as the protagonist. The entire trilogy came out in 1980. It may be why "Hard" is capitalized, referring to his name. I mention the awards because I think anyone nerdy enough to buy Preiss' book back then would have heard of Poul Anderson. I don't know enough about New York to find the connection; Google gives me two hits on a "Stamford Bridge Room" in NY, but I can't find more about it.
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Jul 7, 2013 16:51
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Cask 9, MontrealGuuse posted:You can twist the verse to get you there. "But first across" could be telling you to move a block over to Drummond from Saint Geroges. I prefer the simpler interpretation, but the Mount Stephens Club can absolutely be taken as a final destination from the verse. Would you put the Stephen House on the route at all then? If so, how? I wasn't pulling visual clues from the George Stephen house with any particular verse in mind. I'm ok with exploring verse 5 on this also. Unfortunately, I suspect that it may be verse 5 and we've lost the cask because of the construction.  Verse 7 still puts it in front of the house. If we're looking at verse 7 and not using the George Stephen House as the final destination, everything in the verse is likely self-contained within the square, making the on-site visual clue of the legeater irrelevant. Here are a couple scenarios of how I imagine the hunt would go down if you haven't yet discovered the legeater and are going with a Verse 7 interpretation. Cask 9, Montreal - Verse 7 Variant Scenario #1 - He's hanging by his neck in his loving closet. Scenario #2 - You've done your homework. The first thing you're looking for are numbers, and and a few cities could potentially match the coordinates you come up with from the image. What else are you working with? It's a pretty churchy looking image, and his collar almost looks like a maple leaf. You notice what could be a church dome in his collar too. The neckline looks like it could be the St. Lawrence river as it passes Montreal. Then there's his hat, which looks as much like an outline of Montreal as the island in Image 3 compares to Roanoke, and if you like the "Illinois" in the solved Cask 5 image, hot drat. You think you have a shot with Montreal. So you start looking at Churches and trying to connect the Dutch reference with a location in Montreal. You notice several examples of crow-stepped gables (Dutch) on buildings that match the steps on the collar in the image. One of the more iconic examples of this architecture is the Royal Victoria Hospital, which was coincidentally funded by George Stephen. If your picture isn't lying to you, it is a unique match because it has uneven gables, much like the lopsided steps on his collar in the image. While looking for a connection to the prominent golden checkerboard pattern, you notice the Golden Square Mile. A pretty significant area of Montreal. In fact, there are many squares on the picture, but only one large golden one, and there's a picture of a legeater in it. Maybe there's something to that. You start looking at the Golden Square Mile for nearby parks/landmarks, you take a look at Dominion/Dorchester Square and Place du Canada. Marie Reinne du Monde being right there ties in nicely to the image. You find out everything you ever wanted to know about the late Right Hon. Sir John A. Macdonald and start to think the guy in the image bears a striking resemblance. He certainly has the CV to fit the "high posts" in the verse. You've noted the Boer War Monument for the Dutch connection. The guy in image 9 is pointing to the horse leg and you're at the only equestrian statue in the entire city of Montreal. You start poking around for visuals, and you might even stumble upon the checker pattern in the Dominion Square Tavern. If that old sign from the 60's is still up, you see that too. That's a shitload of squares. You're pretty sure you're sniffing around the right area, but where the hell is that thing eating the horse leg? Looking back at the verse, you have the cathedral's sweet air, and John A. nearby, so that works in conjunction with the church bells for the verse. What now? You start crunching street names and comparing them with the image and the verse. You may notice the mountain in his hat and compare it with Mountain Street (after all, it worked with "Bellflower" in the Cleveland solution). Then you research St. Catherine and find out about Mark Twain's various references to her (Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, et al.) Running north, but first across In jewel's direction Is an object Of Twain's attention Read as "It is northeast/northwest of your current location, but also after you've crossed an object of Twain's attention that is between you and the jewel." You feel strongly that Preiss is telling you that you have to go NE or NW but cross St. Catherine Street at some point on your way to the cask. If you buy Mountain and Peel streets being clues contained in the image, you get this as your search area:  So off you go to find the legeater, and once you do, you realize what it was you were looking for, and that it's on a pole next to a landing with a drop-off and stairs. Here's the theory in action:  ,
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Jul 7, 2013 |
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Jul 7, 2013 17:14
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homullus posted:Verse 10 I thought about a Harald Hardrada connection to either Herald Square or Stamford, CT. Someone 20 pages back or so thought the window in the NY painting looked like a prominent building in Stamford.
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Jul 7, 2013 17:26
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It is funny how progress is being made in spurts with different casks. For awhile cask 12 was dormant and now I'm convinced that Ellis Island plays a major role. I like the towers being the orthodox church. It had always bothered me that there were spaces/poles on the middle tower and it fits well (to me) that this is the water tower. The cut out shape on the left fits well as does the eagle. A prior picture was trying to match the smokestack but I don't think that is necessary. I think that (similar to how we are thinking about cask 11 in Cambridge Common) we should try and match an angle with two of the towers being split by the water tower in the middle. It is hard to know without being on the ground but the angle seems like it would work from Governor's Island. Which is, coincidentally, represented by a jewel. From the other direction it would be New Jersey and Liberty Park but we've already talked about that. One thought about the Ishihara plates (the first thing I thought of) is that they could represent "color blindness" which would be an ideal that is supposed to represent the immigrant experience at Ellis Island. The Picnic Park would be the place most aligned with the towers like that but I don't know how long it has been there.
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Jul 7, 2013 17:46
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Cask 12, New YorkInvicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:One thought about the Ishihara plates (the first thing I thought of) is that they could represent "color blindness" which would be an ideal that is supposed to represent the immigrant experience at Ellis Island. The Picnic Park would be the place most aligned with the towers like that but I don't know how long it has been there. I said the same thing two pages back, with the whole "bubbles like a melting pot" tie in. CronoGamer did not subscribe.
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Jul 7, 2013 17:54
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Governors Island was an active Coast Guard installation in the 1980s, though, right up until 1996 when the Coast Guard left as part of the BRAC process. I don't think it was open to the public at all until 2003 when the federal government transferred the island to the state of New York.
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Jul 7, 2013 18:02
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I figured there were things like that already covered in the thread but I wasn't paying as much attention to the various New York ideas until I saw what looked like great image matches.
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Jul 7, 2013 18:28
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Bolkovr posted:I thought about a Harald Hardrada connection to either Herald Square or Stamford, CT. Someone 20 pages back or so thought the window in the NY painting looked like a prominent building in Stamford. BJG posted:(Incidentally I seem to remember the book is dedicated to seekers of light or freedom in the Russian darkness, or something similar. Since this is the Russian image it might have some relevance. I think it's tucked away at the front somewhere - perhaps someone could check.) This book is dedicated to Alexsandr Ginzburg, Yuri Orlov, Anaatoly Shcharansky Andrei Sakharow, Victor Nekipelov, George Vladimov and all the other voices of freedon in the Soviet darkness Incidentally, the book was published by Bantam Books at 666 5th Ave in New York, a building which can certainly be described as a grey giant. Deteriorata posted:I think this qualifies as Fair Use, since we're not reprinting it for profit, the relatively few pages involved, and the effect on the market value of the book (nil, since it's out of print).
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Jul 7, 2013 23:06
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Cask 9, MontrealMerlot Brougham posted:From St. Georges? Why am I not seeing St. Georges? St. Georges Church, down by Windsor Station and Place du Canada. It provides a pretty clear match for Sounds from the sky Near ace is high Because of the church bells and the air force memorial window can relate in the sense that "ace" could refer to a military pilot. St. Patricks is also a couple of blocks away and could qualify, especially as it has a visible "ace of clubs" on the bell tower, but in that case then we're actually going away from the legeater. Yeah, I've gone back and forth on whether to just accept the leg eater as a nearby visual clue or to actually treat it as a "dig here" spot. I think there are good arguments both for and against. If you take St. George's for the verse match then you can get to Drummond just by going "across" Stanley St. Drummond is somewhat counter-intuitively a north-south street according to the signage, so you just follow it a few blocks north and run smack into the Mount Stephens Club. Or, from the same place at Saint George's you can work the verse differently to put you right in the church's side yard. The plusses of this theory are that I think it would be easier to arrive at, the spot is more secluded and keeps the area that the verse covers smaller and tidier. None of those things are definitive, though. I do like that Running north, but first across In jewel's direction Is an object Of Twain's attention works right at the bell tower, since first you have the church windows (from his Montreal quote) running "across" the side of the church in Montreal-north direction, while you have line-of-sight on the street that cuts the park in "Twain" running closer to cardinal north. It doesn't mean that the cask has to be here, but it does provide a different option to the Mount Stephens Club. I actually don't think verse 5 worked all that well. It always struck me as weird that it asked you look at the signs but then took east differently from how it was listed on the street signs. Regarding the smiling and frowning faces that you can get by mirroring each half of the face in the painting and the thought posted earlier that maybe it referred to something like the laughing/crying drama mask, I found these guys on Windsor Station:   Cask 12, Liberty State Park The lamps in the park themselves are domes with spires, too. You'd have to step well back from one to get the perspective right, but you could absolutely line them up with Ellis in lieu of the smokestacks. 
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Jul 8, 2013 00:14
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Merlot Brougham posted:Cask 12, New York Haha, that's no reason to dismiss it altogether! I was just saying it wasn't a very solid leap in my mind. If Preiss were to have made that connection I'd call it out to his face (or to his grave  )
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Jul 8, 2013 00:22
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Cask 2 (add to P.57 post) http://beachbum.homestead.com/Lighthouses/SouthCarolina/CapeRomain.html provided some of the most recent photos of this site. I thought these large fence posts might be added to the list of possibilities for what might constitute "between two arms extended." I wonder if that outline in the mask with the shape of Charleston could be one of these fence posts.  The posts have strong triangular shapes like the "mouth" portion of the Sumter shape, 
Urban Smurf fucked around with this message at 06:22 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 03:49
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While I can't particularly contribute (I'm not near nor particularly familiar with the areas suggested so far), this thread is fascinating and I hope you guys keep up the good work!
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Jul 8, 2013 06:15
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Cask 9, Montreal - Verse 5 I've been looking at the Royal Victoria Hospital because it was funded and established by George Stephen, and has multiple buildings with crow-stepped gables. I don't think it would be a bad place to look for another legeater. A quick search shows that the hospital was established after the George Stephen House and original legeaters were built, making this possible. Granted, the hospital was established a decade plus later, but maybe he referred the architect to his lamp guy. A lot of the brickwork and windows on some of these buildings is very similar to the "blob" next to the legeater in the image. If you want to take it one more step, the "blob" could very well be (part of) this building itself. I also like this location because it fits with the fact that the horses hoof extends beyond the "Golden Square", indicating an area near, but just outside of the Golden Square Mile.  Regardless, it is an unmistakable George Stephen connection less than a mile away from the known legeater. Most importantly, this building:  Has these things (circled above) in addition to the three (uneven) crow-stepped gables (Wish we could make out the details better to see if they show anything else that hits):  Two visual clues from the image on a building funded/established by the guy directly responsible for the legeater. Unfortunately, that's the best picture I could find for the time being. If anyone (stat?) could find/take a better picture of these shields to examine some of the closer detail, I would be grateful. Also, take note of the weathervane, which I'll get back to later. Yes, it's been there forever.  At this point, I think it would take some boots on the ground at the hospital to look for additional clues there. There are many buildings with crow-stepped gables on the campus with interesting characteristics. Some even look "lopsided" like the image. It's hard to tell because of perspective and the available photographs. The questions I'm asking myself at this point: What are the details of the inscriptions on those shields? Is there possibly another legeater somewhere on the campus of the Royal Victoria Hospital? Are there any other buildings containing these style shields, and do they contain different details? Are there any matches to the "blob" somewhere? I noticed a couple buildings with cupolas, and certain patterns of windows/ledges/brickwork show promise. Here's the map for some perspective on the location of the hospital in relationship to the legeater/Dorchester Square. And yes, it should be "Royal Victoria", not "Royal Victorian":  It also has a beautiful match to Verse 5: Weight and roots extended Together saved the site Of granite walls Wind swept halls Citadel in the night A wingless bird ascended Born of ancient dreams of flight Look at the map. Notice anything about the name of the street ("Pine") next to the hospital built on the slopes of Mount Royal? Mount Royal and Pine = Weight and Roots Granite walls, citadel. It looks like a fortress to me. There's a metal bird on the weathervane. Weathervanes being instruments that were born of ancient dreams of flight. Beneath the only standing member Of a forest To the south White stone closest At twelve paces From the west side Get permission To dig out. The rest of it will take you directly to the dig spot. What's on the lamp posts?  Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 10:04
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Premeditated Toast posted:Or you know, there's the Washington Baum (aka the author of Oz) Bridge. That you can take via Hwy 12 ("In December" referencing the number 12).
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Jul 8, 2013 14:27
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How can you not like the Munchkins theory? Image 3 has only the upper torso on a pedestal, very indicative of the armor worn by Tyrion Lannister... http://youtu.be/uFmv22ghzQw Urban Smurf fucked around with this message at 14:52 on Jul 8, 2013 |
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Jul 8, 2013 14:46
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Merlot Brougham posted:Cask 12, New York That bird head does look like a pretty good match to me. I could imagine that the author took a Polaroid photo like that photo and gave it to an artist, that it would wind up looking like it does here. I find the similarity especially noticeable when looking at the thumbnail version of the first one, there.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:20
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ChickenOfTomorrow posted:I think it's time for fewer heads in the clouds and more feet on the ground. How's the Houston campaign going? We are trying to get a GPR crew to survey the area where we believe the treasure lies. The park will probbaly let us dig if we have very good evidence to show them. Since a GPR crew isn't cheap (and excedes my gaming/treasure hunt budget), we are looking into universities that might lend us a crew or GPR. Not much to report yet.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:38
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New York Could the seagull body be a play on Sigel (Union General Franz Sigel)? He was from New York City. There's a statue of him on Riverside Drive and a park named for him near Yankee Stadium. Or if not him, someone else named Sigel or Siegel...
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Jul 8, 2013 15:40
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rookhunter posted:We are trying to get a GPR crew to survey the area where we believe the treasure lies. The park will probbaly let us dig if we have very good evidence to show them. Are you at liberty to say how small of an area you're surveying? I think you've found the spot if you've got it narrowed down to a 3' by 3' location. No doubt the reasons for that spot are well defined by the specific layout of the area unless markers have been removed, relocated, or obscured.
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Jul 8, 2013 15:49
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Urban Smurf posted:Are you at liberty to say how small of an area you're surveying? I think you've found the spot if you've got it narrowed down to a 3' by 3' location. No doubt the reasons for that spot are well defined by the specific layout of the area unless markers have been removed, relocated, or obscured. Yes I have the spot down to a small area. We are also verifying markers to make sure they are old enough.
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Jul 8, 2013 16:03
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