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GWBBQ posted:I can see why you're asking, but not really. It's the location that makes it important to me, but I agree it's more of an "essence" than a match. I agree there's nothing that calls the image out as Boston, and there's lots of numbers you can find hidden in it. It would be quite a kick in the dick if there wasn't one in Boston. I urge people to still look for alternate sites. St Louis is a very popular one, but really anything that isn't conclusively linked is up for grabs. (edit: Seattle, Portland, and Salt Lake City have popped up a bunch too) We're pretty drat sure about Montreal, Charleston, Milwaukee, and Roanoke. Houston is pretty much a lock as well. San Francisco would be one hell of a red herring if wrong. I'd say honestly the rest are up for grabs. NY is teetering, I think the Ellis Island bird is for real, even if the rest isn't. But New Orleans, St Augustine, and Boston are all lacking conclusive proof. I think I've seen enough to be convinced of Boston though. There's a few things that are in ridiculously close proximity represented in the image that would be an absolutely incredible coincidence. Plus the Revere reference.  edit: The more I look at them, the less I'm convinced that the 'church' in #12 is Ellis Island. In the center there are clearly [] [] windows or slats and they're such a fine detail they must be important. xie fucked around with this message at 02:47 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 02:40
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Charleston is so locked down that it's scary, but might be still doable. Keep in mind that's only if the cask is buried at the Battery (my theory, along with Hieronymous Alloy and TotalHell) or Fort Moultrie (lots of other people.) If someone can come up with a theory that's not on the turf of a historical monument, digging should be a minor trespassing charge at worst. Someone earlier said they'd ruled out the Battery because Preiss said he didn't bury any of the casks anywhere "dangerous." Remember, the world has changed a lot since the mid-Eighties. If I'd dug in a planting bed alongside High Battery fifteen or twenty years ago, or even on Fort Moultrie, I think the LE reaction would have been much less extreme, probably more along the lines of "eh, it's just a hole in some sand, fill it back in when you're done" (that's judging by personal experience with high-school pranks and metal-detecting fiends of the era.) That's not the world today; society is more litigious, laws are stricter and police enforce them more harshly.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:49
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NarkyBark posted:I too have a hard time relating any of that to Boston. The falcon, the weird dress pattern, they look so specific but I can't think of anything they relate to. Apologies but it doesn't feel like a hatch shell thing to me. 112 or 42, maybe. There's another 70. 
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 02:52 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 02:50
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My posts on the subject include "I know the world has changed, but..." When you say the Battery do you mean White Point Garden, or the Battery proper?
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Nov 13, 2014 02:50
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I would love for the cask to be in Boston too, because I'm not going to another city just to find one. What I'm worried about is that we're using the right verse but the wrong image.
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Nov 13, 2014 02:54
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This is the gist of it. bonestructure posted:Cask 2 - Charleston, SC These are all of my posts about it (ignore the first couple where I had a false start with Hampton Park): http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3552196&userid=141427
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Nov 13, 2014 02:54
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I have a bunch of notes based on the USS Maine thing alone but that's further than I ever got. I think that's an excellent theory. There will be image matches along the way, they may be difficult to find, and I'd love to get a bunch of historical photography, which I'm sure exists. Especially around the bicentennial. edit: Did you ever dig in the sand outside of the park? xie fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 03:01
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xie posted:edit: The more I look at them, the less I'm convinced that the 'church' in #12 is Ellis Island. In the center there are clearly [] [] windows or slats and they're such a fine detail they must be important.   Also, did you ever make it to NYC to check the theory you were so sure of?
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Nov 13, 2014 03:05
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xie posted:I'd say honestly the rest are up for grabs. NY is teetering, I think the Ellis Island bird is for real, even if the rest isn't. But New Orleans, St Augustine, and Boston are all lacking conclusive proof. I'm going to disagree here. I think NY is solid. Down to the shadows on her face, the hairline, and the bird tongue. We don't need a conclusive latitude and longitude in number form to figure out this image points us to New York. Both Image 7 and Image 6 have city coordinates within them. Image 7 has New Orleans, and Image 6 has St. Augustine. New York  St. Augustine With St. Augustine, even moreso than Boston, we have a verse that has a lot of uncanny references that all have matches at the Fountain of Youth. For the full breakdown, lemontiger does a fine job: http://www.lemontiger.co.uk/images/misc/thesecret/floridapuzzle.pdf I know you've read lemontiger, but I highlighted some of the best bits here for those who haven't. The first chapter Written in water Near Men with wind rose Behind bending branches And a green picket fence At the base of a tall tree You can still hear the honking Shell, limestone, silver, salt Stars move by day Sails pass by night stars move by day Sails pass by night Even in darkness Like moonlight in teardrops Over the tall grass Years pass, rain falls. Let's break this down a bit. The First chapter Written in water   Near Men with wind rose  Shell, limestone, silver, salt   Stars move by day is a reference to the Planetarium and the honking is a reference to the geese that used to reside in the park.  New Orleans Not to mention Image 7 has the John McDonogh Monument right on the clock face, so if that isn't New Orleans, then where? Edit: 
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 03:35
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xie posted:I have a bunch of notes based on the USS Maine thing alone but that's further than I ever got. I think that's an excellent theory. There will be image matches along the way, they may be difficult to find, and I'd love to get a bunch of historical photography, which I'm sure exists. Especially around the bicentennial. That was the case with the scanned newspaper articles I linked (link is dead now, apparently.) The Bicentennial was a big fad at the time, so there were a lot of retrospective articles in the local Sunday supplements (we used to have two daily papers here, believe it or not.) Tons of information and pictures. I've gone back through family photos and my old yearbooks too, as my high school always had student photos taken at the Battery and WPG. quote:edit: Did you ever dig in the sand outside of the park? Probed with a t-screw several times, never got as far as digging. In my self-designated search area I hit a couple of unyielding things with the t-screw that might have been rocks or might have been something else like trash, oyster shells, old brick, etc. No real evidence for anything.
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Nov 13, 2014 03:43
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Merlot Brougham posted:For the full breakdown, lemontiger does a fine job: So the very last line in this pdf says the guys who found the Chicago cask had an idea about another one, which they narrowed down to within four blocks in Colorado. Anything ever come of that? Edit: maybe the Boston image is actually Colorado. It does kind of look like the flag if you rotate it... Deadite fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 04:09
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Deadite posted:So the very last line in this pdf says the guys who found the Chicago cask had an idea about another one, which they narrowed down to within four blocks in Colorado. Anything ever come of that? Knowing that any numbers we see are likely to be map coordinates of some kind, there isn't really any good location in Colorado to accommodate the fairly definitive 24 / 42 on her sleeve. Edit: Then you also have the problem of reassigning a verse that's dripping with Boston/Paul Revere references. Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 04:29 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 04:24
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Bone, You might want to get in touch with four21 at Q4T then, I know he has been working a lot on the Charleston puzzle.GWBBQ posted:Pick one. The first had blue domes when the book was published. The windows of the field house in McCarran Park are also very similar to image 12 No, I'm way less sure of it now like any good theory, I was just being dumb. Since the bottom one is in Cleveland I'll take NYC The problem with McCarren Park is that none of the other clues point in that direction at all. As far as I know it's been explored (not by me) and nothing has turned up. edit: The chicago guys solved their puzzle by being from the area and figuring out the verse clues and getting BP to help them dig it up. I'm not saying these are amazing puzzles with simple solutions, but they definitely "brute forced" it. That's how BP expected most of them to be solved, I expect. (By locals, not with his help) But it either wasn't as simple as he thought or it just didn't sell enough. xie fucked around with this message at 05:01 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 04:58
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Merlot Brougham posted:To answer the more general question that was asked, Boston is also located at 42° N 71°W. The 42 is obviously there, but the 71 is a stretch from hell, especially because the lines could make 7711. It doesn't jump out enough like the 42 does.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:19
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112 is there which would make it pretty close to Salt Lake City.
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Nov 13, 2014 07:23
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Bad things about the gate: Boop, slow reply from me, sorry. Anyway, yeah, the Watergate thing is definitely the biggest Urban Smurf of mine (I love that Urban Smurfing is now a verb, ty Urban Smurf). The main reason I was inclined to interpret "July and August" as referential rather than literal was because of how December was used earlier in the verse to indicate the highway rather than a literal month. So if Preiss had any internal consistency (lol), July and August should be referential/figurative too. The gate would be the last thing that you touch (push open) while walking down that path toward the beach, and also the first thing physically standing in your way on the path. I think. Unless there's something else across the path further back in the gardens. There are a few other tidbits hidden in the drawing that I'll mock up in a picture later. They include: the outline of the borders of the garden, the rough shape of the main paths in the garden, and the Wright Brothers memorial from the angle you'd see it from Roanoke. But yeah there's a lot of other weird poo poo in the painting that I cannot interpret at all. Megaman's Jockstrap posted:There's no amount of analysis that will bring you to the Roanoke cask, for instance. It's gone. And don't be silly and say "no it's not there, you have it wrong, if you just try somewhere else..." It's there, the verse is airtight to bring you to Fort Raleigh and one of three beach paths, but then you get there and see the eroded shores, the collapsed fences, the remodel, the general wear on everything near the beach, and can't find a match to the image that's helpful: it's done. This is the uncrossable chasm. Pretty much this. I'd like to see someone sink a shovel into the sand under the gate just for funsies, but in reality the cask probably washed away during one of the numerous storms that wiped the coast between the 80s and now. I'll post an attempted Roanoke solve for shits n' giggles sometime down the line when I care and have enough time. Would be nice to pull all the evidence together in one place. I can explain away most of the verse and some elements of the image, but there's a ton of stuff in the image that makes no sense and apparently has no analogue in the gardens. pee pee doo doo preiss was a bad puzzle writer
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Nov 13, 2014 07:31
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What is Urban Smurfing?
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Nov 13, 2014 08:43
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ManMythLegend posted:What is Urban Smurfing? Dense thinking combined with an enthusiasm for gestalt possibilities.
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Nov 13, 2014 09:19
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Urban Smurf posted:Dense thinking combined with an enthusiasm for gestalt possibilities. lolololol
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Nov 13, 2014 10:00
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Is anyone even questioning the verse/pictures pairings anymore? A lot of these do not seem to make a convincing case for themselves. For instance, the reason verse 11 is associated with image 3 is this line: "To the land near the window." What could 'the window' be except a reference to the associated picture? And which pictures have a window in them? (1, 3, 11, 12) Of these, how many have a 'land' near the window? The window in 1 is surrounded by rock, but none of it explicitly marks a location, the closest thing to 'land' near the window in picture 11 is a featureless globe, which is potentially as unhelpful as it gets, and there is not land at all in picture 12. Therefore the stylized map of Roanoke Island in picture 3 is the only picture that matches, and it strongly hints at a verse 11 / picture 3 pairing. Excepting the verse/pictures which have been solved, what are the rationales behind the other pairings? A lot of them seem to me like they are taken for granted based on people's hunches and loud screaming, not on actual, objective clues, but I welcome any counter-example. And by the way, as far as I'm concerned, the numbers in picture 11 are latitude/longitudes: 111/41 on the oculus border at the top, 42 on the bracelet and 112 at the bottom. So 41-42N, 111-112W. Yeas, it's a big swath of nothing out in the boondocks, with Salt Lake City close by but not quite close enough (too far south.) So what? If you are going to be honest about it, those are the numbers in the picture, and any attempt at reading the 112 upside-down as 71 or some other nonsense is just disingenuous urbansmurfing.
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Nov 13, 2014 10:54
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The verse is very clearly talking about Roanoke, including the reference to the Baum ferry. There is absolutely some wiggle room in which verse goes with which painting, but not for that one. For #11 not to be Boston id need to see some direct Polaroid level image matches. It's a settled question at this point as far as I'm concerned. St. Louis is the most likely candidate, go nuts and see if there's anything, but it's almost definitely Bos.
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Nov 13, 2014 12:52
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112 or 42? And once again, she has another clear 70 in on her left elbow. e:
Merlot Brougham fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 13:04
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Indeed I picked the strongest example I knew of evidence of a verse/image pairing with that one, and I am not questioning it. I am asking about the others. Please point me to the rationales on which the other pairings are based. I can find every "conventional wisdom" pairing, no problem, what I cannot find is why these are: 1) valid choices. 2) the only valid choices. And since half you answer pertains to image 11, I return your argument: For #11 to be Boston id need to see some evidence. Where is it? What is it? I am looking at the wiki linked from the Q4T forums and the rationales in the notes are unconvincing, to say the least. The globe -> Boston Globe newspaper -> Boston. Erm, how about : The globe -> Harlem Globetrotters -> Harlem? Just as many steps, just as reliable, just as much a crock of poo poo. The castle on the box -> Strawberry Hill -> Horace Walpole -> Some tenuous and forced connection to Boston. The others are even worse examples of urbansmurfing. What it shows to me is that someone got it in their head that the city must be Boston and they have expended a lot of effort trying to find and force connections to Boston, but that's exactly the wrong way to go about it. You're supposed to take the clues and follow them to where they lead, not twist them to force them into your preconceived notions. So what's the evidence for Boston? I have seen none, you have provided none, you have simply repeated "It's Boston, it's settled, it's almost definitely Boston." Repetition does not engender truth. Edit: You see '70' Merlot? I see 'Jr'. It's Dallas! HerStuddMuffin fucked around with this message at 13:16 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 13:12
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The Secret Wiki is intentionally bad and hasn't been seriously updated in years. Please do not interpret the Internet not laying everything out for you in a wiki as "no evidence." Nobody owes us anything, it's great there's as much out there as there is. I can't repost four21thrasher's work, and I've been honest and up front about it. Dig through the threads on Q4T and you can possibly pick up the thread. Despite assertions otherwise nobody has found a Xenophon or Thucydides elsewhere but the BPL. The same verse contains a Longfellow/Revere reference and very possibly a Harvard one. There is a fairly photo-realistic representation of the Hatch Shell in image #11, as well as other matches to the image along the way. The Citgo sign is visible on the robes of her dress as well. Note that in 1982, the sign was not lit up. I'd need to see direct evidence of somewhere else, not just "well we don't know!!" The Milwaukee verse is definitely Milwaukee, some people have tried the "May 1913" verse (6 I think?) with NYC which is probably worth a peek, but that's almost definitely SC. Etc.
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Nov 13, 2014 13:22
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The page I linked was last updated 3 days 8 hours ago. You're not even trying. Bunch of excuses as to why you can't/won't provide any evidence. OK then. The Hatch Shell is nowhere in image 11. Amazing, given that the image is dominated by a bunch of circles, and still that hemispherical structure is not even hinted at anywhere in the image. Seeing it hinted in there would be wishful thinking, talking about a "fairly photo-realistic representation" is downright delusional. There's a bunch of symbols on the sides of her dress and not one of them is the Citgo logo. Either you're blind, or I'm blind, or we're not looking at the same picture, but something is terribly wrong here. Please remember that the burden of proof lies with him who makes the claim, and that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The scariest thing to me is that I'm asking to be convinced, I'm practically begging for it, and you've got nothing.
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Nov 13, 2014 13:38
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There is a guy on Q4T who runs the wiki. He spends his entire day deleting things that aren't his or that he believes in. It's a wiki, people can edit it. I'm sorry that someone edited the page, Detective. I meant, but didn't realize I was on trial, that the information on the wiki is stale and out of date. The posters on Q4T do not regularly update it with new connections or findings, or at least not many of them. The guy at the train every day begs me for poo poo too, I'm not obligated to. Why should I betray someone's trust for some rear end in a top hat I don't know? Most of the work is on Q4T, some has been edited out. Go read, I'm not your loving librarian. I'm not even the OP of this thread. Form your own conclusions, I couldn't care less and will happily provide feedback.
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Nov 13, 2014 13:55
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If you're declaring something as "definite", it's kinda rude to then tell people to look up the reasoning in another place. This is why it's so useless to mark "progress" in anything but dug up casks: assuming something is correct traps people into the same interpretations, meaning a real solution might get missed.
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Nov 13, 2014 14:29
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What? No it isn't. I'm not the referee of this hunt. I've shared everything I have that's my own work. I don't ask him to believe me, he's free to do whatever he wants or believe whatever he wants. I don't owe him my time anyway simply because he asked, but I'd be happy to share some of the Boston specific stuff and have reached out to four21 to ask permission. Please forgive me if I respect someone who has personally asked me not to share stuff that he spent a lot of money to do (right or wrong, he came here and put in a poo poo ton of effort) over a random goon. I am not hoarding my manifesto, the specific stuff he's asking for isn't mine to share, everything else I have has been an open book. If he can't lead himself to Boston that isn't my problem, and I think he should try to falsify Boston as I've said a few times, because I'm not objective. However, at this point the default should probably be "Boston" and I'd like to see something to sway it otherwise, a good verse theory, an image match, something, because the consensus is that it's Boston by the other people who've spent a lot of time on it, and that's what it'd take to change the consensus (right or wrong). xie fucked around with this message at 14:46 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 14:42
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HerStuddMuffin posted:The page I linked was last updated 3 days 8 hours ago. You're not even trying. I think the answer is you're blind, at least with those two points. The discussion on the hatch shell coping was like a page ago and the Citgo logo is a triangle within a triangle. Look again. I don't know if either of those things means the image is conclusively Boston, but they're both there.
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Nov 13, 2014 15:51
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xie posted:If he can't lead himself to Boston that isn't my problem, and I think he should try to falsify Boston as I've said a few times, because I'm not objective. However, at this point the default should probably be "Boston" and I'd like to see something to sway it otherwise, a good verse theory, an image match, something, because the consensus is that it's Boston by the other people who've spent a lot of time on it, and that's what it'd take to change the consensus (right or wrong). 41, 42, 111, 112, all in image 11, clear as day. Leaps of logic: these numbers are to be used together; they represent latitudes/longitudes (same logic that places image 1 around San Francisco and image 4 near Cleveland.) That places the cask somewhere around northern Utah. Boston is nowhere near there. Boston falsified. If you want to convince anyone who does not already subscribe to your theory that image 11 is for Boston, then you need to somehow top this. That's the bar you have to clear. You have not cleared it. Frankly if the bracelet read 40 instead of 42 I don't think anyone would believe the cask to be anywhere except in Salt Lake City. All the Boston matches are contrived. All of them. Show me one that is not. Of course you won't, because you don't owe me anything, and you're not in the business of providing me with evidence. I guess you're not in the business of having credibility either, then. People have been asking you and NBB to back up your claims because they want to believe in you. The day they stop asking for proof and just mercilessly mock you is the day they give up on you. That day is fast approaching. And I'm not even getting into image/verse pairings, that's another can of worms entirely. If you ask me, and you're not asking but I'll tell you anyways, the first step in getting solutions would be to redo the 9 pairings that are not justified from scratch. V11/I3, fine, the connection is acceptable at least temporarily, but all the others should be seriously examined, without a priori, and redone. Any pairing that cannot be directly linked, not through some poo poo Mark Twain -> Steamboat -> Casino -> Las Vegas urbansmurfing, directly linked, would logically be discarded. It's pretty obvious at this point that the main reason people are turning around in circles is that they have their pet theories and spend more time trying to fit things to their preconceived notions than to follow the clues. Shape matching is a prime example of this. Image 1 is not for San Francisco, it references Liberty State Park in New Jersey. Just turn on Google maps and look up (40.698177,-74.053048). That pond is a pretty close match for the blue stain on the side of image 1. Therefore I know I'm on the right track. Polaroid bitches, Polaroid.  Except not really. That pond did not exist in 1982, the match is purely coincidental. Shapes are shapes. It's easy to match arbitrary shapes to pretty much anything you want when you get to pick across a large area such as North America. Connections can always be made, and the longer the chain the easier it is to make the connection. People get trapped in their confirmation bias and lose sight of the original data. Simple, direct links are the only acceptable links.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:21
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Urban Smurf posted:Dense thinking combined with an enthusiasm for gestalt possibilities. You're the best, and don't let anyone tell you different.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:23
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BigFactory posted:I think the answer is you're blind, at least with those two points. The discussion on the hatch shell coping was like a page ago and the Citgo logo is a triangle within a triangle. Look again. I don't know if either of those things means the image is conclusively Boston, but they're both there. Apologies for the double-post.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:29
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HerStuddMuffin posted:
What video game bad guy are you pretending to be?
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Nov 13, 2014 16:37
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HerStuddMuffin posted:Apologies for the double-post. 
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Nov 13, 2014 16:40
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LOL does anyone actually say "that day is fast approaching" anymore?
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Nov 13, 2014 16:42
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:LOL does anyone actually say "that day is fast approaching" anymore? Goons are the loving weirdest.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:44
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That's an animated, lit-up sign isn't it? You know what, gently caress it. It's my own fault for seriousposting in GBS, I should know better. ROFL  fart.I'm gay.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:51
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He's right that a random checkered semicircle really doesn't look a drat thing like the hatch shell though.
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Nov 13, 2014 16:55
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HerStuddMuffin posted:That's an animated, lit-up sign isn't it? What are you going on about? Would a polaroid picture of Kenmore square from the 70's or early 80's look more like the picture I showed you, or a low-res png of the Citgo logo taken from the web in 2014? If you've ever been to kenmore square the citgo sign doesn't look like the image you found. At all. It looks like the thing on her dress. Is the triangle on her dress 100% supposed to be the Citgo sign? Who knows. Levitate posted:He's right that a random checkered semicircle really doesn't look a drat thing like the hatch shell though. It looks an awful lot like one ring would look like if you're drawing it from a grainy photograph and trying to disguise it. If that is what it's supposed to be, there are more obscure and abstract looking clues in the Cleveland image. BigFactory fucked around with this message at 17:00 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 16:56
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People have been struggling to find a match for the "green tower of lights" bit in Verse 3, what if Boston is completely wrong and this green thing called the "Tower of Light" on top of the Con Edison building in NYC is what it's referring to? edit: also, if anyone wants to go on a wild goose chase, the djinn and the pillars in image 8 are the fountain and rockets in the KSC Rocket Garden. It pairs with "A wingless bird ascended/Born of ancient dreams of flight" in Verse 5  
GWBBQ fucked around with this message at 17:20 on Nov 13, 2014 |
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Nov 13, 2014 17:09
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