MeLKoR posted:

Maybe it's an obvious place once you get within a few meters of it, I mean two of them were found.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

CHARLESTON

1) The pattern on the lion's forehead. This looks like a coastal/river map but I can't make it match up with anything in google maps. Part of the problem may be that the coastlines may look really different at high and low tide.

Deteriorata posted:

Also, I think the blue circles refer to trees in a park somewhere. Note how many of them cross the vertical line, as overhanging branches would. One of them is highlighted, probably indicating where to dig. The appropriate verse will get us to that particular spot.

OMG BYZANTIUM posted:

This is probably totally wrong, but does anyone think the "New York" image does not show New York? Ever since I saw the water at the bottom, I immediately thought of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. The face bears some resemblance to the Statue of Liberty's Face, but the hair and the pose are totally different. Maybe that would be too obvious, though.

When I saw the earlier post saying it resembles a statute of Artemis that used to be in Buffalo, I just had to share my theory. Alternatively, does anyone know a place with waterfalls or rapids near New York City (or maybe its a giant wave at a beach?) The water at the bottom is specifically drawn to be flowing and frothing. It has to have some significance.

PunkNickel posted:

My dreams at night are getting to be weird ones of running, always running, and looking for casks. I'm going to end up with brain mush soon if we don't get a cask out of the ground.

Cosmik Debris posted:

Los Angeles has literally nothing to do with spain, and there's a pretty prominant spanish conquistador there. Florida is really the only US state with a strong connection to spain.

rookhunter posted:

Helicopters

Urban Smurf posted:

Cask 1

and I noticed the view from the postcard pictures of the Palace of the Legion of Honor have a shape that matches the curved area between the reversed Gh to the shape of the Golden Gate Bridge.



This might be a good indication that the Palace is an important place to focus on for finding the cask.

Urban Smurf posted:

Cask 3 Mirlo Beach @ Rodanthe

I've never seen very good evidence to support the Roanoke based theory(ies). Someone said there's a plaque with verbatim from the verse and there's exact images, but I've never seen them brought to light in a distinct and method based way which would fit either a Chicago or Cleveland style solve.

Urban Smurf posted:

On the subject of crazy theories, its just a phrase to mark the atypical approach. The verses and images are crazy to begin with. The trouble with normal is it missed the point. If you arent making one assumption then youre making another. The Secret is the Sun and we are stuck leaping upon shadows. There will be a direct path to each solution, but it wont be without discovery of some fantastic underpinnings that look crazy from the start.

Vienna Circlejerk posted:

I'm new to this thread but I checked the wiki and I sincerely hope I'm not posting on a dragon = Chinatown level.

Looking at the image for Cask 6, it strikes me that the outline of the rock the conquistador is standing on is awfully detailed for just suggesting Florida with its negative space (and really doesn't match very well, plus it suggests the wrong side of Florida), and that the outline of the right side really makes me think of a detailed water boundary, like a riverbank or a coast. I looked at the maps of parks around St. Augustine, FL, and I'm struck by what a strong resemblance it bears to the bank of the St. John's River at the Bayard Point Conservation Area. If you look at this trail map (pdf), the bright blue jewel of the picture would be at about the East Trailhead entrance, wouldn't it?

Cosmik Debris posted:

I would caution you against seeing that as an intentional outline of virginia. If it is then its very poorly done. It's missing the eastern "hook" of virginia that juts up into West virginia and kentucky, and the dip in the same eastern border where West virginia sticks down into virginia a bit.

The outline of Ohio from one of the solved puzzles was pretty spot on as far as shape and size goes, so I doubt this is intended to be virginia, especially considering the other side of the tree also forms a fairly accurate representation of tennessee as well; I doubt either is intentional. There's 50 states and if you pick a random shape there's a good chance it will be close to the outline of at least one state. As far as I remember there was a good deal of discussion on whether the outline of illinois from the chicago puzzle was intentional or not.

Invicta{HOG}, M.D. posted:

[quote="einTier" post="419853381"]

Perhaps he did mean it to be very imprecise. Still, Houston's coordinates are 29.7628° N, 95.3831° W, and while we can find 95 (and 96!) easily in the Arabian image, we cannot find 29 at all. We do find 30, but that's not technically Houston's latitude. I'm wondering if there's something we're missing here and the latitude and longitude numbers couldn't point us in a much more general area. Even in 1982, with the right maps it wouldn't be unheard of to be accurate to the first or even second decimal.

In the case of Houston, defining a box by the second decimal still results in an area about 2000 feet on a side. As an example, that's big enough to include most of Hermann Park or any of the other parks we've discussed.


Think of the numbers as framing the longitude and latitude rather than being degrees before and after the decimal.

einTier posted:

Unmistakable? How so? Some have said they're from the Children's Zoo -- and there were some posts there that looked like that. I've argued they look like the Tranquility Park pillars, but I'm not too sure of that now.

What was trying to say in that long, rambling stream-of-consciousness post is that maybe there are four numbers in every image, and combined in the right way, get you very close to the park where the cask is buried.

Urban Smurf posted:

I havent worked out the theory completely, but I recently learned the fortune cookie did have its beginning in SF. Ive been coonsidering some tie ins with the "pearls of wisdom" inside those cookies along with the idea that when its time to pay for your meal, thats when the cookie comes to the table. Essentially the asian woman is a fortune teller. Twain was also known for his pearls of wisdom in the form of quips and quotes. Im still putting this together, but Im confident the old cypress trees near the end of the bench at Lands End match the womans folded arms.

Drunk Nerds posted:

Okay so i spent a few hours with my SF native friends . Sorry to say we have no new lead breaks... Yet. But i do feel i have something to offer.
...
So much fun! Glad to be working on this, thanks!

demonachizer posted:

I forgot about this thread. Now that it is GBS 2.1, I would like to take the opportunity to tell Urban Smurf that he is an annoying sperglord and should probably stop posting in this thread/in general.

Thanks!

xie posted:

Ha, that was my solve for a long time. Liberty State Park. I have a really decent solve for it, but remain skeptical it isn't on Governors Island.

I had it behind the train yard on Liberty. PM me, we should compare notes.

Never Been Banned posted:

Alright. In the spirit of contributing something to the thread beyond posturing and vague claims here's some writings about the SC puzzle that I've done over the past year or so.

I'm not sure what's new about these and what isn't, as I started from scratch and just tried to work out as best I could what seems to be going on with this one. I'm sure much of it has been discussed here before.

Some pieces of this theory work quite drat well imo, and make me think it's on the right track. Some of it leaves me dissatisfied. Who knows if any of it's right. It'll be interesting to see what you guys think.

There are two documents, a photographic walkthrough type thing and one of the traditional Q4T like verse tables. Some of the content is redundant but not all of it.

Walkthrough: https://www.dropbox.com/s/14zssngv9i7z3v2/The%20Case%20for%20Sullivan%27s%20Island%20Walkthrough.pdf?dl=0

Verse table: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ha1vvl4ped0ue1f/The%20Case%20for%20Sullivan%27s%20Island%20Verse%20Table.pdf?dl=0

quote:

From 1902 to 2002, visitors to midtown Manhattan were occasionally disoriented by what seemed to be an impossibly nearby view of the statue. They were seeing a 30-foot-high (9.1 m) replica located at 43 West 64th Street atop the Liberty Warehouse.[19][20] In February 2002, the statue was removed by the building's owners to allow the building to be expanded.[21] It was donated to the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which installed it in its sculpture garden in October 2005 with plans to restore it on site in spring of 2006.[22][23]

Merlot Brougham posted:

Also, just to back up what xie is saying, the Fort Sumter mask could also just be a city indicator, and not the actual treasure ground. Examples of this being the Chicago Water Tower in Image 5, or the Terminal Building in Image 4 (Cleveland).

I know we can offer no proof, but I am doubtful of any legitimate publishing house allowing a book to have a solution which requires the commission of a Federal offense. Granted certain areas have had restrictions tightened throughout the years, but it was still a Federal offense in '81. I don't think the list of out of play casks is as big as large as Megaman's Jockstrap is proposing.

The Supreme Court posted:

Also, these don't look that similar.

xie posted:

The line is

Beneath the only standing member
Of a forest to the south

it's not the oldest. And it's with a different verse than typically associated with SC (but I don't really have a problem with that if it fits)

xie posted:

I try!

I don't know if anyone has seen these, these are the best pictures from the 2004 solve. This is a good info dump for someone who wants to "see" the site as best they can and understand it. Plus what the casques/key look like.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/102050593@N07/sets/72157636370249904/

Hopefully it's OK to repost, Egbert posted it on Q4T which is basically public now.

Bloody Hedgehog posted:

xie posted:

We have no firm evidence but there is nothing stopping anyone from holding the painting or a map up to a mirror in 1981.

As far as I'm concerned if it could be done with 1981 tech it's somewhat in play, though less likely. Don't forget transparencies. If it requires actual aerial photography, unless you can show there was a sign in the park with the aerial or something, yeah it's probably not.

Cleveland definitely has the shape of Parkgate in the centaur's tail as well, so map features aren't to be ruled out entirely.

edit: Not to be a dickhole but if you think it takes any kind of technology to flip a map upside down

xie posted:

The map of Ohio in Cleveland is a mirror image, though it's still recognizable without a mirror. It was possible with 1981 tech and has definitely been a part of other non-Secret puzzles. I don't think The Secret was designed that way, and honestly they're hard enough without it that I'm not going to consider it. However, flipping anything upside down is 100% in play - you have to do it to see the Terminal Tower. I'd say any rotation is fine.

I constantly walk the line between "well designed" and "complete poo poo" for these puzzles. As I feel like I'm zeroing in on Boston and it does seem to still be solvable I do give BP a little more credit than I used to.

xie posted:

That is on the start location. The lamps are unique to the park, but all of them have that design. The hatch/collar link is the 'dig here' and is located under one of the lamps.

I got this poo poo