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Dr. Gitmo Moneyson posted:But then how do we get digging permits? Proving yourself wrong is how you get rid of all the "this kinda sorta reminds me of this other thing if you hold your breath and squint" stuff before you show the real CLUES to the PANEL.
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Jun 7, 2013 03:54
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clockworx posted:I agree - unless it's some easily recognizable shape like Ohio or on a small enough scale that is observable on foot, I don't think the author was expecting readers to map overlays (with rotation and resizing in some case) in order to solve the puzzle with the technology that was available in 1982. It's trivial for us to zip around on google maps until we find something close, but imagine trying to do the same sort of wide fit-and-match search using 1982 technologies. Transparencies? Overheard projectors? It would take forever. Just want to remind you that maps did exist in 1982, which are aerial views of things, and that to do the fit-and-match you would only need one transparency and one image on the wall -- you change the size of the projected image on the overhead by moving the overhead closer or further from the wall (and if you can rotate a piece of paper, you can rotate a transparency). I agree that it's not worth going too crazy with, but it's also not far-fetched that he could have used a distinctive shoreline as a clue in the 80s.
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Jun 9, 2013 16:55
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I did a quick forum search but maybe did it wrong. Has anyone pointed out that those look like runes?
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Jun 14, 2013 14:39
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Milwaukee If it really is verse 8, it calls for walking 100 paces SE over rock and soil. Depending on whether you use the modern "single-step" or traditional "every other step" for a pace (and how long your pace is), you need ~250 to ~500 feet of rock and soil to traverse in the vicinity of city hall.
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Jun 20, 2013 14:39
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Neutrino posted:Just to clarify, the actual verses are: They could well be separate verses, you're right! I should have accounted for that! As for the pace -- they both do exist even today. The single-step one is sometimes called the "military pace" and the two-step one the "geometric(al) pace" or "great pace"; it did not end with the Roman Empire. EDIT: The Oxford English Dictionary cites "geometrical pace" as late as 2008. homullus fucked around with this message at 19:36 on Jun 20, 2013 |
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Jun 20, 2013 19:14
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demonicon posted:This puzzle was created in the 80s and supposed to be solvable by common people reading the books in the 80s. The Rand-McNally road atlas is releasing its 90th anniversary edition. I assure you that in addition to stone tools and fire, we had cheap and readily-available maps in the 1980s.
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Jun 20, 2013 23:36
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demonicon posted:I dont Know if this is even a good idea. If we 'solve' the puzzle just because of his clues, what's that worth really? Its not like there is a lot of money to gain. We would just spoil the puzzle for anyone else attempting it now or in the future... Clearly the answer is that the decades-old mystery and its resolution would make a great book on its own, as both a bit of history and as a cautionary tale to puzzle-makers of the future (since clearly Preiss didn't account for all the things that could and did go wrong with his clues). I too would buy prints of the paintings, I think they're pretty cool, and would look great framed next to their solution.
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Jun 22, 2013 16:09
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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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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. That's funny, I think Urban Smurf is right, even if his (or her) theories are far-fetched (they aren't all far-fetched, but many are). I think this whole thing has demonstrated how the puzzles Preiss created are simple when you know the solution, but that given the number of interpretations of so many of these things (to the point that we're not even sure of the cities in some cases), we really do need to be open to the obvious-only-in-retrospect options.
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Jul 30, 2013 14:36
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rookhunter posted:I had this idea early on using silver dollars or some kind of big coins in a wooden chest from Hobby Lobby. I never followed through but I think it would be fun to post clues on CL or a city forum and see if anyone found your buried treasure. I think this would be ideal for a city with a lot of history like Boston or DC. A long time ago, there was a guy doing a contest like Preiss' one. It was solved by a guy who'd followed him around, seeing where the stuff was hidden in general. It would be fun to do the contests, but once people know who you are . . .
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Jul 30, 2013 19:09
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crashdome posted:Wait. He advertised he was going to hide stuff before he actually hid them? If I recall, yes. It was at least 20 years ago.
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Jul 30, 2013 20:12
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einTier posted:Houston When stuff like this happens and you know in advance, maybe it's worth writing to the companies doing the renovation, so if a worker spots the broken cask, we all can get some closure.
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Sep 26, 2013 17:30
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If I lived in one of these cities, I would put a big ad in the local paper soliciting family pictures (or old maps/guidebooks/schematics) of the most likely locations. There are probably 10x the pics out there, just not scanned in and on the internet.
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Oct 5, 2013 23:14
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Bolkovr posted:Nothing we don't know already, but here's some recent bloggage about Milwaukee. Nothing we don't know already, in the sense that this exact link was posted on this very page by the author of the item linked.
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Oct 14, 2013 19:15
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Megaman's Jockstrap posted:Xie I hope you pull one of these mugs out of the ground one day, I really sincerely do. All I care about is what makes an interesting/funny thread, and posting wacky theories is p. good. Being a secret agent about your mug location is not. Please don't drive yourself crazy. I am totally on board with progress on the "puzzle" being real progress, even with no digging, but yeah, this is why I come to SA: I want to be informed, I want to be entertained, and I want to do the same for others. With no new data, no new conjecture, no new thing for people to talk about, none of those can happen. I have read this entire thread and I enjoy it quite a bit; I think "new" breaks on these could come from old family photos sitting around that show things as they were for Preiss, for example, so I certainly haven't give up hope that we can "conclusively" (as conclusively as most aspects of fragmented history) figure out where these were. Post your theory, go dig it up, and then post about the dig. That is what is best in life.
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Nov 12, 2014 19:46
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xie posted:
I would find it a little amusing, though, if your actual job were "digging holes."
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Nov 18, 2014 16:34
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Deteriorata posted:No, don't listen to him, Urban Smurf. Your posts are the best part of this thread. At least until xie or Never Been Banned digs and posts photos, anyway.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:13
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xie posted:I'm in official talks with the DCR to excavate. They like the story of the hunt and the official archaeologist is talking to the permit office. This way is much more exciting for me. Glad you waited!
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Dec 12, 2014 15:33
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One thing I enjoy about Urban Smurf's theories is that they are often reliant on the internet, recent photographs on the web, aerial photography, schematics, et cetera -- things that wouldn't necessarily have been so accessible or even "thought about" by the average solver in 1981, but would be today. Like, if you wondered what it would take to make a modern visual puzzle hard but still solvable, where people with ready access to GIS and stuff would still need to work... you'd probably have to narrow it down to a single city for people, but your solutions might resemble some of Urban Smurf's solutions.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:09
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Urban Smurf posted:I use to rely heavily on such methods. Then I wised up and figured out how to use the tools to express my ideas, knowing full well that there's a very significant potential for having such limitations. If I were a professional writer I'd use just words to get my point across. If I were an artist, schematics. Right now I'm using MS paint and whatever internet means I can muster but believe me I'm always on the lookout for things which introduce errors into the perspective. No worries. I appreciate the feedback. There's nothing wrong with MS Paint for context, it's a good tool for showing relationships that you don't have an image at hand for. Your posts are kind of free-association riffing on the verses and images. I think they're pretty far-fetched, but good brainstorming usually produces some far-fetched stuff. I would enjoy it if you continued to post, as long as it's fun for you to do so.
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Jan 11, 2015 08:42
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Urban Smurf posted:
So I think this raises an interesting point, when combined with xie's "Polaroid" approach. Since Preiss figured they'd all be found quickly, I think he thought the same thing: locals first, then puzzle-philic tourists would find them. I wonder whether AAA (or similar) city guides from 1980 are around? He might have used them to decide what things would be "prominent enough" in cities he wasn't intimately familiar with.
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Jan 16, 2015 16:37
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Nocheez posted:This was my idea while scouting around San Francisco. I tried to think of what a tourist would be drawn to. Ghirardelli Square is a great starting place, and there is a battery close by and a park at Fort Mason where you can see the Golden Gate bridge from. I would not doubt that the wrong verse has been used and is a dead end. I think, based on the solutions that we know, that it would not predominantly be the first things that tourists are drawn to, but secondary things that might pad out a book of "things to see" in a city. Very few people go to a city to see its parks, you know? Parks are everywhere. But they're often in travel guides.
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Jan 16, 2015 17:54
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Johnny Aztec posted:So, did you guys ever actually find anything? I found another person who can't be bothered to read things!
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Mar 9, 2015 16:56
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Urban Smurf posted:Why does the hand have cracked/jagged nails? That's also some pretty unnatural wrinkling on the hand.
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Mar 16, 2015 21:52
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Tony Homo posted:I only started talking poo poo to Xie when he kept making excuses. I was the sole voice speaking about him for a while so the argument he didn't dig out of spite for me is not true. There's no way it was you. I think "this is a major undertaking" met with "hey other parts of my life are more interesting/distracting" and they fell in love and had a baby with no holes dug in it.
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Apr 26, 2016 18:55
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Tony Homo posted:Because Xie never had the info in the first place. This is the whole thing. He had an excuse every time he was called on it: Actual ground things are Real Issues. Digging in frozen ground suuuuucks. Xie may or may not have had the info. I hope it does exist and it gets passed on to somebody! "Hurt my wrist" is . . . well, if you have help, you can do the tasks that that aren't very wrist-y. "Doing stuff with friends" is either trolling those of us who still believed or the clearest evidence that Xie had lost any real interest in doing it at that point.
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Apr 27, 2016 18:39
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.random posted:What if Preiss didn't release just ONE copy of the book, but 3 or 5 different versions, each with different - but intentional - "imperfections?" Perhaps these puzzles were intended not to be solved by an individual, after all, but by a group with access to several of these books with "imperfections" which all are needed to solve the puzzle. Perhaps it is only through our powers combined that we can call down a rain of gemstones upon ourselves. Perhaps? If you want a reputation as a clever puzzle-maker and want people to pay you to do it again, you need the publicity of people finding them, so you can sell copies of your books.
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Jun 6, 2016 17:40
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Urban Smurf posted:Nobody has followed up with me on this treasure spot. Could be people disagree or they dont have any idea of the return for their time and trouble to dig and repair a small patch of grass. It's too bad you don't sleep on piles of money, Urban Smurf. I think you could make puzzles like Priess did, except yours would be so hard that you could tell people what city they were in. No specialized knowledge is required, only a willingness to dive into the obscure and to entertain many "out there" ideas.
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Jul 11, 2016 14:16
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I didn't expect the thread to dig up xie. For real, though, somebody who has more than a casual interest in this (i.e. not me) should check xie's idea with the Japanese translation.
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Nov 1, 2018 18:28
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Is it solved yet? The real treasure is your unhealthy compulsion to post some version of this on almost every page.
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Jan 2, 2019 15:12
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Found anything yet? I found the treasure! Looks like somebody replaced the gem in the casque with somebody's obsession though.
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Mar 4, 2019 19:42
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Urban Smurf posted:I wonder if Erol Otus is still alive. he is
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Jul 7, 2022 16:45
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ante posted:Can someone summarize the last decade of thread for me please?! A few flurries of actual discussion, a minority of it rational, and 12 years of people thinking they're funny when they revive the dead thread to announce that the real treasure was up their own rear end all along or whatever.
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Feb 8, 2023 21:59
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EconDad posted:... well, was it? I'm not going to risk my wrists checking asses
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Feb 9, 2023 06:45
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