Maybe my mind is just to cluttered but I’m having a hard time understanding this idea although I love the simplicity of arranging the wheels and the goal of searching for a trend.  I also like the switching things up point of view where the same method or any reverse engineering will not favor one individual who could use it to find all the locations.
Ive seen notions of Masquerade but I don’t think it’s solution was in effect at the time of the Secret’s publication.

Yes, the Masquerade solution wasn’t published yet.  The clock idea isn’t that closely related anyway.  At first I tried more Masquerade like solutions with drawing lines between the gems and eyes and clocks, etc.  But I like this clock idea alot.
The references to time in the pictures is strong, and with image 7 showing such a large clock and the only one with a second hand I think there are strong hints to a clock based solution.  The key is matching verse 3 to image 7, as image 7 shows the second hand pointing to 3 and verse 3 mentions the 12th hour.  These two go together, I am pretty sure.  And verse 3 can be matched to New Orleans, so I think it is strong.
The real piece of the puzzle is coming up with an initial ordering of the verses.  Here is the solution I propose step by step:
1.  Lay the images out in a clock pattern, using the birthstone/birthflower/time ordering.
2.  Order the verses somehow (this is the hard part).  My example image is based on the numbers in the verses.
3.  Arrange the verses around the clock.
4.  Rotate the verses so that verse #3 (based on the book ordering) is at the 12 o’clock posistion.
This will pair the verses with the images.

I previously tried something similar with a circular look at the various possible orderings…of the images, of the likely verses, of the litany, of the map, of the astrological correspondences, even of the initial letters of gems etc, but if there’s a pattern it’s pretty obscure.
(Random observation – if the figure in armour is female, that gives the order FFFMMMMMMFFF.)
Have to admit, I’d love there to be a logical pattern to the order, but I’m starting to suspect there isn’t one. (If the correspondences are relevant at all, they may crop up in more tangential ways such as January-Janus-Gate, or Marigold-Mary-Montreal.)

I don’t think ordering the images is difficult.  The birthstone, flower, and times/warts/etc all produce the same number in a given image.  I think the creation probably started with the gems as birthstones, but since it is hard to tell the difference between emerald and peridot for example, so we get the litney and birth flowers, etc.  All to act as a confirmer for the proper order.
I think ordering the verses is the hard part.  I keep going back to “Goodness First”, but have no idea what it means.

…sure the images have a clear correspondence with month/zodiac/gem/flower; I just mean that no pattern has been found in the sequence of images as given in the book, or the order in which the corresponding litany couplets or verses appear, and I’m starting to think there won’t be. (I previously considered this in the
Zodiac
thread, though I don’t believe that theory any more. I likewise wondered about that “Goodness first” thing, and I still think the verses and the rest of the introduction contain neglected clues… )

I agree that there are clues to pairing we don’t have.  I mean we are told explicitly to first match 1 image with 1 verse.  That is our only instruction.
But there is no way to do that using the methods from the Chicago and Cleveland solutions.

Regarding this system of correspondences – the story is all about peoples, races, migrations, and this seems one of the central parts of the puzzle. So for instance, take Image 4; the correspondences for the image give us March. The March gemstone is Aquamarine, and the litany pairs this with Greece. The gem was in the Grecian Cultural Garden. I think these cultural ties, made from the images via the litany, are a focal point for the system of correspondences, if not their raison d’etre.
Likewise Image 3 -> January -> Garnet -> England -> Elizabethan Garden, Virginia Dare (the first child born in the Americas to English parents), etc.
I wouldn’t want to discourage you from looking for some logical/mathematical system of pairing images and verses…it’s just that I’m beginning to despair of finding it.  😉 If it exists, I think it’s worth searching for it in the litany and map as well.

Yes, the cultural stuff seems important, either as a clue to the final location or as a pairing mechanism.  The problem isn’t the images, it’s the verses.  How do you connect the cultures to the verses?

howardncci

1.  This treasure hunt is either very poorly designed.
OR
2.  The two solved puzzles were “backwards engineered” and their solutions have very little to do with the real soultion.
If 2. is the case then what we are missing is the “ah-ha” moment.
I just started getting into this hunt because I find it very intriguing that after all this time it is unsolved.
Both the Cleveland and Chicago solutions where found because of some key phrases in the verses pertaining to the cities, NOT because the verse was paired with the painting first.  .  So all we have to do is figure out how to order the verses right?  Sounds easy, but nobody has figured out how.

I think both your assertions are wrong, I think, they puzzle is designed very well and I think the backwards engineered solutions were almost spot on.
Then why havent we found all the casques? I think there are two reasons for this.
First though lets remember as smart as BP was  (and I think he was scary smart)
two things about publishing
The Secret
surprised him
The first wast that that all the casques were not found/uncovered in short order.
the second I think is the root cause of the first.
The second is that
The Secret
did not sell very well at all.
This is evidenced that There never was a 2nd
Secret
book as was mentioned in the back of the first. It just didn’t sell enough copies to make it worth it.
My background is in Information technology, I am a UNIX/Linux Systems Admin. There is a Linux saying “With enough eyes on the problem, there are no bugs.”
Basically this means since there are soooo many people who work on Linux, that whenever a bug pops up, There is at least one person out of the 1000s who says, “oh That! I know how to fix that” and then fixes it…
The problem with
The Secret
was there wasn’t enough eyes. (originally) and the people who did buy the book had no way to communicate to others.
It is as you noticed relatively easy to associate a picture with at least a state or region.  then you say no one has figured out how to pair the verse with the pictures…
We have all tried to move the verses around the clock face, count syllables, look for hidden messages and codes… and every couple of years someone new to the board tries it all over again.
What if its simpler and cruder than any of those ideas… What if, simply BP put at least one thing into each verse, that a “Local” would recognize. and simply if you weren’t a local you wouldn’t get it.
For instance.
Aces High
Running North but first across
Well I am from California.  and of all the ideas I have heard put forth for this stanza, non to me seem more likely than Highway 1 running north across the Golden Gate.
I don’t think there is a method that can indicate each verse goes with which picture,  I think you choose the verse that fits your city because of your local knowledge.
So here now we have enough eyes. why aren’t we digging them up right and left?
I believe its just the passage of time has changed the locations enough that the verses no longer fit.
So in answer to your question what should we do about it, Its everything and anything you can do to roll back the clock and figure out where things were.
The bad news is this is exactly the kind of data that won’t be on the Internet. Trips to local historical societies and libraries is your best bet.

Malted, I think I am a little more optimistic about the role of the internet in all this. You lot couldn’t have found the Cleveland casque without tools that were online, but not originally on the web. And Google keeps putting books online, with searchable text. And Google Earth is just indispensable now. More and more information (a lot of it historical) is finding its way online.
Actually, you know what? All we need is Google!

At least BP had the presence of mind to choose markers that hold up well to the passage of time.  Review of the clues to the two solved casques still gets us close or spot on through the assemblage of historically significant architectures and land marks.  Use of trees seems to be the most fragile bit…30yrs of growth can wildly vary…even though many trees might live for centuries, many don’t make it twenty years.
Gawd..the internet…its all changed so much since my 1981 DEC Pro Rainbow 350 from Reed College that ran a custom OS that never surfaced since cp/m and unix took better hold…

erexere

At least BP had the presence of mind to choose markers that hold up well to the passage of time.

Thats my point, he didn’t – look at Houston, -the entire park/casque location is basically gone.
The area I believe the SF casque is located was remodeled in the early 90s and the main landmarks were moved and/or removed. Looking very hard I have only found 3 images of the area online that show the area as it looked in 1981 and they were quite obscure. I had much better luck going to the library.
The array of trees in chicago that led you to the location is gone.
In Cleveland the street you were supposed to turn on was renamed and no longer matches the clue in the picture.
In Charlotte, bridges are gone, park landmarks moved…
This isn’t the kind of stuff that is going to show up on Google. Yes google is constantly adding books that are out of copyright, but I think we will find that the books we need fall into the copyright time that means google wont get them for 25 -75 years.

Even knowing all you know today about Chicago, If the casque was still there, I believe it would be almost impossible to find.
With all the markers still in place and BP standing right there, they almost missed the casque
Today with the array of trees gone, locating the exact spot would be almost impossible.
to get the chicago casque today, you would need to dig an improbably big hole. we are only talking 4 or 5 feet Plus or minus. but that equates to a hole you could drop a car into.
one of the park maintenance people might get upset over you trying to do that.

I live in Cleveland and have lived in Cleveland my whole life (sad I know).  I probably would’ve figured out the Terminal Tower and the Ohio connection to the painting, but there is nothing in the verse that resonates with me as a Clevelander.
I think about 1983 and how you might have solved it then if you were not from Cleveland and didn’t have Google around.
Anyway, there are some very smart people on this board.  I think we should come up with a list of “candidate” cities for each of the paintings based only on the paintings themselves.  Then we should divide that list up among the active users here. Each of us takes 1 city and the 10 remaining verses.  We use our modern tools and try to force the verses to fit our cities.  Some of them won’t fit at all, some will fit really well.  When we are finished, we will end up with a list of all possible pairings and how they might lead us to the Casques.

That sounds like fun — I’m on board!

I’ve taken an interest in trying to connect specific Generals in early American wars and skirmishes like the Mexican-American War and Civil War.  The landscape in terms of statues and architecture that honor such history is from what I think Preiss drew from to create this fantasy wormhole.
Sent from my PG06100 using Tapatalk

Before we start our backwards engineering, I found this interesting.  I noticed that every verse has at least 1 number in it.  Anyway, if we throw out the numbers written as digits (1913, 92, 200,100, 3) and disregard numbers like “first” we are left with just those numbers one through ten (not tenth).  And 982 is 9,8,2 and 222 is 2,2,2 since it is not hyphenated (like twenty-one is).  Next we add in “for” and “too” to the numbers.  Add the numbers together in each verse.  We are left with:
1 26
2 43
3 5
4 13
5 36
6 2
7 7
8 9
9 0
10 1
11 4
12 27
Next, order these verses.
If we place them in order around a clock (circle) we now have 2 rings, the photos and verses.
We can line up the verses around the clock using the easy one, the 12 o’clock position.  This clock shows us with the second hand on the 3 and the 3rd verse has it written “twelfth hour”.  Now the rings line up as such:
Note that cleveland and chicago line up.  Also, the 1st verse (which mentions a lion) lines up with the lion painting.  Verse 8 still lines up with Milwaukee, verse 11 is still image 12. There are more things that seem to line up too.

The chances of finding out where these casques are by contacting anyone that had anything to do with publishing The Secret are probably nil.
This was written in 2006–only a year after Preiss died.
http://www.comicsbeat.com/2006/10/02/byron-preiss-assets-on-the-block-for-150k/

…tried contacting John Pierard via Facebook, but no reply there either. These people are either secretive or just not interested…

I notice you redacted a statement from that post, WR.  Any reason for that?

Not really, I’m just a compulsive editor…
(It was a bit of a whinge. Sounded like that in my head anyway.)

Well, please do let me know if you hear from HoJo, as I am also trying to make contact with a townie in my quest for a behind-the-wall pic. I didn’t know if that spot had been directly suggested before with any reasoning, and I would be excited to see photos from the “alley”

(…yeah, sure thing. I sent an enquiry to the address on this page but had no response. Some of my emails probably end up in spam folders so I don’t know if they read it.)
http://www.hojo.com/HowardJohnson/contr … tyId=01235

This might go on for a little while, so let me summarize first:
1.  This treasure hunt is either very poorly designed.
OR
2.  The two solved puzzles were “backwards engineered” and their solutions have very little to do with the real soultion.
If 2. is the case then what we are missing is the “ah-ha” moment.
I just started getting into this hunt because I find it very intriguing that after all this time it is unsolved.  This is my first post, but I have read the pages and pages of theories from this site and others.  I will continue this post as if #2 above is correct.
—————-
THE TWO “BACKWARDS ENGINEERED” SOLUTIONS
—————–
Both the Cleveland and Chicago solutions where found because of some key phrases in the verses pertaining to the cities, NOT because the verse was paired with the painting first.  The paintings as we know, all seem to indicate certain cities. When the winners recognized certain things in the phrases, it was easy to pair them with the proper painting.
WHY THIS IS AN ISSUE:
This method does not work with the rest of the images and verses.  The verses are too vague and can practically be matched up to ANY city you wish.  Read up on the crazy solutions people came up with for the David Blaine hunt or for Masquerade.  We see what we want to see and will force our ideas into our “solutions”.  You can go mad this way.
For example, in the Cleveland verse (4) the columns are mentioned and we take this to mean the 4th painting.  But there are columns in the 8th painting as well.  The Greek connection doesn’t hold up either because we have a Greek connection to verse 3.
Likewise, there is a lion in verse 1 and in painting 2 but we throw out that connection because we think Houston is a better fit.  A rose in verse 9 matches image 1? Nope, we throw it out.  Palm (Florida) is a better fit there, but is it?  There are palms of hands in every painting.  The supposed Florida verse (9) spells SELOY at the end.  Why don’t other verses seem to have things hidden like that?  Is it a function used only once?  And the Floridian tribes mentioned in the book do not include SELOY anyway?  The woman in image 11 is literally holding a white house in her hands.  The list goes on and on, you can link practically any verse with any painting you wish.
While some of the proposed solutions might be correct, they have all been figured out by working backwards from a city.  Take for example, my work below.  While working on trying to find an AH-HA moment (more on that later), I connected painting 7 with verse 3.  (basically, the second hand points to 3 and the 3rd verse makes reference to the 12th hour).  Well, assuming the New Orleans location is correct, I found Jackson Square and got to Goolging and came up with:
If Thucydides is
North of Xenophon (???)
Take five steps
In the area of his direction (???)
A green tower of lights (The lights at Jackson square have a greenish hue)
In the middle section
Near those
Who pass the coliseum
With metal walls (The Superdome, down the street has metallic outside panels)
Face the water
Your back to the stairs (When you put your back to the stairs outside Jackson Square, you are facing the river)
Feel at home (Right next door to the famous 1850 House)
All the letters
Are here to see (??)
Eighteenth day
Twelfth hour (Sounds Like Paul Revere, but 18-12 or War of 1812, the Jackson Square monument)
Lit by lamplight (There are street lamps in a small grassy area behind the stairs, facing the water)
In truth, be free.
There is also a large clock tower at Jackson Square and a few other things I found in Google Images that remind me of the painting.
Well let me get in the car and go to New Orleans right now!  Or I am falling into that trap again!
———————–
THINK LIKE IT IS 1983
———————–
There was no internet, Google maps, or wikipedia back then.  You couldn’t look up the Herman Melville quote in verse 1 so easily.  Yet despite this, Priess thought that this treasure hunt would be solved within a year.  Why?  I think it is due to something we haven’t found, something that will be very simple looking back on it.
———————-
THE AH-HA MOMENT
———————-
We know that there is a simple method for ordering the paintings.  The gemstones, birth flowers, clocks, etc all give us this information.  So all we have to do is figure out how to order the verses right?  Sounds easy, but nobody has figured out how.
The theme of time comes up alot in the paintings and verses.  We have 12 paintings and 12 verses, each painting has a number (from the month connections) that indicates their order 1-12.
We also have the most sparse image in the book, the giant clock that points at 12:00.  Hmmm.
Thinking back to the solution for Masquerade I put together the following image:
I could have done this in 1983 by ripping my book apart, just to be fair.  Not sure what to do with it now, but it has started my brain thinking in whole new directions and maybe it will help somebody out there.
Maybe somebody reading this will have the AH-HA moment and maybe this clock image will help them.  Maybe we can solve this after 30 years, if we just think about life in 1983, forget what we think we know, and find that elusive AH-HA.

howardncci

1.  This treasure hunt is either very poorly designed.

Yup.  Even if we could get a true foothold in any of the remaining casques, it doesn’t negate this first problem.
There just isn’t any evidence that these puzzles were created with a reliable system that can be cracked (à la ATT).  There probably won’t be an “Aha!” moment, ever.  The clues are subjective, even in the solved casques, and the markers have become less accurate over time.  Heck, even BP himself had to help in the Chicago solution, and that was the first one.
This hunt has so much promise, but I think that’s all it will ever really amount to.  It’s a frustrating, tantalizing puzzle that’s lacking in logic and coherence.  Even if you have the right answer, you might never know for sure.

Goodness First => Wholeness First => Wholesome First => Whole Sum First

Finding synonyms and then doing wordplay with them is a bit of stretch… 😛
(I’m just as bad really…started thinking earlier about “Wed one image with one verse” -> Wednesday -> Woden/Odin. The intro talks about Scandia…do you have a copy of the paperback…?)

I’d like to weigh in here.
As tempting as it is to try to find an overweening solution, one that covers all verses and paintings, I really think this is the wrong way to look at the book.
The real reason this hasn’t been solved in 30 years is simply that it’s been THIRTY YEARS. These boxes and casques were buried underground. You bury anything for 30 years and two things will almost certainly happen: the item will disintegrate, or the land above it will change drastically.
When the book was published, it was not published to a great fanfare of publicity, it was not a bestseller, it was not given the same consideration as Masquerade or Who Killed The Robins Family, or any of the other puzzle books that came out around the same time–it was also not thought through as thoroughly as any of those puzzles. Some of the paintings that JJP made were already painted when the book was written.
The biggest pointer to any location in any painting is the latitude and longitude that appears in each painting. These aren’t random numbers–they point to actual places–and it isn’t that hard to find a verse that supports what you can find as landmarks in each painting once you have a place to look in.
I don’t think most of our conclusions so far are wrong–I think it’s just been too doggone long since the things were buried. Too much has happened, too many changes to the landscape have taken place, too many landmarks that might have pointed a seeker to a specific location have been altered or have just disappeared. Trees die, they rot, they fall down, bridges get moved, remodeled, signs are changed, parks revamped–if you are counting on something being uncovered in under a year (at the most) then you don’t have to find a “marker” that will outlast the decades–you only have to find one that is distinctive. This is what I believe Preiss did–but when interest in the puzzle just didn’t happen, the locations and the treasures languished; and now, they will be almost impossible to find because too much has happened. Katrina probably washed the NOLA casque into the Gulf of Mexico, the Houston zoo has been razed, Boston has been entirely remodeled, there is no digging allowed in many places that he might have been able to dig in before–this puzzle is probably only a pleasant mental exercise now.
That doesn’t diminish its pleasure for me. But serious treasure seekers probably ought to look for some other puzzle–even if you FIND a casque now, you won’t get the jewel that goes with it. But to reiterate, I wouldn’t look for an over-arching solution to solve anything. These were individually designed, capriciously buried, and are going to be impossible to verify.

I completely disagree that there is not an “overweening” solution.
1.  We are given 1 instruction….just 1, pair the paintings and verses.
2.  You ABSOLUTELY cannot pair them all up just by matching words in the verse with objects in the paintings.
3.  You also cannot look at a painting, figure out what city it might be for and then backwards solve the verse pairing by using google.  This came out in the 1980s remember.
4.  Figuring out the pairings does NOT solve these like dominoes.  You STILL have to figure out what the verses mean, and even in some cases what city to look in.
I do agree that you will have time finding the casques now even with a solution in hand.
You can keep trying to backwards solve these things, but it will not work (maybe you can figure out 1 or 2 this way).

If you take ANY random city ANYWHERE and try to match at least one verse to that city, YOU WILL succeed.
I will prove this right now:
I will “solve” a random city using a backwards engineering approach:
1.  I used a random number generator online and just got the number 35, so we will pick a city in the 35th state alphabetically…this is Ohio
2.  Next I choose a random number 1-10 and choose a significant city in Ohio (ranked via wikipedia as United States metropolitan areas)…I get 7, this is Mansfield, OH
3. So now I have a truly random city, Mansfield, OH  here we go
(I am “solving” this as I go):
First off, image 3 seems to indicate Mansfield to me, here is what I found:
Now the verse:
Of all the romance retold
Men of tales and tunes
Cruel and bold
Seen here By eyes of old
(indiactes an historical building)
Stand and listen to the birds
(as in jail birds or reference to the “Ohio Bird Sanctuary” in Mansfield)
Hear the cool, clear song of water
(There are a few small lakes at the mansfield reformatory)
Harken to the words: Freedom at the birth of a century
(There is a park nearby called Liberty park)
Or May 1913
(the lincoln freeway which was the 1st road accross america and started in 1913 passes through mansfield which if you follow it in Mansfield, it intersects with Route 13 right at the prison)
Edwin and Edwina named after him
(in 1952 Blackbeard the Pirate, there was a character named Edwina Mansfield)
Or on the eighth a scene
Where law defended
(Another clue for the old jail)
Between two arms extended
(This pairs the knight with the verse)
Below the bar that binds
(Bars that bind is a clue for The Mansifield Reformatory)
I think you would now go to the liberty park for the rest of these clues.  There looks to be statues at the park.
Beside the long palm’s shadow
Embedded in the sand
Waits the Fair remuneration
White house close at hand.
This is a demostration to show how it is easy to pair verses and paintings when you backwards solve things.

Sorry, Howard, I ‘m not buying what you’re selling here. You’re being WAY too vague. Of course, if you’re that vague, and that oblique, you can pair it up with nearly anything. However, the paintings and verses are NOT that vague.
And this isn’t at all “backward” engineering. It’s what we’re supposed to do–that’s not backwards, it’s the way the puzzle is constructed. You pick out some elements in the paintings, you pair up some elements in the verses–and hopefully when you’re done, you have enough to pinpoint a location. It doesn’t matter that Google didn’t exist in the 1980s, or that satellite pictures were not available. You can find enough in the paintings without using satellites–and in fact, I’ve been an advocate of that since starting research on this puzzle. However–that being said, Google (and other search engines) are no more than glorified card catalogues or reference libraries, both of which WERE available in the 1980s and without which we would not have found the Sarmiento book, or probably discovered the connection between the first two lines in the verse you used in your example (v 6) and Treasure Island–which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Mansfield OH, but which DOES have something to do with Charleston SC, which is probably more likely a location for this verse and which can be associated in great numbers of ways with Image 2–including, but not limited to–the latitude and longitude in the painting. That’s not vague or oblique. There’s a map of the peninsula where Charleston is located in the painting as well, just as there is a map of Ohio in the Cleveland painting, a depiction of the water tower in Chicago in that painting, and a map of Roanoke Island in Image 3. Again–these aren’t vague or oblique–they’re fairly concrete and no matter what ELSE you can pair up or refer to in these verses and paintings, those things aren’t much in doubt. And if there is any overarching method, it’s probably that alone–that somewhere in the painting is a map of the area or an unmistakeable landmark. They may not be as accurate as they would have been if Preiss had had Google earth to use, but they are definitely THERE.
As for your “solution”–it’s not a solution. It’s a theory. A solution would lead to a casque. You leave out too much of the verse to make a good match with the painting OR your choice of a city. If you review the two solutions that are correct, you will see that there isn’t very much of either the painting OR the verse that goes unexplained.
You’re more than welcome to use whatever methods you think will work–no one will object to that–but don’t expect agreement on everything. That’s what the forum is for–exchange, not acquiescence. Good luck.

Don’t get me wrong, I do think most of the analysis on the paintings is correct, I just take issue with the verse pairings, it is very sloppy.

Asking for the answers sorta takes the fun out of it, doesn’t it?

On the other hand, losing the casques forever wouldn’t be much fun, either.

I was thinking more about asking for some confirmation, for one casque. After all, BP confirmed the first one, and most treasure hunts have the occasional hint after all.
But…yeah, I suppose so…

Hi howardncci – welcome to The Secret.

Yes, welcome!
Much of what you say resonates with me. But I have to disagree on some points. It is a mistake to want the same method to work on all V/P pairings. It was done that way in A Treasure’s Trove — once the trick of the maps was discovered, the puzzles started falling like dominoes. Personally I would feel cheated by another hunt like that. I *like* the fact that one puzzle has an acrostic, another has a rebus, another has clever wordplay, etc. Keeps it challenging.
I agree that the verses seem to be more informative than the paintings, but that isn’t a weakness, it’s just a feature of the game. BP could have supplied us with just verses, but he decided to supplement them with 12 beautiful paintings containing extra hints. Can’t we look at it that way?
Also, it is true that the utility of two paintings have been figured out largely in reverse, but it didn’t necessarily have to happen that way. Someone could easily have recognized Chicago’s Water Tower or Cleveland’s Terminal Tower, or the little map of Ohio, if they had been perceptive enough. Charleston was figured out without the help of a verse by recognizing a map of the city and a picture of Fort Sumter; now we know to look for a verse that references Charleston, whereas we wouldn’t have before. Roanoke was identified by combining a verse with a painting; it’s highly improbably that either one alone could have been used to do that (you’d have to recognize a squiggle as a map of an island, or just know that “land near the window” somehow meant Roanoke).
“Think like it is 1983” is a very, very good point, something we should all keep in mind.

It’s uncertain in several cases. There might be an underlying logic to it, or there might not. There may even be an intention to deliberately mislead. I’ve just got used to regarding it as one of the more devious and difficult aspects of this puzzle. What I’d most like to see is more groundwork in some of the possible locations that have been identified, but it’s very difficult to get locals interested. I recently put together some comprehensive notes about Lafayette Square and sent the Lafayette Square Conservancy two polite emails from different accounts inviting any thoughts on the matter and requesting confirmation that they’d received the email. Nothin’. I’ve emailed quite a few people in the US about this book in similar ways over the last year, and that’s a typical response.

howardncci

I never claimed a solution.

Unknown

Unknown:
I will “solve” a random city using a backwards engineering approach

Actually, you did:

welcome to the jungle.  These verses are dubious beyond belief even when paired correctly.
I was just considering the line ‘over the tall grass’ and I wonder if it is a reference to a high elevation or plateau, or is it just “hey, there’s a field with tall grass” in the literal sense….or is it an area that is regularly harvested by combine harvesters?

Has anyone tried contacting any of the authors recently…? I used to think that this would be “cheating”, but nowadays I don’t give a damn…
In the past I’ve tried JJP a couple of times on the “commissions@” link on his website, and Sean Kelly at his Pratt Institue address. No replies though.
http://www.johnjudepalencar.com/Policies.htm
http://www.pratt.edu/academics/liberal_ … ?id=skelly
Would be nice if we could negotiate a 30th anniversary casquing celebration next year…some of these got so darn close. I’m sure a few are recoverable with assistance.

And another thing: Why should we try using a tool that Preiss didn’t have? He didn’t HAVE Google Earth, or satellite photos, or the luxury of unlimited time to choose a location that would last for decades. He planted all these boxes within a 3-week period in a literally whirlwind trip across the country to do so, improvising along the way without using any aerial photographs. The most he might have had to give that sort of perspective would have been a park map or maybe a postcard. Almost NONE of the tools we are using now were available then.
The fact that we found two relatively obscure passages from an equally obscure printed work (long out of print!) is remarkable–but I don’t think it’s necessarily
significant
. And it may not even contribute to the location–we just don’t know. In the two solved casques, you can see where all the parts of the verse fit. In the verses that are left, they might fit almost any location–even after the association is known. SArmiento was not a well-known book, and would not have been something that ‘came to mind’ easily when thinking about New Orleans–not when there are so many other works that
would
. Remember, BP wanted these things to be FOUND.
The two other passages that are literary, the one from Melville and the one from R. L. Stevenson, I believe ARE significant. Why? Because they are specifically tied to a location AND a part of the verse. You can directly tie in the Melville quote to Hermann Park, you can directly tie in the Stevenson quote to Treasure Island and Charleston Harbor. I wouldn’t look any harder for some tie-ins; I don’t believe it’s necessary.
As for the locations, I am in total agreement–the country has changed. A LOT. The book did not get enough exposure in the places where it might have mattered. What we have found is gone. If he used a tree, that tree has grown up and probably died by now–and been turned into compost. If he used a building, it would have to be so iconic and recognizable that it wouldn’t GET changed–like Chicago’s water tower and Cleveland’s Terminal Tower. Anything else might not even be there. Posts get dug up. Plants die. Facades get remodeled. Parks get paved over, fountains refurbished. Look at Copley Park in Boston. Even though there is a dead-on flaw in the fountain there that exactly–EXACTLY–matches the strange crack on the window frame in Image 11, we know it cannot possibly be the thing depicted–because the fountain was built AFTER the publication of the book. Years after. The problem we are now facing is not that we don’t have enough information, it’s that we can find far too MUCH.
And if anyone digs, don’t count on a plexiglas box being still only 3 feet under the surface of the ground. Any buried object can shift significantly over even just a single year; it has been over 30 years since these objects were buried.

shecrab

The problem we are now facing is not that we don’t have enough information, it’s that we can find far too MUCH.

Unknown

Unknown:
however I am sure BP also had access to aerial photos.

Undoubtedly he did. I don’t dispute that he had access–I do doubt that he actually looked them up and used them. Park maps and city maps often have photos taken from helicopters or higher elevations. I think these are probably as “high” as he got.
I will still disagree about Illinois. Just not close enough for me–the Ohio shape
is
close enough. I won’t disagree about the shape of the fountain–but one could see that shape without using any aerial photo at all. It’s small enough to view if you stand near it, so that isn’t much proof, IMHO–no offense. I would expect some statue like “End of the Trail” to be iconic to someone who had seen it or knew it. That is pretty much what I said in another post about recognizable images. Like Charleston Harbor, fer instance, or the Milwaukee City Hall.
In other words, we’re not in real disagreement here–only on a couple minor points–and I totally agree with you about the library.
Case in point: back in the 80’s I was a subscriber to Conde Nast Traveler magazine. They have a feature called “where are you”, which is a very similiar puzzle hunt, in every issue. They show you a photo, give you a few verbal clues and you have to find the exact place. I haunted the library’s reference section every single month to play that puzzle hunt. BTW: You can still play it–and your best reference sources is STILL the good old fashioned library where all the color atlases are. Even a small library is useful. I got it right nearly every month just using the library. So you’re right–and I have no doubt at all that BP used the libraries wherever he was, as well as his vast and rather unique position as a publisher with an extensive knowledge of written works to set up each and every verse/image pair. And I think he deliberately looked for things that linked between one or more verses, too.
Note, for instance that the Cleveland picture IS Greek–and on the wall where the casque was found are all the names of those Greek people that are ALSO on the frieze at the Boston Public Library. There’s a Knight in Image 3, and one in image 6. Image 1 has a woman near a table, as does Image 11–Image 11 also has a bird, as does Image 12; bubble-like spheres appear in image 3 and in Image 1. I think this is deliberate, but I’m not sure if it’s designed to be a red-herring or if it’s meant to draw attention to something larger that links the images. We already sussed out the meanings of the gems, the times, and the flowers, which don’t contribute to a solution, nor do they point to any specific pairings. Just one more thing to think about!

shecrab

Why should we try using a tool that Preiss didn’t have?

Why not?? Do you think the Cleveland casque would have been found by now without search engines?
I say let’s use all the tools available to us. Google street view lets you practically walk in BP’s footsteps. We have amazing resources at our disposal. We need to use them to fullest advantage to overcome the changes time has wrought on our casque sites.
Where did the three week figure come from, incidentally? A Chicago Tribune article states “Sometime during the winter of 1981-82, Preiss, dressed in a modest, blue-collar disguise, had crept into Grant Park and planted the ceramic cask…” Another one states “Preiss, 29, hid the jewels over several months as he crossed the country on other business, carrying with him a six-foot shovel and various ‘disguises’ that he won’t discuss.” Regarding how long he thought it would take to finish, we may not be doing so bad according to Preiss: “Preiss says some of the puzzles are easy, and some are hard. He expects at least one treasure to be unearthed within 30 days.
Others, of course, may never be found
.” So any treasure unearthed between mid-December 1982 and the end of time falls within his idea of reasonable.

I agree with you almost 100%
I do see the shape as Illinois, The ohio map isn’t perfect either, nor is the shape of FL or the shape of LA – they all “resemble” maps of those states.
however I am sure BP also had access to aerial photos.
In the mid 1980s I worked next door to the local us geological survey office in El Cajon CA. I got to know the people who worked there and learn about what they did.
Turns out from the 1950s-all the way up to the 90s. you could go to any USGS office and there was one in every large city, and check out aerial photos (like a lending library) – once you checked them out you could copy them too.
The office would have photos that entirely covered their jurisdiction, all taken from airplanes – you had your choice of shots taken from 2000′, 10,000′ or 20,000′ altitudes. In a lot of cases the resolution was still better than you can get from Google.
all kinds of people would come in and check them out, architects, scientists, city planners and authors…
It was a well known resource provided by the govt. It is no longer available in that way, now you have to go online.
Anyway in some of the pictures i,e the map of the fountain in chicago. the image is undoubtedly taken from an aerial photo. So I suspect strongly BP used a similar if not that exact resource.
The quotes in the verses aren’t obscure at all for someone who knew how to use a library. In the 1980s rather then google the lines you would have looked them up in Bartlett’s familiar quotations (and yes I have and they are in there)
and lastly when I originally got the book I knew the Chicago picture was chicago, not from the water tower(which I totally missed), but from the End of the Trail statue and the outline of what I took to be the Hancock Center.
It said chicago to me as much as image 1 says SF to me.

I dont think shecrab is saying NOT to use what we have available….that would be ridiculous.  I am pretty sure she is just saying BE CAREFUL while using them.  It is soooooooooooo much easier to FORCE fit locations with so much info at our fingertips.  I know all about that…..I was convinced that the Charleston pic was near the Four Corners…I MADE them all fit.  What she is saying is dont disregard what tools BP used back in the day.  He used them to hide them, therefore, we CAN find them using the same things.

That’s exactly what I’m saying, Fox! Thanks!
I get a little put off seeing things like the satellite view of the water inlet that just sort of looks like the gnome (Image 3)  or the maps that almost fit, but not quite. This puzzle requires that we narrow down a search literally to a cubic yard of earth somewhere that isn’t a cemetery, public or private flower bed or dangerously situated. It will only be found by finding
visual confirmers from the ground level view
–because that’s what he would have taken a picture of to give to Palencar. Remember–he did not give Palencar the locations either. He did not tell him where these casques were, and probably would not have wanted to use anything that screamed out the location (such as a map that said in large letters at the top “Elizabethan Gardens, Roanoke Island”) He gave him more than one set of longitude and latitude numbers–and they are not precise.
He might also have a view from a higher elevation–hill, building’s upper story, staircase, or he might have used a paper map of the general location in question–
but any pinpointing confirmers are going to be from the point of view of a person standing on the ground
. It has to be.
For instance, in Chicago: there is no good map of Illinois. There is a somewhat similar shape, but I don’t believe it is supposed to be Illinois. It’s just not similar
enough
. There is a symbol that sort of resembles the Chicago bulls logo–except that it doesn’t really. There is nothing else that screams Chicago–except for that water tower. And the coordinates. What else is there? Two pieces of statuary and one specific fencepost. You get the right city by the coordinates and water tower. You get the right blocks by the statuary. You only get the location by that FENCEPOST–and you can’t do that by the image alone. You have to be directed to that fencepost by the verse. You would never get to Chicago by virtue of that image
alone.
However–Cleveland is a little different. You have the definite shape of Ohio. Right state. You have the shape of the Terminal Tower. Right city. You have the association of Greece–right area of the gardens. How do you get from the right city to the right area of the gardens? Well–again, you need the verse–but at least in the Cleveland image, there is a lot more visually that could identify the place and the specific garden if one had ever been there–it’s almost (note I said almost) possible to do it from the image alone. Those two columns are a dead giveaway. There are few places in Cleveland where you would see columns like that, that would have all those same associations.
Can’t we simply put these same methods to work in other pairings rather than focusing on one or two of the images’ icons and extrapolating from there? I think we can. I think we should. I think it works well in some images–like 2, 10, 11 and 12–and not as well in others. But–if we managed to narrow it down in those four–with the two solves already done–that’s improved our chances of getting the pairings correct in the other six by 50%. It means we need to be more methodical and not use quite so much “free association” when trying to find locations.
As for my statement about the three week period, I could have sworn I read it on this forum–somewhere. I won’t hold fast to that time period however. If it took longer, it took longer–my point was that it didn’t take that long, and it wasn’t pre-planned–the destination cities might have been planned, but not the specific locations. He wasn’t traveling in order TO hide casques. He was traveling for other purposes. And we know for a fact he didn’t travel with Google Earth.

and to point out in your “matched” verse there are 13 lines.
you didn’t match 4 lines…  9 out of 13 is only 69%
Thats a Fail.
Note in the two solved verses they are 100% solved.
my verse 7 solution matched all but 1 line – and obviously it’s wrong.
You are correct it is easy to find some matches in any city or even multiple matches in a city.
But you are missing the function of the verse,
Which is specifically to guide you to the square foot spot you are supposed to dig.
In the two solutions the verse is a specific route directly to an unambiguous dig spot.
With corresponding images in the picture to confirm the spot.
So when you claim a solution it must specifically point to a dig location, not just a generic city.

I never claimed a solution.  And I actually do not disagree with how the verses work.  What I take issue with is the method of connecting verse to image.
You actually support my argument.
Point is that it is next to impossible to work the verses without pairing them correctly first.