Hooray!
The final Forrest Fenn Gold Medallion, FFGM #9, of the first series of FFGM armchair treasure hunts, has been successfully claimed! Congrats to Susie D! Again, we thank all those participating! We couldn’t be happier with how all the hunts have played out and the Medallions claimed! They were meant to be found by boots on the ground, and were! Excellent!
There are more hunts to come! However, that is for another post. Right now let’s hear Susie D’s story. FFGM #9 proved to be the toughest of them all to solve, lasting over two weeks!, but Susie kept at it and brought home the Gold! Way to go! Well done!
Here were the clues and video:
The Coded Treasure Stone was found at James Baird State Park, New York. This is where the Grasshopper of the 2005 A Treasure’s Trove treasure hunt was located as well. Riches new and old!
Here is Susie’s Story: (and what an awesome one it is…shows determination and has a well deserved wonderful ending!)
Like everyone else, it was pretty easy to find the sentence “The Hands of Time Move Forward Never Back” using simple number/letter substitution (a=1, b=2, etc.)
Like everyone else, I tried to figure out the clock.
I noticed that if you keep the minute and hour clock hands in the same position and rotate them, there are exactly two places where they both point at Xs: 9 spaces forward and 33 spaces forward. If you go 9 and 33 characters from the end of the Hands of Time sentence, you get NH.
Someone on the FB page said that if start with A on the first space and then start back at A when you get to Z, the white hands point to PA. Someone else mentioned that if you do the same thing but start at the minute hand, you get NY.
Needless to say this was all inconclusive.
I tried to use Google Maps to find a parking lot in all three states that matched the video. But NH is a big state and half of it is in the Appalachian Valley (thanks to Jenny for that comment on the clue page that mentioned anywhere in the shaded area counts). That tactic got me nowhere. I realized I needed to solve more to narrow it down.
I tried starting at the minute hand and counting the spaces where anything NOT an X pointed to a space (white hands, mouse, plant, bird). I took those numbers and then used that number of characters in the text. That got me PISAAH. Hmm…if there was a mistake on the page and one of those As was really supposed to be a G, it would be PISGAH. There’s a Pisgah National Forest in NC, a Pisgah Recreation Area in NY, and a Pisgah State Park in NH. But Jenny confirmed that there are no typos on the clue. So that was out.
I gave up trying to get anything out of the clock and just concentrated on the text.
Right from day one, “Clues this time are a different find” jumped out at me. I was pretty sure it referenced Forrest Fenn’s poem since this is a FF gold medallion hunt. The bold letters anagram to TREASURE. Also her text had two lines similar to FF’s (“secret where” and “riches new and old.”) One of the FF lines has 52 characters in it, so those letters would fit around the clock if you skipped the Xs. I even reasoned that a bird and mouse are creatures you’d find in a forest, and the plant looks like something you’d see in a marsh (another word for marsh is fen.) Just goes to show you could pretty much reverse engineer anything to come out the way you want it.
It wasn’t until Jenny gave hint #2 that I realized the ‘different find’ is one of the jewels from A Treasure’s Trove. (Besides, FF’s bounty isn’t a find yet). Also this may just be coincidental, but a synonym for Find is Treasure Trove (according to thesaurus.com).
A Treasure’s Trove First see
with 58712643
So I started concentrating on that. I googled articles on TT. All I could find was a list of where they were found. The butterfly, dragonfly, grasshopper, ladybug, and spider were all in the Appalachian Valley. Again, big states to just randomly search for every parking lot. And what did “First” mean? The dragonfly was the first found. The spider was the first listed in Jenny’s post about it on the MW site.
Staring at the clue itself with just the question of which insect she meant made things click into place.
I realized that “hop, skip, and a jump” didn’t mean something close to. It was a reference to grassHOPper.
Then when I googled “treasure’s trove grasshopper” I found additional articles. One article was from a newspaper of a small town which is just a stone’s throw away from where I grew up (no pun intended). It said the grasshopper brooch was the first jewel the author acquired.
Bingo!
And now that I was certain grasshopper was the key, I couldn’t help but notice that the plant is GRASS. To say that the bird is hopping in it is a bit of a stretch, but maybe that was meant.
So…the grasshopper was found in James Baird State Park in New York. It was pretty easy to find the matching parking lot using Google Maps satellite view.
The funny thing is that I had looked at James Baird before but totally missed that lot. But now that I knew it must be there, I saw it right away.
I found the location the day before FFGM #10 came out, but couldn’t go and get it until three days later. I just made the trip there and back from MA. And now I can finally have a peaceful night’s sleep without worrying that I’ll see the Claimed notice the next morning.
I’m really interested in knowing how to solve that illusive clock. Also I never figured out what 58712643 meant in Jenny’s hint, why a cardinal and mouse were used, and what the red ribbon thing represents.
Thank you, Jenny, for an awesome hunt!
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Congrats again to Susie! What a great adventure and thanks so much for sharing it with us! She will receive one of the very limited Forrest Fenn Gold Medallions, Doodle, and COA.
The following are other clues given in the hunt. Like many of the hunts of this series, there have been many ways these hunts could be solved by using the various clues. Not all of them are needed, but were there. And all that matters in the end is the treasure is found!
The phrase found by the number code, mentioned above, ‘The hands of time move forward never back’ was to hint to following forward the ‘hands of the clock’ to the letters NY for New York– as shown below. The fact they were minute/hour hands and there is the popular phrase ‘New York Minute’ confirmed the find.
Next was the text. As mentioned, riches new and old, referred to new and old hidden treasure at the place. The grasshopper was solved and found at JBairdSP in the A Treasure’s Trove hunt of 2005. I know, I was two hours late for that one. HOP in the text, as Susie mentioned, was a hint/confirmer towards the grasshopper.
With these few clues, and making a match to the parking lot seen in the background and video, the FFGM coded stone could (and was) found.
However, JBAIRDSP, was given as well in the clues. This was with the red X’s— X marks the spot.
It was noticed by searches that the positions of the X’s were in the 1, 12, 22, 27, 36, 40, 47, and 51 spots. There are 60 words in the poem (counting FFGM as words: Forrest Fenn Gold Medallion)…and even though FFGM is at the end, it still was a hint to 60 words/60 seconds and to connect them.
The words in the X positions are: In, Rests, Paved, See, Jump, Discover, Are, But. Taking the FIRST letters of each word gives: I R P S J D A B which anagrams to JBAIRDSP. This was hinted to by the X being in FIRST position of the one line in the poem) And X marks the spot again- FIRST. (also the clue of 58712643 was to order those letters as it was done in ATT)
The word TREASURE, is an anagram, and was given by one letter from each line, like the words of the X’s, giving the letters of JBAIRDSP. This hinted to those needing to be anagrammed. Plus, JBAIRDSP was given as an anagram in A Treasure’s Trove, using a different method, but using the same letters (JAMES was not spelled out).
The mouse nose, tail, grass, and hands linked to letters by letter count… This was a cipher (which I’m not going to reveal at this time (it was more of a test (forgive me)), but these items were used more for distraction, because I was thinking it was too easy with NY given by the minute hands, Hop, New and Old Riches, X marks the spot, Image of location, and the anagram.
That’s basically it!
Congrats again…and stay tuned for more FFGM hunts! Details coming in a few weeks!
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Best of luck with all you seek! Always treasure the adventure!
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So was the red ribbon also just a distraction or did it have a significance?