It’s now been Nine Months since the armchair treasure hunt- Tribute: Hunt for the 13th Casque- was released. So it’s time! This baby needs to come out of the ground!
For those unfamiliar with the Tribute hunt here is a quick video offering a summary:
So what do we know so far?
Most searchers feel confident they have the City and Park. John Michaels, creator of Tribute, has mentioned he felt The Secret (original 12 puzzles) were solved by the following steps, and he has stated he has made Tribute using many of the same believed methods. The steps are:
Locate the City
Find the Park
Find the Treasure Grounds
Locate the Dig Spot
If City and Park are correct, and the clues found to date certainly seem to suggest such, then it seems searchers only need to Find the Treasure Grounds and Locate the Dig Spot in Cherokee Park, Louisville, Kentucky.
It’s interesting to take ‘NOTE’ of a note JM offered as a clue in early August. It includes the words ‘Treasure Ground’ and it seems this is the step, Finding the Treasure Ground, that has halted searchers. This step has to be determined before ‘locating the dig spot’.
The Mysterious Note is:
Evan, Moderator of the Tribute Facebook Group, posted the following recently concerning this Note in the group:
Everything we need to solve the note is in Dustin White’s podcast and the two interviews he did with Jenny Kile
– The key part of the Dustin podcast was the part where JM says we only need 11 words
– The clue that JM wanted me to pass along to you about the note is “WHEEL”
Some searchers suggested the 11 words are:
“To Find the Treasure Ground you must refer to a Book”
MUST?
So is a book mentioned in one of the interviews I did with JM? I had actually asked John ‘which interview or post’ was he referring to. I had done many over the course of the last year, and I wasn’t sure myself. JM was nice enough to say it’s NOT the 20Q’s one he did with the kids, but it is one of the most recent two. Which are:
Six Months Down and Still in the Ground (Q/A at the end)
and
In Search of the Charleston Casque of The Secret Treasure Hunt with John Michaels
He names a book in both. So if ‘which book’ is the clue found in the interview, is it the book ‘Aboard in America’ or ‘Quest for the Hare’?
And then how does ‘Wheel’ come into play?
This makes it seem maybe the 11 words as the answer are not ‘to find the treasure ground you must refer to a book’.
And maybe it’s another clue in the interviews?
I had asked one other Question about this to JM right before he hopped on a plane. It was:
- Q) How will the clue help the Tribute puzzle?
- A) I cant say. All I can say is the answer to the note is 11 words, the clue about how to solve the note is in one of those two interviews, and a further clue about how to solve it is “wheel.” Once the note is solved it will give information about the Tribute.
Hmmmm…. Ok… and that’s all we are getting.
But it seems solving this ‘clue’ might help with discovering the Treasure Grounds. It should be mentioned, HOWEVER, this is NOT NEEDED. All we need is in the Image and Verse to find the 13th Casque. This clue only offers a nudge or something.
At the beginning of July, Rich Blandford participated in a MW Six Questions detailing some of the major finds and some of the issues searchers were having in pinpointing a location in Tribute. I’m not sure much else has been determined since then– so have a read. Do we understand the Butterfly yet? And what four spans? etc.
I decided to ask Evan, who as mentioned above moderates the Tribute FB Group, (and you also might remember he answered the Six Questions on The Secret Casque in Montreal) more about his thoughts.
- Q) As moderator of the Tribute Facebook Group, what do you think searchers feel they are missing? It’s been nine months; do you think searchers think they are close to digging this baby up?
A) I think we’re all frequently overlooking two things (yes that includes me, I’m no more better than anyone else at this hunt, just more sarcastic)
1. I think we sometimes get a little too creative with things, and need to remember that most clues are literal. Time and again, I catch myself going down the rabbit hole of, “well, Valkyries oversaw battles, so maybe their “window” is a window of time when there was a battle. World War II was a big battle, and Operation Valkyrie was a World War II plot to kill Hitler. Maybe the window of time when they killed Hitler is important. Maybe the dog in the image is Hitler and the person with the axe is trying to kill him,” and I have to stop and remind myself that’s not how JM said these puzzles work on the podcasts, and not how non-crazy people solve puzzles.
It’s far more likely that there’s going to be some Valkyrie statue in a window with a 7 on it, and that’s where the treasure is buried, so we’re better off wandering around the area and Google Maps than trying to interpret things in the abstract. Just yesterday, I found a building on the Sacred Heart Valkyries softball field with a giant number 7 next to a weird window. Like half a mile from Cherokee park too. While I don’t think it’s there (JM wouldn’t want us to go messing around a private school, in my opinion), I feel like one of us is going to spot a huge, literal coincidence just like that and that’s the end of the hunt.
2. I have to constantly ask myself “is this `clue’ I think I found actually everywhere?” Like, I’ll be poking around some bridge and think “hey, that looks kind of like a 7” and I have to remind myself that any time you have two straight lines connected at any angle, it kind of looks like a 7. Same with the emblem of B, I’ll think “haha, Bridge starts with `B!” and have to remind myself that there are literally 13,500 words in the dictionary that start with B. I could make anything I want start with a B. I could make the letter Q an `emblem of B’ (a Q looks like a Bowl that’s Bisected By a Bar, so it’s truly an emblem of B, you see).
Otherwise, if I let myself get convinced by “matches” that actually occur everywhere, I waste a few hours convincing myself that “this bridge is perfect!” when in reality it’s just a plain bridge or whatever.
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So here we are at 9 months….. will it be in the ground for another 9 months? What do you think?
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