Congrats Andy and Leigh L!
Five Claimed and five more to go in this first round of Forrest Fenn Gold Medallion Treasure Hunts! Next one released on March 20th!
A huge congrats to Andy and Leigh L. who has been enjoying the chase for the Gold Medallions since its launch, and succeeded in catching the FFGM of the fifth hunt! The clues for the FFGM #5 were posted on Dal’s site mid morning, and by early evening they had retrieved the coded treasure stone and submitted a successful claim. They will receive one of the very special and limited Forrest Fenn Gold Medallions!
Below is their exciting story, and the solution! They solved it just how it was planned to go!
Winner’s Story and Solution by Andy L:
Thanks so much for putting together the hunts and hosting the Mysterious Writings web site. We’ve been anxiously waiting for each set of clues to be released, and #5 was no different. We were ready to go when it was released this morning.
First step was to figure out what the phrase “The shepherd of Poussin points the way” was all about. A quick google search revealed a couple of paintings by Nicolas Poussin related to shepherds. It was the Arcadian Shepherds one that stood out, since the shepherds in the painting are pointing to something. It turns out they are pointing to the phrase “et in Arcadia Ego” – which is also the subject of the MW webpage “Secret Meaning to the Phrases of Et in Arcadia Ego”. This had to be the right track.
The red letters weren’t making any sense since they did not seem to anagram to anything in particular (for now). So the next step was to start brute force, trial and error code cracking. A vigenere cipher with the keyword as “et in Arcadia Ego” worked after a bunch of tries, and it decoded all three lines!:
The fourth power of three
to the hours in a week
The golden ratio will take you right there
Some quick math and googling led to:
Fourth power three = 81
Hours in week = 168
golden ratio = 1.618
So that left “81 to 168, and 1.618 will take you right there”. Initial thought was to take route 81 to 168 then to a route 161 or something like that. But then after some reconsidering, this became I-81 to exit 168. There are two exit 168s on I-81 – one in Pennsylvania, and one in Virginia. Took a quick look at the area near the exit in PA, but nothing jumped out as interesting.
Then it turns out that the exit in VA is right near the town “Arcadia”, and Arcadia Road… Arcadian Shepherds… Bingo. At that point it was just figuring out how golden ratio factored in. Looking around the area on google maps, the boat launch area on Acadia Road looked interesting – the google street view of that area matched right up to the clue photo on Dal’s site! And, the boat launch measured 1.6 miles (the golden ratio) from exit 168.
The problem was that we live over 400 miles away from the site, so we had to recruit some help just like Brian P had to with FFGM #4. Luckily we have some family who happen to live in VA about 90 minutes away from the boat launch, and he was willing to take the trip on short notice. 90 minutes later, we had a confirmation photo of the stone!
Then we took a second look at the red letters, and saw almost right away that it anagrammed to VIGENERE!
Thanks again for putting these hunts on Jenny and Dal!
Andy L.
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Perfect Sleuthing! Well done! And Congrats again– your Forrest Fenn Gold Medallion is in the Mail to you!
Thanks all for participating in these hunts. They are such a joy to do and we love rewarding the Medallions to searchers!
Lots more fun to come with MW!