Congrats to Don A! He solved The Ring of Old and has been rewarded the $250 cash prize! MW is always so happy to share another successful conclusion to a MW Treasure Hunt. Just Awesome!
Below is his story on how he solved the puzzle to claim the prize. As you will read he didn’t need to find answers to all the clues within the Scroll and so many are left unsolved at this point. MW has decided to let these unsolved codes and clues remain as such for the time being. Try your hand at them! (see below).
MW strives to make very solvable hunts for all, and the next hunt will be released December 21st, 2017. We hope you will join us for more fun and Cash Prizes!
But for now, let’s read about Don’s adventure in solving the Scroll. It will make you laugh for sure. It’s a pleasure to share it!
How did I solve the scroll? Wow, it was a long and winding trail for sure. For a 70 year old man with ADD, Jenny, you made it almost impossible for me to solve. Once again you led me on a great adventure of discovery in literature and geography. I gained so much new knowledge as I read so many articles and Icelandic sagas plus the tales in the final solution.
Once I got the scroll downloaded, the first thing I did was solve the red letters, even before I read the tale. “No one knows how old I am”. Hmmm. Lots of thoughts about that. Then I read the story super-fast since obviously I was going to have this thing solved in the next 10 minutes. J War waged for love? Wars of gods?(plural) Noble heart saved? Wizards, Witches and demons? Battlefield now leaves all in pure wonder? Luminous sights? Ok, lots of stuff here.
The luminous sights made me think immediately of the Aroura Borealis or Northern lights as they are called. So I started searching for a battle of the gods in the north. The Roman/Greek gods and the Celtic gods just didn’t seem to fit because of their geographical locations to the south. But the Norse gods were a perfect fit. I found an article that described a landscape in Iceland as looking like a battlefield of gods so I knew I was on the right track. There was even a volcano called Hekla that had myths about gods doing battle there. I would have to do more research on this for sure.
But first I turned to the codes on the scroll. The first one I cracked was the series of circles at the bottom that turned out to be Morse code for “MWTreasures”. Nice touch Jenny but no help at all! LOL
The witches brew was next, another easy solve but still not helpful as far as I can tell.
2 of Six and 1 of Seven must be xiv or xvi = 14 or 16. Not sure how that will work. (N or P?)
21 19 1 = USA
The !##$… codes were changed to numbers by transposing them with the keyboard. I had no clue what they meant at the time. They did not match numbering for the words or letters from the scroll. My only thought was #$%@%&^$!!! I also had no idea how to put the numbers located on the pages in the folder to use. I needed to find the keys for the XGLBUB and the DJUY… ciphers.
So I went back to reading Norse mythology. It all led to Ragnarok… the great battle of the Norse gods. I am a great fan of the Marvel movies as anyone that follows my Facebook page knows. I did not know the story of Ragnarok before but now – could Marvel/Disney really be planning to kill off all of the gods? End the series? Of course not. They’ve already killed off Thor’s mother so they have already broken from the ancient myths. I guess we will see in November. But I digress. Next I started reading some of the sagas from Iceland. I soon developed a love/hate relationship with these as they attacked my ADD head on. I was fascinated by these sagas and at the same time, since many of them were about men and not gods, I knew I was wasting time I should be researching elsewhere. I seemed up against a dead end. If I see another link to Magic: The Gathering on Google I think I will scream out loud!
After two days of this I told my wife as we were driving home from one of our exercise classes at the local YMCA, “You know, I am going about this the wrong way. I need to quit trying to find the tale and get after those codes.” So when we got home I immediately started researching… the tale. LOL
Plus something was bothering me. USA. This would seem to imply the answer was in the USA. Not Iceland, Norway, Russia, or any of the other northern countries. So I started searching for answers in the USA and hit pay dirt almost immediately! The name of the scroll, wizards, demons, the heart, the pictures on the scroll… they all came together.
I will now admit, I never solved any of the other codes and did not even try once I had the tale. It was not necessary. Jenny, you put the answer right in front of our faces if we only knew how to see it. The tale is from the Native Americans of Oregon and a story of the battle of the gods Llao and Skell. There are variations to the tale but it all leads to Crater Lake. Now I understand the xiv and xvi. Which letter? It is both! NP – National Park – NP USA!
So now that I have the location, who is this mysterious stranger “journeying” an unknown path around Crater Lake? It turned out not to be “around” Crater Lake, but “in” Crater Lake – The Old Man of the Lake. He is a floating tree trunk with his white top sticking up out of the water. He has been moving around the lake for over a hundred years in an unknown path as he drifts with the wind and currents.
So what could the mysterious ingredient located below this white top around the edges be? It turns out that there is moss that grows on it that just happens to have 10 letters in its name – fontinalis. Now I am excited. I ran that through the mixer Jenny supplied but I got an answer that made no sense. And then I realized I used the mixer backwards. I corrected that and I got SNAIL OF TIN. I looked at the scroll and there he was, right next to a tree stump. It all fit just as you said it would Jenny. So I immediately mailed it in and kept my fingers crossed. I had to wait until the next day to find out and I spent a sleepless night waiting to hear if I was first. I hope you had a good night’s sleep Jenny! GET UP AND CHECK YOUR EMAIL!!!!! LOL
So it was that I stumbled on to the solution with a lot of deep research and side trails that once again led me on a great adventure of the mind. My wife said “You are just in it for the hunt” and so I am. The hunt is where it all is with me. Whether I “win” or not is not near as important to me as just being able to enjoy the hunt and learn as I go. After being a school teacher for forty years I am still the student.
Thank you, Jenny, for another extremely enjoyable hunt. I look forward to the next one.
.
For those who would like to try The Ring of Old Scroll for Fun (and for free) it is added below. Even though the prize has been awarded it can still offer some puzzling thoughts!
Can you solve the ‘codes’ or find more clues to the location?
There were a few different ways this Scroll could be solved. It didn’t rely on complicated codes only (but they were there if that was your thing). And if not, the answer was right there in plain sight too, as Don discovered!
