Greetings from a beautiful afternoon in Salt Lake City airport!
This is how I'm applying my steps to the firefly puzzle:
1. Create a 5 x 5 grid of letters using an A - Z alphabet minus the 'Q':
The firefly on p. 33 is associated with the series of acorns. The 'acorn grid clue' is on p. 52. Imagine the outline of the picture as being the outline of the 5 x 5 grid. That would place the acorn with the lower-case 'g' in the bottom row, middle box. This creates the following letter grid:
J....K....L....M....N
O...P....R....S....T
U...V....W....X...Y
Z...A....B....C....D
E...F.....G....H....I
2. Discover and solve a sequencing mechanism, and apply it to the 5 x 5 grid of letters.
The acorns around the picture on p. 33 are being shown pointing in specific directions. I simply use the single long branch that the poem is attached to beginning with 'Each'. These are the directions I obtained. (The diagonals are there for reference only--they show where the acorn branch takes a turn around the corner in the picture--it makes it easier to reference.)
NE W SW SE SE / SE SE NW NE NE / SE NW NW NW W / SE SE blank NE W SW / SE E SE
The firefly on p. 28 is associated with the 'W' as a starting letter. This is where I begin applying the series of directions to the letter grid. If you move off the grid, simply continue on the other side.
Begin with the letter 'W' in the grid. Move NE = S. Move W = R. Move SW = V, etc.
The letter sequence I obtained starting with the letter 'W':
S R V B H / J P J F B / H B V O T / U A A W V Z / F E K
3. Convert the grid of letters to numbers 1 - 25.
Once again, the firefly is associated with a beginning letter 'W'. I number my grids according to this sort of clue for each treasure. So, for the firefly, W = 1, X = 2, Y = 3, etc. Substitute these numbers into the 5 x 5 letter grid above:
14.....15.....16.....17......18
19.....20......21....22......23
24.....25.......1......2........3
4........5.......6......7........8
9.......10......11....12.......13
4. Apply the sequencing mechanism a second time to the grid, but in a completely different manner.
For the firefly, imagine the picture on p. 33 is an outline of the 5 x 5 grid and the acorns travel around it. The sequence of acorns starts in the lower left corner and travels counterclockwise around the picture, and the last acorn is in the bottom row, middle box.
Applying this to the grid of numbers above, I derived the following series of numbers:
9 10 11 12 13 8 3 23 18 17 16 15 14 19 24 4 9 10 11
5. Apply the series of numbers to the sequence of letters.
I took the 9th letter in the sequence, then 10 letters past it, then 11 letters past it, etc.
This is the final code I derived:
F W J A P T A A H B V H S V V K F W J
None of this is terribly difficult, but it's resulted in zero tokens.
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