Thread: Solution to firefly?

Ok, I'm not new here but I have been keeping to myself for almost 6 months. With the recent discoveries I have seen that sharing can be helpful so I was going to throw these ideas out and see if anyone can help me out of a dead spot. Many of these ideas have been developed in the chat room but I know that there are people that don't visit, such as me these last several months. Here's what I have:

Ok, so 33 is the Firefly image with 28 having the Firefly dropcap. An interesting note is that there is no fairy there, I have no idea why and it could help with solving the puzzle. So it is now believed by many that the 5 X 5 grid should be used. On page 33, there just happen to be 5 appearance traits and 5 size traits. I believe that these could be used to derive the coordinates for the grid.

Size: The acorn nearest the Firefly is the largest. Going clockwise, the second acorn is the second largest. Going counterclockwise, I believe that the third acorn is smaller, making it third largest. The second acorn going clockwise being the second smallest, and the furthest left acorns being the smallest. There are the five sizes.

Appearance: There are also five appearance traits. There are plain acorns, paired acorns, acorns with dark spots and then two types of white-spotted acorns. One way to see the difference is to put the point of the acorn down, showing that there are white marks on the right and one acorn with a white mark on the left. It may also be possible to leave the acorns as they are and use white on top or white on bottom.

Ok, so there are the possible 5 X 5 traits. Now, the problem is numbering them. I have tried many different possibilities from going counterclockwise from the Firefly head, going clockwise from his tail, starting from the lowest and working up, starting from the highest and working down, and many more. Almost every time, the same problem arises, double-letters. It always seems that there will be several double-letters in the phrase that make it impossible to spell something out.

This is where I'm open for suggestions. I have also tried doing something similar to the snail, only using the appearance traits. The down side of this is that it cuts the total characters to 10 which is very hard to give an exact location. If have tried a normal abc grid along with Docs grid that he used based on the acorns on page 52. I just wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone can find any flaws or perhaps give some suggestions.

Thanks in advance

This is my first time posting, but long time treasure trover. I have been working on this one myself, using many other peoples input, I tried 5 sizes and started from the open acorn, didnt come up with much, I also tried starting with the begining of the vine. One method I tried that differs from yours- I counted all leaves in between acorns ( ex. 3 on left 5 on right, makes that 35,,,,) didnt get much there either. As for my grid-I tried the regular a,b,c,,, then I went to the W beginning and so on. So I dont think this will inspire anyone but just in case. Any help for a Washington stater would be appreciated!

almost too bizarre if a coincidence. He promised no red herrings, if just trait (or size) mattered he certainly could have had adjusted to have just 3 sizes to avoid confusion. Makes me think an acorn contains both characteristics at the same time, it doesnt need to be paired like the other puzzles (and gives 20 letters, a much better solution than a 10 letter one). However, pairing seems thematic (the mates).


T R A I T S
S
I
Z
E
S

it's worth a shot, only 120 x 120 possibilites. the triplet of large size,light_mark_left_side is a problem (it's actually even worse: 4 of 5). Three identical letters in a row?! Four out of five?! Doesnt seem possible, yet i dont see how to traverse to make it avoidable. I guess a word *could* end in a double letter and the next word start with the same (eg BRAWSISS SP [no such place])

Originally Posted by jamesrav

the triplet of large size,light_mark_left_side is a problem (it's actually even worse: 4 of 5). Three identical letters in a row?! Four out of five?! Doesnt seem possible, yet i dont see how to traverse to make it avoidable. I guess a word *could* end in a double letter and the next word start with the same (eg BRAWSISS SP [no such place])

a la aardvark?

Lets say we do have the number 1-5 correctly then what? How dow we get a pair of numbers? from the leaves?