Thread: CHAPTER 4 - discussion and clues

Happy Thanksgiving to all the American questers.

Jeff, I agree with you regarding interest. It is waning I think for a variety of reasons. Goodness knows I have only considered the book as a Christmas gift for poisonous in-laws and people who cut me off in traffic.

I will say though that in my thinking the "easier than you think" may be locational, not implying anything with regard to solvability.

And for what it's worth, which is not much, I do believe there is a tendency to overthink the clues and solutions. I don't think Captain Ron was trying to express that with the "easier" clue. But I do think we all have a natural impulse to find things that are not there and try to justify them. Myself included. Anything can be a "clue" or fit a theory. Especially after the fact. And "simple" is relative. I'm sure it's "simple" to the guy who created it. Not so much for everyone else, and he should do a better job with a lot of things, including keeping that in perspective.

Anyway, good luck to all of you and Happy Thanksgiving. After this Chapter is won, I will be signing over and out of the whole thing. I hope Doc is right and that it is solvable without FB clues and that there is an underlying method. I personally don't believe it, but I hope it turns out that I'm wrong.

Happy Black Friday to all the American questers.

Who has still any interest in the hunt (disregarding the money-prize) but the hunt by itself ?

Nice to hear from you Vincent. As you can see by the very few posts, most are done with this hunt and have moved on.
Very sad because the book and website are extremely nice but the solutions with missing keys and no validations have been quite disappointing.

Originally Posted by Vincentournier

Happy Black Friday to all the American questers.

Who has still any interest in the hunt (disregarding the money-prize) but the hunt by itself ?

I am enjoying it.

Hoping to win this one and provide enough food for thought in my solution to help everyone solve the other chapters.

Oh snap! My best ever solution just submitted. But, we all know how this story goes.
Will we get a clue today on Black Friday?

Originally Posted by Rx Jeff

Oh snap! My best ever solution just submitted. But, we all know how this story goes.
Will we get a clue today on Black Friday?

This chapter is taking a little longer than it probably should because of the amazing number of herrings that litter it. Particularly when you start the search for Omega, you're quickly going to find that there is an insane amount of misdirection. There are no fewer than 20 sections of the chapter that relate to, are symbolized by, or link back to omega relationships.

The biggest problem is, there's no way to accurately decipher misdirection in this book. At least, that's my conclusion. You first need to accurately determine that something is signalling a herring. There are a lot of hints throughout the book about what herrings likely are, but the rules which govern precisely what relationships to those herrings are ALSO herrings are non-existent.

The biggest problem though is that you then need to guess about what the duration of effect of a herring is (its "scope"). Does a herring affect the sentence it is in? The paragraph? The page? Who knows. And without knowing this, you simply cannot discard anything in the book. All possibilities have to be tried at all times, and all herrings are therefore unknowable and have to be ignored, lest you toss out something that is not intended as a herring.

And so, my search for the C4 keys continues. I am getting down to only a handful of possibilities now though, so it shouldn't be long, as long as my general approach is accurate... which is a big if of its own.

Good luck.

New clue is out early. Guessing that part of the sequence will be found in the navajo code section at the end of the story.

The lost Dutchman 70 years old...

Page 70? It does talk about Jacob Waltz, The Peralta Family, etc. on that page.

don't have my book(s) on me right now but one thing I always come back to is "the needle" or "weavers needle". I believe one page of the book talks about it repeatedly, like five times in two sentences.

Needle if I remember correctly is "t-kin" in Navajo, and there are quite a bit of "t-kin" in the poem code.

Mr. Timmons (I think that's his name) accent sounds a bit Ron Shore Navajo-ish too if I-kin remember correctly...

wow pretty quiet in here... was hoping to see some activity...

"If I hear so much as a mouse fart in here the rest of the night I swear by God and sonny Jesus you will all visit the infirmary. Every last bleepbleep in here."