OK everyone. So, LIL has proven to be the most effective guesser in this little game.
1) The letters do combine to say "VALENTINE." Sorry I wasn't more elaborate, humanodon. You 9 are my Hubski valentines. Aww. Smoochies.
2) The incorrect assumption in the last post:
- Here they are in order, though Ns and Es are of course interchangeable.
Wrong-o, my loves. The letters were cut out of their associated paper in a pattern, which means the Ns and Es, not falling in the same spot in the word, were not interchangeable.
V ad
A stripes
L maps
E music
N clovers
T ad
I stripes
N maps
E - we can deduce aesthetixk's e was also on music paper. So sure, the E's were interchangeable. However, the point is that there was a pattern.
3) LIL is right again. I tried to send people a letter that corresponded with their name. With limited letters I couldn't always send someone the first letter of their first name, so again you all are right, codingvagrant's V came from Vagrant. I am glad you all had fun. Thank you for being my valentines.
ref, that was incredibly sweet and creative of you.
You also engaged a random assortment of us in a new game.
The part I liked best, though, was that you used real world things like paper and envelopes and stamps. Things. With substance.
I will paste my "L" into my journal. The stickers are already on my computer.
Is this supposed to dissuade me from finding the treasure in Canada?
Whoa whoa whoa, no one said that. Maps, stripes, music, ads, clovers. This is clearly all an elaborate game to finding DB Cooper's treasure! Ads - D.B. became a cultural phenomenon. Between "Cooper Day" in Ariel Washington, souvenirs sold of him, and all the books written about him, there are ads about him everywhere. Maps - lil said it's of the Canadian North, but no, really it's the Pacific Northwest, with topography removed to obfuscate the area being shown. Stripes - Longitude and latitude lines, of course, showing a zoomed in view of the precise spot where the money is buried, with topography removed again. Music - Oh my there is quite a bit Clovers - This one is the coup d'etat of the whole riddle. It seems so simple at first: it's Washington State, there are clovers everywhere, but it's better than that, O my brothers. No, you see, originally it was thought that Cooper landed near the base of Mt. St. Helen's, near Ariel, Washington, but later they discovered that due to manual flying based on Cooper's demands, they were south-southeast of that, near the Washougal River. Now this is full forest here, where someone can easily disappear, even if someone's looking for them. If someone were to know what they were doing, they could navigate through Gifford Pinchot and Mt. Rainier parks, worth their way towards Puget Sound. Of course, if they were carrying $200,000 in cash, there would be no way someone could make it through the Sound and past Seattle uncaught, so they would have to hide it for a while, while things cooled off enough to come back for it. And what's just south of the sound, just North of the National Parks and only around four hour's drive from the Washougal River? Clover Creek.. Cooper probably wasn't expecting the fact that he was so close to McChord AFB either. Look at this map, see how close he was, how he had to go around it, after trekking through land just outside the search range. He had to make his way around it though to get to the Sound. No way that any plan he had at this point to carry the money with him will go through, no matter what his plan was already through that area. So he had to ditch it there. Bury it in a memorable spot near the Creek and go until he could come back for it when things cooled off. What happened to Cooper that he wasn't able to retrieve it? Who knows. Maybe _refugee_ knows. Maybe she's the only child of DB Cooper. Maybe she is DB Cooper and this is the elaborate way for the person most cunning, most willing to go search for it to find it, so DB can finally rest. A true riddle indeed.