Cleveland

 

Forge thy tongue on an anvil of truth and what flies up, though it be but a spark, will have light.

—Pindar

To be completely honest, I put this particular puzzle off till last. I had no interest in rehashing someone else’s excellent work. This is, in my candid opinion, the only puzzle to date that has actually been “solved” (less the secret of The Secret part, of course). I saw it as uninteresting and offering little in terms of challenges. I was completely wrong on both counts. 

In May 2004, the Cleveland casque was discovered by Brian Zinn and Andy Abrams. The following account is taken from an interview with both Zinn and Abrams in the February 3, 2018 Cleveland episode of The Secret Podcast.

Zinn had studied the puzzles for many years, on and off. Originally, he thought Image 4 related to Philadelphia because of the L and bell next to each other and the gem being mounted in the keystone of the arch. The Liberty Bell resides in Philadelphia and Pennsylvania is known as the Keystone State (because it connects the Northeast with the rest of the country). Everything changed when a gentleman named Johann did an internet search for the three Greek names in Poem 4–Socrates, Pindar, and Apelles, which he learned were carved into a decorative wall in the Cleveland Greek Cultural Garden in Rockefeller Park. He also noticed in Image 4, in the space between the branches, the upside down outline of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower. He soon posted the information on the website quest4treasure.co.uk. Zinn saw the post and immediately noticed that the wall from the Greek Cultural Gardens was hidden in Image 4. 

Everything fell into place after that. Poem 4 was associated with Image 4 by virtue of the reference to the columns. See thesecret.pbworks.com for a great presentation of this and other image matches. This would be a good time to turn to Image 4 from The Secret: A Treasure Hunt. 

Here are the columns and wall.

Zinn got permission from the Cleveland Park authority and set up a time to meet them on site. The day they scheduled their meeting turned out to be the day before Mothers Day, which meant they would only have a few hours to find the casque. Once there, they were able to recognize a number of items hidden in Image 4. They then began to decipher the clues. 

Beneath two countries

As the road curves 

Parkgate Avenue curves around the Greek and Italian Cultural gardens, and the wall containing the Ancient Greek names are downhill from Italian and Greek signs and flags. Surprisingly, the ancient Greek names appear near the end of the poem. The clues seemed to be out of order. The columns are what you pass when you first enter the garden from the main entrance, yet the reference to the columns is at the end of the poem.

Some workers started to set up for a wedding on the large lawn area in front of the wall, so Zinn and Abrams moved to the rear of the wall as they searched for clues.

Seven steps up you can hop

From the bottom level

Behind the wall were five steps leading up to a ledge in front of a rectangular planter. They reasoned that you could “hop up” to the planter, the seventh step. 

In a rectangular plot

This line, they surmised, referred to the planter. They took this to be the approximate location of the casque. They then started to decipher the exact location.

Beneath the tenth stone

From right to left

Beneath the ninth row from the top

Of the wall including small bricks

They carefully counted nine stones down including the top-most layer, which was rather small, and ten stones in that row from right to left. This put them near the left (north) end of the planter where Zinn proceeded to dig, and dig, and dig, for hours. They found nothing. 

At this point, Zinn had done all of the digging and was exhausted. He took a short break to rest. Abrams reviewed the situation and made a brilliant observation. If you stood with your back to the wall or viewed the wall from the other side (from the perspective of the columns), the treasure would be near the right (south) end of the planter as opposed to the left. He prodded the ground in that vicinity, and on his third try hit something that made a scratching sound. With a little digging, he pulled out a large chunk of plexiglass. The box had collapsed over the years, but the casque was still there, intact.

You may ask, Why rehash such an excellent puzzle solution? I asked that same question. But grudgingly, for the sake of thoroughness, I began to analyze this puzzle while writing this book. Having done so for a few weeks now, there are still several outstanding questions that, frankly, I can’t answer. This is an opportunity to give you a window into the circuitous and failure-ridden process I go through when analyzing one of these puzzles.

Welcome to Level 1.