Update: This drop has been found.
For those of you who live in the greater Boston area, you now have a free copy of Master Collection awaiting you if you can find it first. Unlike last time, you will have to solve a little puzzle in order to get the GPS location. The last one was supposed to be more of a race but because so many people want something harder, I have used a common cipher technique to encode the coordinates. If you are a puzzle master then this might not be that hard but we’ll see. All the clues needed to find it are in the image below. The only hint I will give is that A=0. If nobody finds it within a week I’ll give another hint. Good luck Boston!
Lee
longer between dead drop place and Europe is shorter
)
I’ve meant distance
Hmm I’ve got the ISBN number for ‘a beautiful mind’ but I don’t have the book.. I’m guessing it’s [page number]-[paragraph number]-[word number] or something similar for the GPS co-ords… As I’m in Australia I’m not going to buy the book to figure it out! haha.
Come down and do a dead-drop in Perth Lee!!
How did you go from NorCal to Boston?
Hopefully us folk here in SoCal will get an opportunity like this soon.
In any case, Thanks for this clever diversion!
This will certainly get some from behind the desk!
awesome idea!
Great work! Hope you can come to Seattle soon, both for a dead drop and perhaps the chance to buy you a beer.
Thanks for everything!
FUN!
When youre near Amsterdam are you going to hide a master collection?
could be a cell number? backwards?
I just want to know why you’re using my social security number!
Too bad I don’t live anywhere near those places…
iBrent
I hope the dead drops that only 1 person can benefit from doesn’t replace the tutorial that thousands can benefit from.
Chill Out ‘seth taylor’.
Jeez!
Are you for real? This shit is real. Fun. & fuckin rad.
GO to kirupa or somethin’
You the boss Lee!
Man if you come to Turkey>Istanbul. Drop it to sea
I wish I live in Boston.
Lee,
what kind of camera do you use? The video quality is great.
Hello. I cracked the cipher and reached the coordinates with 2 gps units and compass found nothing. Quitting as it’s been 2 hours and it’s dark. Was the package found and where you not notified?
Yes this drop has been found. Great work everyone.
what’s the solution?
Since this is confirmed as being completed, would someone post the solution? Thanks!
Where was the boston drop found?
Lee or Ethan, can you please post the solution to the cipher and the method of deciphering? Thanks!
Ugh! We had this figured out just before lunch , but couldn’t get down to Boston until after work. We were half way there when we saw the post that it had been found. Oh well.
As far as the solution. Dave Simms from Austrailia had the first part. First you broke down the the series of letters given. A=0, B=1, C=2, etc. That gave you the ISBN number for “A Beautiful Mind”. You then needed a copy of that book. The next seies of numbers corresponded to page of book – line on that page – word on that line. Then you took the first letter of that word and broke that down to the corresponding number. Again A=0, B=1, C=2, etc. This would give you N42 20.975, W71 15.490. Excellent puzzle Lee. Was a lot of fun.
I think the reference text for this drop might have been ISBN: 0743224674
http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Mind-Mathematical-Genius-Laureate/dp/B0000C7GFA/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233625312&sr=8-12
A caear shift of one position on AHEDCCEFHE=0743224674 (where A=0, B=1, etc) … I didn’t have the book to confirm with pages and other info, given, etc, though.
Just a guess … maybe I am totally off on Step 1.
Not sure on Step 2, no book at hand to confirm if I was on the right track …
Dave Sims was onto something…
With the hint A=0, then B=1 etc… This pointed to the ISBN match of A Beautiful Mind. It got a little trickier from there. To obtain the coordinates, the same decryption method was followed. The question was how to proceed. I went to the library down the road, which happened to have the correct edition of the book.
From that point I deduced I was looking for 42 to start the sequence for the coordinates being that it was located in the Boston Area.
I looked at the pages and figured out from the first 2 sequence of numbers how to obtain the 4 and 2. It turned out to work with page number-line number-word on line. The code read “Entertaining Closely Could (.) A John Festivities. His But But Few (.) Entirely John Adding.” Using the A=O crack method, this gave me the coordinates. 42 20.975N 71 15.490W. Plug into GPS and Google Earth on iPhone once on location I used both and followed.
I came up empty handed. I got there around 3:30pm and gave it till dark. The timing must have been ridiculously close. Congrats to the winner.
The drop was to the right off of the path at the very end near the water. the little red tape was nailed to the tree. my hands were freezing when i dug it out of the snow. i found it around 4:50 so you guys must have missed it.
@jakeZ @Ethan Yes you are both right.
I got the idea from the movie National Treasure. It is called an Allendorf cipher. The sets of three numbers referred to letters from a book. The first number is the page number, the second the line number, and the third the word number. You are then to take the first letter of that word. Once you had all the letters decoded you had to use the number substitution cipher to get the coordinates. Usually A=1 but since I needed some zeros I had to shift it.
But Dave from Australia put everyone on the right track with the ISBN and book title.
Ryan Stewart and I went and placed the drop late last night in the freezing Boston weather. It was hilarious because it was on a slope right at the foot of the Charles river. We were falling and slipping all over the place. I wished we had videotaped it
WHOOO! Tons of fun deciphering the code and actually being a part of the winning team!! Big Thanks to Dave from Australia for getting our wheels turning! Also Props to Matt (unknown on here) for venturing out and digging it up!!
bring it to New Orleans or Baton Rouge…I could use some excitement now that my FOTB trip has been canceled….
This is merely for my own curiosity … but can you post if you actually made it to correct drop? … or, if you had figured out the coordinates, but could not make it to the location. Thanks!
-sj
@Scott not sure who you asking that of but Teddy is the one who was actually on the winning team. Correct me if I wrong Teddy, but I believe he is from New Hampshire and called a friend of his here to actually go and dig it up. So yes it has been retrieved. I put a some special instructions on how to email me so that I know if it was legitimately found.
Lee, I’m just curious about who played, is all. I wish I had heard about it sooner, I love puzzles like this.
Teddy is a friend of mine from Indiana who I had talked with about doing the Boston drop when we originally heard about the San Fran drop. I went to the location (’bout an hour north of me) and saw people looking for it (sorry fella’s). Most people were looking to the left of the path. the drop was on the right off the path about 15 feet. i could’ve sworn i was going to drive up there for nothing but then again, here i am installing this beautiful suite!
I want a drop in Belgium too!
Congrats for finding it!! This drop seemed much more difficult indeed.
Great to see you used Beautiful Mind, which is basically all about cryptology.
Drop one in Germany, please
Lee…you got to make these more difficult! They basically last two days the most before someone figures it out…your dealing with programmers here, so it figures that it would be easy…
@Nazim I think this one represented the perfect difficulty level. Firstly, I don’t want the software sitting out for weeks or months, specifically here with snow and freezing temperatures. Secondly, this is not just for mathematically-gifted programmers. Designers, developers, gardeners, janitors, and anyone else can take part. Again I want to stress that this is also about who moves the fastest.
drop in Pittsburgh!
I think it’s a great promotion. However I picture two different people showing up at the same time and claiming THEY found it first. Then the investigation follows for the double homicide and CS4 box with blood all over it.
I thought the code was in RGB values!!!, I plugged in the values converted that into a hex number! I was looking all over in the ocean a couple days ago :’( I just got back from going under water 3,000 times. I’m sooooo upset that it was simply in a book. rioqjotj29834hgie
All I can say is when you do this in London, don’t leave the package by any of the usual tourist attractions or you’ll get shot! I can imagine the BBC News report now
You should come to Miami soon.
It’s wa rm down here 
Props on Dave Sims for straightening everyone out 