Solution for The Wayfinder

Congratulations to The Puzzler and all those hunters that made the journey. This turned out to be a challenging puzzle hunt. In the end the winning submission was the only submitted attempt to find the coin in the 856J grid area of the Google Plus coordinate grid where the coin ultimately was located.

The Start

At first review after reading the Wayfinder puzzle hunt introduction and downloading the puzzle we know we need a playfair key to decrypt the coded words, then figure out a path, and fill in some blanks to find the coin. Hopefully from reading the puzzle release blog post you know the blanks represent coordinates of the coin (virtually hidden). Let’s start solving this puzzle.

Find Your Bearings With A Compass

The puzzle presents you with a riddle to start, “An enclosure for the debt that all men pay”. It turns out to be a riddle from a treasure hunting movie, National Treasure 2 Book of Secrets, but with a slight twist. The enclosure being a cage which happens to be the main actor’s last name. 

We have solved the compass which gives us our bearings for the entire puzzle starting with decrypting the coded words but also giving us a potential theme for the puzzle.

Seek A Numbered Route (in more ways than one)

The thing you were expected to find quickly was the acrostic NY to LA. This was to help you determine the route map endpoints. This would help you narrow down your search for the path or route.

Need a start, call upon the Spaniards. (34 dial prefix)
Y’all seek a numbered route across the land. (Route 66 and keywords for search)
To find the mark you must decide,
Left or right of the seven at the center. (east or west of 7 cities on the route)
A noble bird will give you passage. (airplane, movie reference for Cibola)

If you had tried “airplane route across america” in your path searches you might have found success in finding this historical route.

The exact match to the image used in the puzzle would take you to this page for CAM 34. You found a numbered route that matches the puzzle but where is that coin?

Pick the Beacon

On the homepage of the Arrows Across America website you will see all the beacon stations (concrete arrows), kind of like a wayfinder or a signpost, that are along these airways.

Now remember that movie reference in the compass step? And that last line of the puzzle stanza? What treasure where they looking for in that movie? Cibola, the city of gold!

The CAM 34 airway happens to go right through Cibola County, New Mexico. We have ourselves a lead.

Let’s find an arrow! 

Let’s focus on the Cibola County beacon stations that are part of the Contract Air Mail 34 route. We only have 4 to choose from. And one of them is #66, alongside Route 66, and that might make you think of the second line “a numbered route across the land”. We have a second use for that line.

This might have proven tricky because beacon 66 isn't shown on all pages.

Being First to the Coin (Coordinates)

Beacon 34_66 is in Cibola County New Mexico, very near Albuquerque, which if you had overlaid the signpost page onto the landscape page you would have seen the left pointing arrow was aligned on the path, pointing you in the proper direction of the coin, and answering the stanza question “left or right of the seven at the center”.

But what coordinates will win the prize?

The format of the blanks is unique. Searching for types of coordinates eventually you find out about Google Plus Codes. Finding Plus Codes makes sense of those yellow hashtags above the route. 85 is the prefix for the region in New Mexico, 86 for the Midwest and 87 for the Eastern US. And we also know from the puzzle that two of the places must add up to 7. 

Whether through realizing the arrow was the key part of the puzzle in reference to the Wayfinder and signpost or by trying every coordinate that touches the beacon you eventually find that the expected coin coordinates were at the largest portion of the arrow head.

The Coin Location

The Next Puzzle

There are a bunch of puzzles releasing from the Masquerade hunt in the next 2 weeks so I might delay the next Retro13 puzzle even though it is basically ready to go. I do have to tell you it might be even trickier or maybe you are starting to figure out how my puzzles work. Let me know what you think via email or on the MW Forums.