In a previous story, I discussed what I consider to be the Golden Rule for The Thrill of The Chase — Keep it Simple.
Since the clues to the treasure location are in a poem, that means to interpret the poem literally. Take the words of the poem at face value. Do not transform or mess with them in any fashion. Furthermore, do not look for clues or hints outside of the poem. That only increases the likelihood of error.
All well and good, you might say, but the poem is so vague that its clues can lead almost anywhere in the Rocky Mountains. Perfectly reasonable interpretations have been offered by many searchers, leading to vastly different endpoints across all four search states. They can’t all be correct.
True, but I don’t think searchers paid enough attention to the methodology that brought them to their final locations. Consciously or not, many employed a “guess and test” methodology that has significant limitations. In this story, I’ll discuss the problem with this approach and will offer an alternative that I found to be useful in my search for the treasure location.
Guess and Test
The guess and test method begins when you focus on a particular clue in the poem, such as “where warm waters halt.” Knowing about Forrest’s stories, such as River Bathing is Best, you might speculate that warm waters halt where the waters of Ojo Caliente mix with the cooler waters of the Firehole River. This is a very reasonable guess, derived from a literal and straightforward interpretation of the poem.
To test this guess, you proceed to look for features near Ojo Caliente that fit the next clue in the poem, which directs you to “the canyon down.” If there was no canyon near Ojo Caliente, you might conclude that your initial guess was wrong and start again from the beginning. As it turns out, Firehole Canyon is fairly close by, so the initial guess cannot be discarded just yet.
And so it continues, until you either arrive at a clue for which there is no answer, or you run out of clues entirely. The former is somewhat useful, because at the very least, it forces you to reconsider each of your preceding guesses. The latter is potentially more troublesome, since it gives you the impression that you’ve found the final location. In that instance, should you rush out there to start looking?
The Problem
I wouldn’t put boots on the ground at any location based on the guess and test methodology, because it’s inherently flawed. It’s actually very likely to suggest a final location — we’ve seen solves across four search states that all derive from precisely this approach. The problem lies in the fact that this approach fails to exclude other possibilities that are equally as probable.
This suggests a couple of requirements that should form part of any sound methodology. For starters, all potential solutions to a given clue should be considered, as opposed to just one, or a few. It may not be easy to compile a comprehensive list of all possible solutions, for there could be many. However, the candidates are not limitless, so every effort should be made to identify the universe of possibilities.
Secondly, the selection of one solution to a clue over all others must be done on some sort of objective basis. It will not suffice to rely on intuition or any such feeling. Exactly what objective basis to use is a matter for debate, but once established, this will guard against personal bias affecting the selection of one solution to a clue over all others.
Expand and Contract
With those requirements in mind, I approached Fenn’s poem using what I call an “expand and contract” methodology. I’ll describe it here, only in general terms, leaving its application to the actual clues in the poem for future posts. As the name implies, the expand and contract methodology consists of two important steps.
The first step is to expand the list of candidate solutions to any given clue, in an effort to identify all reasonable possibilities. This can be accomplished by widening our frame of reference. It’s akin to stepping back, before plotting the way forward. It might feel uncomfortable to widen the scope of a problem when the ultimate goal is to home in on a solution, but doing so puts us in a much better position to evaluate candidate solutions and gives us more confidence in our final selections.
The second step is to contract the universe of possible solutions to any given clue using what I call the principle of “most significance.” It’s based on the premise that Forrest operated with a basic sense of fairness and created the chase for the general public — average people with no specialized skills or knowledge. Given the choice of many reasonable solutions to a given clue, this principle states that we should simply choose the answer that ordinary people (i.e. Forrest’s audience) would consider the most significant.
Without delving into the poem right now, let’s consider an example. Imagine if you were given walking directions to a restaurant in Manhattan, New York, and were told to begin at the fountain in the park. Manhattan is a large place with numerous parks. With a little bit of research, you could easily compile a comprehensive list of all its parks. But which one should you choose? By any measure, Central Park is the most significant. It’s the largest, most visited park in the borough. The truth is, if the provider of the directions meant for you to begin at any park other than Central Park, then he wasn’t being fair.
Following a round of expansion and contraction, it’s sometimes useful to change our frame of reference and then repeat the process. With each iteration, the answer to a clue can become more refined.
In my next story, I’ll demonstrate how I applied this methodology to the first, and most important, clue in Fenn’s poem — “where warm waters halt.” If you struggled with the vagueness of Fenn’s poem, you might be surprised how effective this simple methodology can be.
