And just like the Prodigal Son I've returned...
There are these constantly recurring talk tracks within The Secret community. We all know them...the cities are wrong, the verses are paired wrong, your idea is wrong because its method is not represented in the three found puzzles, we're so smart and Byron was bad at puzzles so it's just coincidence. One of my all time favorites is the infamous Boston is Irish rebuttal. As if they one-upped the Ivy League scholar with this trivial bit of information.
Has anyone considered asking why? We have a city which is notorious for being stereotyped as Irish. Why did Byron not choose the obvious? The answer is simple. The immigration tie is important and it will most certainly be represented in some fashion in our final location. However, it was not the core component in the design of the puzzles.
The puzzles were designed around the fairies' most treasured possession, the jewels. Byron extended their data set to include the birth flowers and months/items. Why? Not to reinforce which gem you will receive like so many carry on about. It's because the jewels are at the heart of the puzzle design. Back to Boston. We start with an extremely challenging quote from the letters of Horace Walpole to Horace Mann. "The next Augustan age...". Have you wondered why he choose Horace? To Horace? Perhaps due to the most famous Horace, the Roman poet, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, from the time of Augustus.
Remember how JJP told us Byron was obsessed with the USS Constitution? In August 1812, USS Constitution defeated HMS Guerriere and earned the nickname “Old Ironsides.”* Funny how the Longfellow excerpt referencing Paul Revere gives us 1812 with eighteenth and twelfth stacked in the verse. Revere even provided much of the materials used to build the ship.
Did you know the peridot only occurs in one color? Any ideas on what causes the greenish yellow color? Iron.
And the gladiolus? Its name derives from the Latin word gladius meaning sword. Puopolo died after being stabbed with a knife in 1977. Does this minimize the old world connection? Not at all, the areas all have a heavy tie to the old world group. It is just secondary to the jewel trifecta which is critical to the puzzle design and this is why Boston is Italian. It all begs the question, bad puzzles or misunderstood design?
...Get used to one style and you know I might switch it up up and around. Music - Jump Around? - Everlast