I initially dropped this interpretation on our Montreal Vol. 1 episode. If you prefer watching/listening, you can check it out here.
I have been trying to approach some of the verses from more of a riddle perspective. In the Chicago verse, Verse 12, the riddles are relatively straightforward. M=Mozart, B=Beethoven, etc. If the puzzles progress in difficulty, it’s fair to assume that the riddles will become more challenging.
Looking at 3 lines in Verse 5:
Weight and roots extended Together saved the site Of granite walls
I’m a believer that the lines of the verses are intentionally broken up to make them harder to understand. I’ll save my reasoning there for another post, but for my purposes right now I’ll just state it as an assumption.
If we pull these lines together into one sentence, it reads like this:
Weight and roots extended together saved the site of granite walls
Looking at this as a sentence, we can read it with slightly different emphasis and isolate the subjects:
Weight and roots extended together saved the site of granite walls
Weight: What stands out to me about "weight" is that there is exactly one other word in the verse that is a representation of weight.
White stone closest
A stone is a measure of weight that represents 14 pounds.
Roots extended: Thinking about "roots" led me to think about square roots. Looking at the 1977 edition of the New York Times Crossword Dictionary, one crossword answer for the word "extended" is "multiply". Extending (read: multiplying) two roots gives you the square.
If an "arc", from the line prior, is related to the angles of a circle, I started thinking about the angles of the square. A square has four 90 degree angles that represents its corners.
The line tells us to put "weight" (stone) and "roots extended" (corner) "together". This gives us a word: cornerstone.
A cornerstone is defined as: a stone forming a part of a corner or angle in a wall, such a stone laid at a formal ceremony. a basic element, foundation. This aligns really well with the Japanese hint for "weight and roots":
For this section, I was told you should think about architecture/buildings/structures.
If this is telling us that we’re looking for a cornerstone related to “the site of granite walls”, then F.B. Walls is likely our on-site confirmation...