Nordmeyer Treasure

The end is near! But not before two of the trickiest puzzles. First is a complicated looking one that comes with no instructions. This is what will be in the container under the bridge:

You can test your own Nordmeyer knowledge, or cheat and read the answers by highlighting the space below:

Once the clues are figured out, the idea is to find the row where the first column contains the first letter of the answer, second column the second letter, etc. Cross out each letter as you go. So, the first Across answer (Springs) would be found in the last row of the puzzle. Then you do the same thing for all the Down clues across the columns. When you are finished, you will have one letter remaining in each box. Reading the leftover letters you get a cryptic message:

DAILY NEWS PERSONALS ON THE SHARED BIRTHDATE IN THE FAMILY

Lisa and Will have the same birthdate - January 22. If the girls figure this out, they will be headed to the library to look at the personals section of the newspaper. Back in January, I had the following posted in the personals for that date:

Elisa and Jackie, you have found it! You have some latitude here. If the temperature, in degrees, is two less than Mom's age, it lasts for minutes equal to Dad's age and points out 630 out of 1000. To make it long, the degrees are twice Dad's age, the minutes it lasts is our family size, and it points out 21 out of 1000. Good luck!

Ok, I know it doesn't make alot of sense, but it was tricky coming up with a coded phrase that means "go to latitude 39 degrees 42.630 minutes and longitude 84 degrees 4.021 minutes." And that's assuming they'll figure out the N/W part on their own. If they use Google Earth, or better yet, our GPS, they find these coordinates lead them to their own back yard. Specifically, to the playset in the back yard. In the clubhouse (more danger - spiders live there!) there will be an envelope hanging by fishing line from the ceiling. They will grab this envelope and find inside a note congratulating them for their hard work, and telling them they are entitled to a free ice cream cone for each of them at Young's or DQ or Friendly's. Oh, and there will be a key in the envelope, tied to the fishing line.

*** movie spoiler *** but the next part of this clue...highlight to read

If you have seen the National Treasure movies, you know that they get to the end of their hunt only to be disappointed that the treasure is not really there. There is the big letdown, and then they figure one last thing out, which leads them to the real treasure. I have done the same here.

*** end movie spoiler ***

The fishing line goes out the top of the clubhouse, across the top of the swingset, down to the grass, and across the yard to the garden. Buried in the garden they will find a lockbox with the real treasure - coins (for that "treasure" feel), surprise tickets to see their cousins in Colorado (they have no idea we are doing it) and a Wii. Ok, I'm not stupid - I didn't bury the Wii. I just took the box from one of the remotes and buried that in the box. I considered returning the Wii once the plane tickets were purchased, but some important people in my life convinced me I was not think clearly. I believe it was something like "Are you crazy? Who returns a Wii???" Besides, after going through all of this, I think they earned it.

I hope to add to this as the girls go through the hunt to mark their status. I will wake the girls up a little before 8:00am Saturday, April 5.