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[massive]

First instinct is a book cipher ... but what book? We've had two recently referenced (plus the picture on this page is a book cover) ... guess I'll start hitting Amazon and seeing what I can pull ...

ETA: Well, I started looking for the book whose picture is on the page, but it's practically a dead end. It's a rare book and you can't even check out the copy that the picture is from (in California's public library system). Moll Flanders and Catcher in the Rye and Alice in Wonderland have a lot of versions to poke through. Any ideas?

[EnigmaFisk]

i dont know a thing about book ciphers...so i'll take your word for it...i would point out that he told us to remember "On Walden Pond"....

[massive]

Well, the way it works (in a nutshell) is that the number sequences map to a page number, line number, and word number of a word in a book. The famous one was used by Benedict Arnold and his co-conspirators:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_Cipher

The problem here is, which book? And what does the phrase "it pays to be an eagle" refer to?

ETA: I did find a book called "The Dark Eagle" about Benedict Arnold, but the first four words decrypted to "60 doctor them relatively" so I think that's a bust. *laugh*

[Adam C]

It pays to be an eagle refers to the $.25 cost of the book, I believe.

The only problem with doing that cipher is that we'd have to know the edition and publication of the book as well, because page numbers, line numbers and word locations might all be different between the books.

Nevertheless, here is the link...

http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext95/waldn10.txt

If 25 is reference to a chapter number, then it isn't Walden, which only has 18 chapters. Perhaps it could a reference to a page number? Page 25, paragrap x, line x, word x. Unfortunately, the version I posted doesn't have page numbers.

[f]

An eagle in an old ten dollar coin, but that would be an expensive book for the gold rush era.

[Adam C]

The price is atop the book, as well.

Walden had a few eagle references in his work, and also lived near Lake Eagle in Maine (I think) so maybe we can use that as clues?

Can anyone with a true copy of Walden try the book cipher on it?

First try chapters, pages, word...

then try page, line, word

finally, try chapters, paragraphs, word, if the page thing isn't working out.

[Adam C]

Several times in our discussions, Bob has mentioned keeping a journal. He has said it is private, and not online, but I can't help but wonder if there is some sort of online journal or blog of his out there that we haven't found yet?

[massive]

The key's right in front of us:

[Adam C]

The next page is unlocked, but I don't know the url to it.

I think we have to figure out the meaning of "it pays to be an eagle".

When I asked Bob about it, he made some boyscout references, saying the eagle is the highest rank in boyscouts, but no more than that.

[Adam C]

[Angelus78]

Has the next page been unlocked then?

[Adam C]

Yes, he unlocked the next page, but didn't give us the URL!

[Angelus78]

We've discovered that the url is this:

[Adam C]

Bob already said the journal page wasn't the next page, nor was there anything to be solved, so I didn't mention it thinking it was insignificant.

As near as I can tell, only one of the numbers has changed, the first one. However, when I try to solve using book cipher method, I do not get the same letters all the time, that our friend massive got.

[Angelus78]

Me neither.

Edit: It can't be line word letter because I remember the first numbers being 3.27.1 and I don't see how that would work.