Presenting -- for December 18, 2011 -- THE NEW!

DROMGOOLE’S P.Y.M.™ PUZZLER

Asaph P. Dromgoole, Editor

PROMOTIONAL

RETURN OF THE G.L.O.-WORM

WHO HAS P. …. ?

But First … !!!!

HOW MANY HIDDEN NOOSES CAN YOU FIND ?

Images montage Copyright © Asaph P. Dromgoole

Last week, the Puzzler asked the above question about the HIDDEN PICTURES in the Armytage engraving of Wm. Q. Orchardson – sometimes Urqehartson – ‘s painting, of Napoleon on the Bellerophon above, little realizing that the HIDDEN PICTURES were even more hidden then we ourselves imagined when we borrowed them off P.s desk, (see, How Many Hidden Nooses Can You Find? (December 11, 2011) !! For – as was called to our attention -- here they are again, on the paperback cover of a book on Napoleon, where, in wraparound fashion, Napoleon is on the front cover, and the officers’ corps, the mainmast, and the three block and tackle at issue appear as HIDDEN PICTURES on the back!!! And, seemingly, they are copyrighted! as well – that is: because the copy- writer who wrote the promotional jacket blurb for the paperback edition of David Cordingly’s NATIONAL BEST SELLER “THE BILLY RUFFIAN” had his copy copied right over the HIDDEN PICTURES portion of the book cover!!

DISCLAIMER With all litigiousness swirling around our use of public domain material that is “copied right” -- we have to declare: that we DID NOT COPY these HIDDEN PICTURES, in the creation of last week’s Puzzler. The pictures on Cordingley’s bookcover are a little too hidden to make a very good Puzzler. I, in fact, related – almost in real time -- last week, Q.V., how we came across the HIDDEN PICTURES on P’s desk, bumped a glass of water, staining them. P’s pictures were independently hidden. They bear my unique watermark. We did not see Cordingley’s HIDDEN PICTUREs, nor did we plagiarize this idea from the cover of Cordingley’s book!!!! as some Players are carelessly & recklessly insinuating.

MY originality of conception is proven by my WATERMARK! See last issue. This justifies my copyright as well as establishes the originality of last week’s Puzzler. Meanwhile, a number of more pressing issues have recently arisen:

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WHO HAS P. .... ? LAST WEEK, you regular Players will recall, I, was compelled by exigent circumstances, to think fast, and creatively, while P. was running for my MOCHA – and something for himself as well – I think – probably a tall skinny eggnog spice latte w/ whip, is what he got last time I lost the toss – and the ginger nuts from the artisan bakery kiosk by the Battery. Of course, he had not returned with my MOCHA last Saturday P.M. before the time arrived, when the Puzzler had to be finally formatted and “put to bed” as they say. This turn of events lead me down the corridor to P.’s office, where I happened to find the HIDDEN PICTURES referenced above, which ran last week, etc. etc. as just mentioned.

However, when the time came to finally lock up -- P. had still not returned , leading me to post to you Players, and to voice out loud to the public at large the poignant querry: viz. Where could he be?

I gave him $4 for that mocha. And after completing last week’s issue, I did as I had said, and went to put the HIDDEN PICTURES back on this desk ... And it was as I re-entered P’s office to place the Armytage back under the stack where I found it, that I could not help noticing an envelope on P’s desk – but addressed to myself! It had not been there when I found the HIDDEN PICTURES…..

Naturally I opened it, and hence :

THIS WEEK we bring back our occasional feature OUR READERS WRITE – last seen during the Golden Summer series, ca., ________ when we received a number of printable letters – aside from legal filings.

OUR READERS WRITE We are thinking or retitling this feature :

THE MORNING MAILBAG But P. will have to O.K. that change. He is, at this time, still not back – now almost a week later. His absence may well be explained by the very letter we found on his desk – which, being time-critical, we have had to avert to, in loo of the Puzzler which we would have run, if P. had returned. As he left, he mentioned something about running the REAL solution to Fermat’s Last Theorem – not the Andrew Weill thing, but the real Riddle Solution that “would not fit in the margins of this book” …. but would fit in a Puzzler! A good idea!!!

Admittedly, that would have made a good PROMOTIONAL Puzzler, for our subscription efforts. HOWEVER, as I shouted at him as he left, “That would be FIVE French things in a row!!” as I screamed as he drove out of sight:

THAT’S NOT HAPPENING, P. !!!! And I have not seen P. since …

So once again, just as our efforts to get out our FREE SAMPLE issue earlier this month, Players will recall were complicated – well, gummed up is more like it – by the copyright restrictions of the K.W.M.,1

This is almost a direct recapitulation of what happened to Elmendorf – except there was no ransom note received in that case. They just frogmarched him off …

forcing us to abandon our meekly patterned Just What is the AOI, Afterall? actuating ourselves into the OCCUPY AOI!! movement, with consequent revolutionary results, now here again, this week, we are obliged to cancel the PROMOTIONAL Puzzler that had (sort of) been scheduled to run this week, because of P.’s evident kidnapping. Is this déjà vu?

OUR READERS WRITE Here’s the text of the demand letter we received – that is, the first page. The F.B.I. have advised that we cannot print the text of the second page, as it may jeopardize P.’s safety. Players may have to enlarge this image:

1 We are still waiting to hear back from the K.W.M.

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Back issues still available – please send $20.00 to pympuzzler@rocketmail.com $50 for a copy e-signed by Dromgoole

Back issues still available – please send $20.00 to pympuzzler@rocketmail.com $50 for a copy e-signed by Dromgoole

RETURN OF THE G.L.O. - WORM

What is at issue– what is very obviously at issue -- is that whomever/whoever has grabbed P. owes me $4, and is still asking for an indeterminate amount of cash – referenced by the rather open-ended demand “Give $”. The other object of demand is the T 25N R2 W W.M. map, which is referenced prominently near the end of the letter:

Make a Donation of T25NR2WWM

Players will recall how the late Mr. Elmendorf, and the Puzzler, just earlier this year, introduced in depth, a biographical sketch of Charles S. Frailey, Master Mason, and chief clerk for the General Land Office. See Who Was Charles S. Frailey … Really? ( April 19, 2011) and Was Charles S. Frailey Working the G.L.O. Surveys ? (April 26, 2011) – images at left. It’s the General Land Office MS master survey map!! for the Oregon Territory -- that P.’s kidnapper(s) is(are) after!!! See below, pp. 6-8. Recall, Players, that although he was a G.L.O. clerk, Charles S. Frailey was also a gifted cryptologist, and sent a few of his ciphers to none other than Edgar Allen Poe: one such is now famous as “The Frailey Cypher ” See above left. Elmendorf had Puzzled, whether Frailey, the cryptologist, had been assigned to the G.L.O. on behalf of the brotherhood, and while there, encoded – or caused to be encoded – any secret or Masonic information in the cartography of the G.L.O. – hence earning him Edmund Elmendorf’s moniker, the “G.L.O.-WORM”. Some evidence from G.L.O. maps was adduced. In particular, it was the presence of the mysterious name

FRANK MIXTER In the hachure marks of the hills of the Ashland Forest Reserve, in an Oregon G.L.O. map, T40S R 4W that was the springboard for Elemendorf’s thesis – in these two “G.L.O.-Worm” Puzzlers which ran shortly before he himself was “arrested” and shortly thereafter, murdered. See, e.g., Puzzler Memorial, ( June 19, 2011).

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As players will recall, the name FRANK MIXTER appears written in the hills of the G.L.O.’s 1882 survey of Section 20 of T 40S R 4W, just south of Steamboat Creek, near the location of Steamboat – the Oregon mining ghost town of – near another mining ghost town: Buncom, Oregon. The map is still accessible to Players at the Oregon/Washington BLM website: http://www.blm.gov/or/landrecords/survey/ySrvy1.php click on Oregon Townships, and when the grid map opens, select T40SR4W, near the California border, about halfway between Cave Junction and Ashland:

T40S R 4 W WM GLO survey (1882)

ENLARGED TO SHOW DETAIL

T40S R 4 W WM GLO survey (1882)

Elemendorf’s last G.L.O.-Worm Puzzler, So, Then, Who was Frank Mixter? had been scheduled to run on May 22, 2011, but as Players will — with deepest sorrow and a haunting sense of déjà vu – recall, it was earlier that week, on Tuesday, when two gentlemen appeared at the GLOBE offices, claiming to be his “Uncle Elmendorf,” and escorted him out. We were obliged to takeover for the time, and issued the ad hoc Puzzler, So You Think You Know Your Volcanoes, Do You, Eh? (May 22, 2011). The whole tragic series of events is too painful to recall now – especially with P. clearly now facing the same sort of mortal danger !! .. .. .. Poor P.!! But, as it was our duty to do so, the entire ordeal was related for dedicated Players, in the pages of the May and early June Puzzlers, and resolution and closure for the family occurred in the Puzzler Memorial of June 19, 2011. Q.V. We were, after much effort able to get out what should probably be considered Elmendorf’s last puzzler, What was Bartelby the Scrivener Really Working on? (May 15, 2011) -- and eventually the highly elaborate answer had to be run – LATE -- as a Solution Supplement (June 5, 2011):

SOLD OUT

SOLD OUT

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Why am I reliving all this gruesome history? It’s THIS, Players: The discovery of T25NR2WWM that Elmendorf introduced in the latter of the G.L.O-WORM Puzzlers, further validated his Puzzler thesis. I.e. …. That Charles S. Frailey was in fact the Masonic mastermind of the General Land Office, in D.C. -- truly, the G.L.O.-Worm -- and that, shortly after Poe’s ever-more mysterious “death” in 1849, (see, e.g, Where did Poe …. Depot? (October 31, 2011) he had directed first Charles K. Gardner, and then Jonathan B. Preston to the Oregon City G.L.O to begin the work of surveying the vast Oregon Territory, which was eventually to become the states of Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. HOWEVER: what was not to be disclosed, not whispered, not even winked at --- was that the G.L.O., in cooperation with the Army Corps of Topographical Engineers, the United States Coast Survey, and others, was that WITHIN THE CARTOGRAPHY OF MANIFEST DESTINY, they would encode the material of an epic saga of American history – and untold story of valour, derring-do, and heroic patriotism against the menacing British Leviathan. The G.L.O-Worm Frailey and his associates had determined that the story would be told through the records and cartography in – the most unlikely of places, in the most homely and soon to be forgotten of states – OREGON: aka “Land of the Bland”. And also Washington, and Idaho … Where no-one would think to look … that is … until one day. And NOW…..

THEY WANT THE MASTER MS G.L.O. MAP for decoding the work of Frailey -- the G.L.O.-WORM!!!

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This is the master MS map for the surveys undertaken by the G.L.O. in the Oregon Territory, as outlined in the INSTRUCTIONS TO SURVEYORS GENERAL MANUAL (ISG Manual) which Preston took with him to Oregon, when he left the D.C. GL.O. The T25NR2W was the exemplar map for running the entirety of township surveys within what became the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Below, the images are the ISG Manual title page; to its left the field notes of “Robert Acres” for T 25 NR2W; followed by the corresponding Index Map for the same township --

ISG Manual title page

ISG Manual Index map – matching Elmendorf’s >

ISG Field Notes for T25N R2W W.M.

ELMENDORF’S ORIGINAL MS MAP for survey

of the Oregon Territory

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TO ALL PLAYERS – AND A.C.R..O.P.Y.M. PLAYERS:

DESPITE our plans to run a PROMOTIONAL Puzzler this week, we need to reassure all you loyal Players …

THIS IS NO PROMOTIONAL STUNT !! – AND NO GIMMICK !! Here’s the full text of the note:

STOP THE HEIST OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY!!!!

According to page 2 of the demand – which we cannot reproduce, for the sake of P. – before Midnight on Christmas Eve, I am to go to San Francisco, California, and locate a certain Salvation Army bell-ringer near a certain train terminal, and “make a donation of” this priceless MS from the General Land Office, by putting it into his or her kettle.

More, I am under strictest instructions not to reveal!

HOW CAN YOU HELP? SEND CASH!!! P.’S KIDNAPPERS HAVE DEMANDED AN INDETERMINATE AMOUNT OF CASH!!!

PLEASE MAKE A DONATION AT PYMPUZZLER@ROCKETMAIL.COM By now you have probably heard, that in view of P’s disappearance, Al-Rahouchhe has cancelled Christmas. As most of the Puzzler staff celebrates Kwanza anyway, this is no big deal. But there will be NO Puzzler next week !!! , as I indeed, will be leaving for San Francisco WITH THE MAP in just a few short hours, to meet with F.B.I. and D.H.S. agents.2

2 Ramsey -- this is NOT a sting!!!

PRAY!!! --- A.P.D.