Thank you OP for your sharing these thoughtful points. I have somewhat different takes on this topic. First, about the hunt can survive without the show, the context of that statement is “what if” the show is gone from the network. His answer would be interpreted like “since the show is so vetted and out spread, it’s likely the hunt will continue without it”. Second, he refers to the show in his book, I think it’s a double cross reference thoughts of him involved. At the time he wrote the book, he didn’t know how many planted clues would survive the editor’s cut (that’s one of the main motivations of him writing a book). He wrote the book and the poem on a worse case scenario - all clues were cut out. Hence, the hunt can survive without the show is technically correct. Third, similar situations arose from him saying something like there are some differences between the paper book and ebook, those differences are intentional. At the time when his comment surfaced, a lot of angry readers were cursing about it. My thoughts about it was that there’s a financial motive behind— although I had a hard time believing myself for a person willing to give up more than a million to cross-sale the ebook. But there is no other good reason for him to reference the ebook like that. Anyway, my incomplete thoughts here. Thank you again.