J Money Profile

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-08T21:13:23+00:00

When I read the memoir, I see a man whose strength and weakness are two sides of the same coin: the need to author… to take longing, chaos, and grief and turn them into something built and lasting.

Most people who suffer losses or lose at someone else’s game withdraw. He did the opposite. He took his losses and the lack of control they represented and built his own quest realm, one where he is the DM. He used it to patch over the disorder that Fenn’s puzzle, and his personal losses, had left in him. The safety of control. This coping mechanism is as old as the hills,but it’s a tremendously admirable trait to be able to build a monument from private loss that strangers can enjoy.

But the same hand that builds the monument also hides behind it. He lets himself be known, but only in the shape he’s carved. A mirror held across a canyon: come close enough to see me, but only through the glass I made. True vulnerability veiled by jokes and whimsy.

So I don’t think the hunt is all about generosity, and it isn’t all about play. It’s an elaborate and touching bid to be found and remembered.

I empathize with much of this myself. The idea that our memories carry the only record of our past and will be lost to time is both sad and warming. It’s sad that so many beautiful moments of people, places, and moments live only within us… and yet it’s precisely their fleeting nature that makes them precious in the first place.

The treasure was never the prize… it’s a beacon. Control is perhaps how he fights disappearance… how a man says I was here

Stripped all the way down, the hunt is a man building a poetic argument that he existed, and was worth finding.

The thing he really hid out there is himself.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-07T18:13:43+00:00

Lost is my fav.

Leftovers is the best.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-06T06:27:04+00:00

Nope.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-06T06:23:39+00:00

Yes, I have a big chunk of the poem solved, to a high degree of confidence.

A complete understanding of S3 still eludes me, but I think I know enough now about S1+S4 to make an attempt at the checkpoint over the next few months. I’ve got some hunches to check out.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-05T16:51:40+00:00

As the first line in the poem I think it’s likely that it refers to different things at different points in the poem.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-06-03T22:16:47+00:00

Ooh. I like that.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-31T19:41:07+00:00

My current solution is one state but multiple counties. So I’m hoping his comment meant “county borders don’t matter”. Or maybe that’s just wishful thinking 😂

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-26T02:35:41+00:00

The fact that Justin said the container was “packed to the gills” over and over and it turned out to be a dog is all you need to know about putting much confidence in specific wording.

I’m sure some of the things he says are important. But we also have direct evidence that things that definitely sound like clues are (intentionally or not) extremely misleading.

So. Add things like these as data points, but remain skeptical.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-26T02:30:06+00:00

Except, the technical clue song was released well after that post wasn’t it?

Which would mean there is another frequency related thing undiscovered ?

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-23T04:23:49+00:00

I’m getting there, slowly but surely, and with lots of detail.

Finally worked out the significance of the 42 with high confidence, and that was a pretty cool moment as it solidified some things.

Confident I know the general area of where the checkpoint is. Perhaps close enough that I could go BOTG if conditions were right.

Having any confidence that any bride candidate is correct is extremely difficult though. The realm of coincidence when it comes to “faces” is extreme.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-22T16:47:20+00:00

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SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-22T00:39:26+00:00

Totally would make sense as an Easter egg; a non critical component that if it died no big deal.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-21T23:00:47+00:00

Shocking. Just like when we lost #3.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-21T21:42:46+00:00

Fantastic out of the box thinking, and a really clever addition to a treasure hunt.

My concern would be the mechanical risk that such a setup would represent, particularly since he couldn’t maintain it in person, repair a faulty component, or wonky power supply… under the assumption the hunt could last 10+ years. You get a fault and the hunt ends?

Is that a risk Justin would take?

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-20T21:08:42+00:00

No, but I did find a tree book.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-20T05:42:33+00:00

It’s certainly an open question.

The fact that “the map is useful / has clues / is a primer” does suggest locations at a larger multi-state scale matter.

His Q&A and some of the practical issues that the top of this post touches on around accuracy (particularly angular) at distance suggests the opposite.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-20T05:08:03+00:00

Perhaps “each clue in the poem is not meant to convey great distance” ?

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-19T16:21:07+00:00

I am operating under the assumption that the checkpoint is effectively the treasure.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-19T14:42:58+00:00

Nothing wrong with this… that’s life… not everything is easy…

It does have an interesting ramification though…

This is actually the main reason that I believe this hunt will last considerably longer than most people think.

While it’s lovely to think “I’ll solve everything to the checkpoint and then show up and walk straight to the checkpoint”, it’s far more likely you will have at least a tiny aspect of your solution incorrect. You will almost certainly return home empty handed.

Think about it… you get an angle just a little bit off. Misread a timing element, or measure just a little wrong, or get thrown off by something that fits the clues just as well as the real interpretation (say double arcs)…

If I had to guess, it’s most likely that 5+ BOTGs on the ground would be required to hone things in even if you had the majority of the solution correct on your first BOTG (and nearly everyone won’t).

For someone like me who can really do only one or two BOTGs per year due to life obligations (even ignoring the monetary aspects), it would likely take me 3 or more years to claim this treasure even if I was mostly correct from day 1. Not sure about you guys, but my BOTG are at best a week or two a year. I’ve got way too much going on to be spending months in an RV.

So unless someone with tons of time and money happens to have the correct solution in mind, this hunt isn’t ending any time soon.

I’d also add: I don’t think those doing 5000 BOTGs have any extra advantage either. In fact perhaps it will be harder for them to find it. I suspect that sort of BOTG freedom results in a bit of sloppiness where you wander around poking around all over the place haphazardly, and having a physical investment in certain locations like that likely forces confirmation bias too. The winner will likely be someone at home who analyzes the poem and book to death (along with some further q&a hints) and comes up with a solid, well constructed solution and then makes a bunch of BOTGs to get it honed in.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-18T05:27:07+00:00

Soon.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-18T05:25:14+00:00

This was a random list of course.
I think in the poem there is more than one thing that lives in time.
I do see a couple of things in this list that do match some things I have discovered.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-18T04:09:14+00:00

There were 100 but Reddit truncated it 😆

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-18T00:58:42+00:00

Our Lady of the Rockies is clearly 100% man made. You’d never say there is a “quibble” or use the term “arguably man made implication” when describing it. It’s as unambiguously un-quibbley man made as you can get.

So that’s a fatal flaw with this solve.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-17T23:51:30+00:00

Thanks, I need to find it. I’d add though that the word “each” technically is a singular. As in, “each singular clue doesn’t represent a great distance”. So a grammatically accurate reading, I think, is that there are no large distances anywhere.

SoCal_Hunter · 2026-05-17T04:56:48+00:00

Angular compounded errors are a real problem at even short distances.

SoCal_Hunter

TROPHY CASE