Marcus Vitruvius

This series of actions to bring geocaching into disrepute has been the result of a childish response by a caching team to one person’s ‘Needs Archive’ log on 4 of their caches...nothing more! At any point in time, the CO’s regarding these 4 caches could have chosen to follow the usual procedure of waiting for their local reviewer to contact them regarding this request to archive their caches, and work with the reviewer to work out possible solutions to maintain their cache...if in fact it came to that at all...but they didn’t. Instead, they decided to throw a dummy spit, archive those 4 caches themselves without any discussion or intervention whatsoever with either the reviewer or the person that placed the NA log. Then they proceeded to archive the rest of their caches as well, all barring two at the time of writing, in an act of self pity, in what appears to be an attempt to highlight their perceived victimisation. If that wasn’t enough, they then decided to bring it to the attention of the wider geocaching community to gain public support, and then use this to alienate their local geocaching community by seeking out to archive surrounding caches in another childish selfish act of ruining this wonderful activity of ours. Keep in mind, none of this has anything to do with...’Bifrost’, needing permission to place a cache, or any other lame excuse the CO’s would have you believe. All of this has resulted in a simple case of one caching team objecting to the opinion of another over the nature of the cache hide, in which any cacher has the right to do if they see a potential issue with a cache. It is then up to the reviewer of that particular state to decide what needs to be done. Archiving of a cache is not up to me or anyone else to decide except for the CO of the relevant cache and the reviewer. I am appalled at the criticism of our reviewers for their role in this fiasco, when not one of them has had a hand in anything to do with archiving of these caches! Yes the person who placed a NA log on these caches also happens to be a reviewer (and one of the most respected cachers in the country), but instead of making that log under his reviewer account, he chose to keep his integrity by writing it under his player account, and leaving it up to the reviewer of that state to decide what should be done, much like the rest of us would and should do! This also included writing a NA log on another cacher’s cache for that day, yet, I don’t see him or anyone else for that matter who has had a cache archived in the past act like a 2 year old and make it everyone else’s problem. There are a number of people who have worked too hard to develop a good relationship with councils and other authorities, not only in NSW, but across Australia to have one selfish caching team try and screw it up!

Great to see some new blood on the hunt for some answers. GoldBugGirl....if you look at drawings from LdV's notebook's, it is a proposed sketch of the mausoleum. The significance of this regarding the coins lies in the two coloured squares, which aren't coloured in on LdV's notebook sketch...so RWD has done this to deliberately to point to something...but to what is the thing we need to find out. I've got one more week of holidays and moving house, after which I will be back into the swing of things to provide a few more answers. Cheers. M.V.

G'day jsarche, I think you'll find it difficult to find the drawing of the mausoleum. I found a picture of it in one of my notebooks of Leonardo. As for the solution, I emailed the winners with the same thought and their answer was derived from the skull depicted on the Templar coin. Which reminds me, I was going to list a thought on those icons and to their meaning and see if that leads to anywhere. Apple: Could indicate birth or life, in which case Leonardo was born in Vinci, Florence. You would expect that would have to be in there somewhere. Sword: Symbology says it indicates war etc which could indicate the war machines that Leonardo drew so much about. Many of his inventions were war machines or things that could be used in battle. Chest: On an earlier post I put up that it could be represented as Leonardo's Treasure...something that he referred to The Mona Lisa numerous times. Being on the Templar coin it could also be the legendary Knights Templar treasure that supposedly made them so powerful. Skull: This obviously means death, but as a different thought on it, it could represent human anatomy that Leonardo studied and drew. Just a few thoughts.

Hey RD....It's been a while but glad you came back. I've made some observations I just wanted to get clarification on. I wrote some of these a while back. In looking at the picture of the mausoleum, I noticed that two of the squares are coloured in opposite each other...I'm probably fishing too much here but could it be that this symbolises 'The Last Supper' and "The Crucifixion' paintings that face each other in the refectory of the Santa Maria della Grazie. Also, the phrases.......A Deep Red Route.......Do be mute......Nor us again......has been confirmed as an anagram......but are they each an anagram or do they all need to be combined together? As far as the cipher, I've had a few people look at it, and knowing it must be a polyalphabetic cipher, I'm just wondering how many steps are involved to solve it? Thanks.

Just a bump to see if anyone out there has made any progress.

Nice to have you on board. Just right click and copy or save the images at the start of this thread to your computer. From there you should be able to do what you like with them. M.V.

Thanks for the update forthferalz. I keep returning here hoping that someone will provide a vital piece of information that will help with the answer of these coins.

Just checking in to see if anyone has made any progress. Thanks.

I just checked the last time Redwing_Dave visited this thread, and it's been over a year now. I'm hoping he can find the time to make an appearance soon, considering he still logging caches recently. I don't mean to sound like an a**, but I would think at the very least he could drop in and say hi from time to time...I'm not angry, it's just a little disappointing as it only takes a minute to do so. Thanks to those who have contributed here.

Yeah he mentioned that the position of the spears and the stars were definitely important, although he also said that one of them isn't quite a star, which it isn't....it looks more like a sun icon or generic icon.

Interesting observation with The Vitruvian Coin.....I hadn't noticed that before..not that I knew where the coins came from.....Still not sure whether it has anything to do with any part of the solution but it's interesting nonetheless. I have tried many combinations regarding the anagrams, but nothing of real value yet. Remember RD did mention that there is a clue to solving it on the coins somewhere, but I'm yet to discover that either. Maybe whatever location is meant to be represented on The Vitruvian Coin is the clue. Hmmm. Thanks for the reply....It's good to know that there is at least one person out there that hasn't given up like the rest. Cheers M.V.

IS there anyone who thinks that the anagrams could be in another language other than english.....in 4-5 months of searching, the best answer I can get for 'Do Be Mute' is 'Embed Out'. If it is another language, Italian would be the obvious choice, followed by Latin. In Italian, I get 'Tombe Due' which means 'Two Tombs' which sound s like something. Has anyone else looked at this option.

The things that have had my attention are......the map of europe behind the vitruvian man.......obviously it's important.....but how? I've looked at where each of the V man's hands, feet and naval are located on the map, but none of the location are relevant to Leonardo. The other is the cipher of 31 letters. This looks to be a fairly straight forward cipher, but again I've had no luck with it. Also the phrases.......A Deep Red Route.......Do be mute......Nor us again......has been confirmed as an anagram......but are they each an anagram or do they all need to be combined together. Hope this gets some people thinking.

At this stage, any help from whoever it is would be welcome. If anyone is looking for detailed scans, you can leave your email address hear if you like and I will send you mine.

Has anyone had any reply from RD. I've emailed him a few times without any success.

Is anyone still trying to work out these coins.

Just checking in to see if anyone has made any more progress with the coins decipherments. I've made a litttle more headway, but not much. Cheers.

In looking at the picture of the mausoleum, I noticed that two of the squares are coloured in opposite each other...I'm probably fishing too much here but could it be that this symbolises 'The Last Supper' and "The Crucifixion' paintings that face each other in the refectory of the Santa Maria della Grazie. Ironically, 'The Crucifixion' does show knights in the painting, and a skull at the bottom. Interestingly, both were painted in the same time period. Cheers.

Thanks for the reply RD. Like so many I'm sure, I'm a big fan of anything LdV, so the thought of another coin makes my whole body tingle. As similarly mentioned previously, these coins are also the treasure trove of my geocoin collection. I was wondering if there were any coins out there with Leonardo on them, and when I saw these coins for sale on ebay, I was pretty much prepared to pay anything to get them. Initially I thought the cryptic designs were just a very cool way of portraying the enigmatic ways of LdV. When I found out that there were actual puzzles to solve, it seems I can't stop now until all is revealed.

Thanks for that RD. I think I speak for most who have visited these forums in the past few months thats it's great to see you back on this forum and answering a few questions that people have had.....great response by the way. I know that my comments were in no way intended to be harmful, I was just casually throwing up another suggestion as to the long absence that you had, and was simply trying to generate more interest among people to help each other solve these mysterious coins. Even without the puzzle element, these coins are far from 'a waste of money', and were worth every cent I paid for them. As an avid Leonardo fan, I bought a set of the copper coins this year without knowing about the competition side of things, but have been hooked on the puzzle element of them ever since, and am grateful for your effort in both producing these coins and answering mine and other peoples questions. With that, I will ask just one more question for now if you're feeling really generous, and that is.....are the random letters on the back of the Vitruvian Coin a cipher of sorts. I assume that they are. This is the one element of the puzzle I have been working on for a while now...and I obviously can't get it to go. I tried almost every cipher I can think of, so I am leaning towards a multi level cipher. A couple of things I would like to share based on a few ideas I've had over the last few months, starting with the symbols on the front of the knights templar coin. Based on pure symbology, the apple could represent youth, and if so, could be implying Leonardo learning his craft in Verocchio's workshop so something similar...the treasure chest with LdV on it could be 'Leonardo's Treasure' in which he described as 'The Mona Lisa'...the sword ...wisdom...and the skull...death or burial as in ST Hubert's Chapel which has already been mentioned. On the back on the coin, the stars stand over certain letters, and the ones that jump out at me are MVP, as in Marcus Vitruvius Polio', although that would leave the 'T'. Likewise, the three stars and sun could be hovering over certain letters, or could be align with the numbers on a clock face...eg sun=12 or 6. The Paris Meridian coin has depicted on it a design of a mausoleum, more specifically, the Santa Maria delle Grazie, which ironically is where Leonardo painted 'The Last Supper' in the refectory. Well...that's probably enough for now. If none of these answers are close, at least hopefully I've inspired some others to rejuvenate their interest again. Thanks again RD for the coins, and look forward to someday before I die, finding out a few of these answers. Cheers M.V.

The other thought is that there may be no answer to any of these coins. It could be just a wild goose chase designed to get us much public interest involved so that the owner could sell his coins and make money. Could be the reason he hasn't checked back in almost a year.

Have been trying to work on the letters on the back of the 'Vitruvian Man' coin, but have come up with nothing. However, I'm intrigued at the fact that on the front side of the coin, the quote 'A deep red route, do be mute, nor us again' contains 31 letters, the same number of letters represented on the back. Does anyone have any ideas? G'day 17yam. Not sure if it is a map of Europe, although if it is it wouldn't be there without a reason.

Just wondering if anyone had actually solved this yet.

Flux56, thankyou for your advice. I am pleased to say that it is now fully operational again. Working with computers a bit, I knew to go to Garmin's website and get the latest software etc, and web updater. The thing is, I originally checked my version first time around, and when it v2.09, I decided to update. Now at this time the GPS SW was loaded. However, once updating to 3.50, I went back and checked the receiver SW like you said, and presto, it was 0.00. So I opened up web updater again, this time it came up with install GPS receiver SW and ........it works. Thanks again to everyone who stopped by and took the time to help me out. Thanks especially to Flux 56. Hopefully this can help someone else out there with the same problem. Cheers M.V.

Have taken out SD card and used without it and it still doesn't work. Have tried different batteries with no luch either.