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You are hunting for the lost treasure of the Weller brothers, hidden in a pirate cave somewhere - when you finally find the treasure however, it's locked behind a door at the back of a room in the cave. Interestingly, there is a library aboveground nearby with 6 lecterns in it, each displaying a copy of the exact same book.

The book merely contains a version of "The Wellerman" song lyrics but split across multiple pages.

Each book has a different cover, however.

Book 1 features a red star on a white background.

Book 2 features a green crescent on a white background.

Book 3 features a red jolly-roger on a black background.

Book 4 features a blue wave on a white background.

Book 5 features green stripes on a black background.

Book 6 features a blue X on a black background.

As you read the pages, you note the following lyrics: https://genius.com/Nathan-evans-wellerman-sea-shanty-lyrics

Page 1: verse 1.

Page 2: chorus

Page 3: verse 2

Page 4: chorus

Page 5: verse 3

Page 6: chorus

Page 7: verse 4

Page 8: chorus

Page 9: verse 5

Page 10: chorus

Page 11: verse 6

Page 12: chorus

Page 13: chorus repeated again

Meanwhile, the cave has two tables painted on the walls: Tables

Finally, there is also an ominous warning written in pirate dialect saying that only he who turns his pages rightly will inherit the treasure.

You must figure out which books need to be turned to which pages. Once the pages are turned correctly, the door will open due to some kind of magic or complicated mechanism that isn't worth explaining.

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  • $\begingroup$ Based on my solution (and assuming it's correct), I don't think the tags are correct for this puzzle. I would probably tag this as [enigmatic-puzzle], as the solution method isn't explicit in the question, and possibly [music] as well, for obvious reasons. Don't worry, tagging isn't the most intuitive; you'll get the hang of it! :) Welcome to Puzzling! $\endgroup$
    – samm82
    Mar 21, 2021 at 0:40
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    $\begingroup$ indeed. and yes, your answer was correct. :) hope you enjoyed solving it! $\endgroup$
    – FenFox
    Mar 21, 2021 at 4:59

1 Answer 1

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The books should be turned to the following pages (in order):

5, 7, 1, 9, 3, 11

Method

Looking at the books' descriptions and the tables, each book has a letter based on the symbol colour, and a Roman numeral based on the symbol and background colours. This pair can be used to perform a look up on the second table to get a song lyric, which appears in only one verse of the song. (Sometimes letters were missing, and capitalization and punctuation were missing as well) The verse corresponds to the page the book should be turned to.

Full Rationale

Book 1 (red on white) → AIII → "the wale's tail" → verse 3, page 5
Book 2 (green on white) → BI → "the waleman's creed" → verse 4, page 7
Book 3 (red on black) → AI → "billy o' tea" → verse 1, page 1
Book 4 (blue on white) → CII → "that wale did go" → verse 5, page 9
Book 5 (green on black) → BII → "two weeks from shore" → verse 2, page 3
Book 6 (blue on black) → CI → "captain crew and all" → verse 6, page 11

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