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Nuja, dying pirate, the last of his clan, wrote a letter to his nephew trying to tell him the location of a treasure he had buried sometime ago. Knowing that the facility of prison hospital would read his letter thoroughly, he put the location in a cipher. The letter reads thus:

Dear Hector

I know I will not live long now. I have lived a long enough life and had a lot of experiences. There is a great treasure I must tell you about, so that you may endeavor to find it. So know my dear, that treasure is inner peace, chivalry and selflessness. Like the sun, and the rain, which serve silently, thanklessly and constantly.

All things, from elephant to dachshund
Derive their warmth from the sun
The sun earns nothing. The sun does not starve
I wasted my life in vain. And alas
St. George had long said, an ungrateful soul is dead
But in my pine and restless crave
I did not recognize, I was not, but a spectre
Reeling in the abyss of my own sinful ignorance
In my ignorance. In my wasteful existence
"Lo!" the angels said "For he's worse than crow or croc
"He's suffering and he'll suffer in hell
"Eden's garden? Ha!"

So. Where is the treasure?

Hints

One

Hector is christian and believes in trinity

Two

Nuja's sister's (Hector's aunt) name is Roche

Three

Roche lives in the countryside

Four

When taking the union of two sets, the overlapping members count only once!

I will mark the correct answer or give out the correct answer after 2 days.

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  • $\begingroup$ Don't rush to give the answer out in 2 days. I would leave it at least a week. There are probably people who may be keen to solve this who haven't seen it yet. $\endgroup$
    – Gordon K
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 11:30
  • $\begingroup$ Fine. I will leave it to the decision of fellow members. Once 5 members with at least 100 rep ask me to reveal the answer, I will. Once 3 members with at least 100 rep ask me to add more hints, I will. $\endgroup$
    – Youstay Igo
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 11:39

2 Answers 2

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WOW THIS WAS HARD!

The answer I got is

Under the last pine tree in Roche's garden

How I got it...

Lets follow the clues. The first clue of trinity means split it into sections, each section containing 3 lines. Now if we take the last 3 characters from the first line of each set, and using the 4th rule, ignore any duplicate characters, we get

under, last, tree, Roche's

I figured this out from the second hint, to be a good match.

Lastly, we take the third line from each set. It bothered me that they were all an odd number of words, so I looked at the middle word of each line and got

the, pine, in, garden

Add the two together and you get

Under the last pine tree in Roche's garden

I am not sure about the methodology used other than what I have described because I just stared at it until I saw the message.

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  • $\begingroup$ It's a shame a newbie solved it in the first go while the seasoned troopers sit dry ... $\endgroup$
    – Youstay Igo
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 6:22
  • $\begingroup$ i was going to add some more hints because the puzzle wasn't getting any activity. But then ... $\endgroup$
    – Youstay Igo
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 6:29
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    $\begingroup$ This was my first puzzle. I created a SO account just for this :) $\endgroup$
    – usernamenotused
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 6:44
  • $\begingroup$ Now that the account has been created, stay active. I'm gonna post more "very hard" puzzles which I think, will go unanswered for the most part :D $\endgroup$
    – Youstay Igo
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 6:49
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    $\begingroup$ challenge accepted $\endgroup$
    – usernamenotused
    Commented Sep 18, 2015 at 6:50
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My answer is

Church of Saint-Roch in Paris

Clues:

All things, from elephant to dachshund

He is a patron Saint of dogs

Roche lives in the countryside

Born in Montpellier, Kingdom of Majorca. Montpellier is a city in southern France, Located on the south coast of France on the Mediterranean Sea.

When taking the union of two sets, the overlapping members count only once!

The church is also notable as a result of the marriage there of the Marquis de Sade on May 17, 1763.

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  • $\begingroup$ Notice the tags under the puzzle. It is a cryptogram which can be solved by taking bits and pieces of different words in the poem and combining them. You will then start getting a clear, English language sentence or phrase. $\endgroup$
    – Youstay Igo
    Commented Sep 15, 2015 at 5:56

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