A straightforward historical field puzzle at the Boston Public Garden.
William Ellery Channing (1780 -1842), sometimes called the “Father of American Unitarianism,” was the foremost Unitarian preacher and theologian in the United States in the early 19th century. Channing was known for his articulate and impassioned sermons and public speeches, and as a prominent thinker in the liberal theology of the day. His religion and thought were among the chief influences on the New England Transcendentalists including Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. His ministry helped lead to the proliferation of Unitarian congregations throughout New England and to the organization in 1825 of the first Unitarian denomination in America, the American Unitarian Association (today, the Unitarian Universalist Association).
The towering statue of Channing here has presided over the corner of the Boston Public Garden since 1903, a gift to the City of Boston from Arlington Street Church, Channing's congregation. Arlington Street Church, just across the street, was the first public building built on Boston's new Back Bay, completed in 1861. It houses the largest themed set of Tiffany stained glass in the world. Its 16 giant steeple bells are still hand-rung by vigorously pulling series of ropes.
The puzzle: the Classical Latin alphabet had only 23 letters, not the 26 that we have today (missing were J, U, and W). For a very long time, U and V were allographs. An allograph is a variation of a letter in another context. Uppercase and lowercase letters are allographs. Before the use of the letter U, the shape V stood for both the vowel U and the consonant V. It was not until printing standardized letter shapes in the 1600s that the letter U became regularly used. Many old buildings and monuments still use the shape V as an allograph of U.
Find, on both sides of the monument (front and back), all the “V”s that would usually be written as “U”s today. Your answer = U
(U x 7) - 2 = JJJ
(U x 15) - 1 = WWW
The final coordinates are N 42 21.JJJ W 071 04.WWW