Okay, I'm going to give in to my need to talk about this. Based on the shape of the math problem, I searched online to see if there was a pythagorean cipher, there was. And when what I found(just an image, really)about the pythagorean cipher online told me that all numbers MUST be reduced to a single digit. I believed it.

Using 6 for O (O=15, 1+5=6), results in all sorts of interesting possibilities and a need for further research. When you reduce, each of the x's has 3 letters associated with it. AJS, ENW, DMV, respectively. I'll skip a bunch about reasoning out which letters it ought to be, letter-combining into phrases, searching for names of theorem masters, etc., and skip to "Masters of Many Theorems" as a support for what the answer might be, as well as the words "novel" and "steering" near the end of M's discussion. Some searching yields a novel* where the driver named Euclid* Madden* steers* his streetcar into Teddy Roosevelt. If you constrain your answers to the book(a review of)and to beginning with the x-letters, yields Sherlock, Euclid, Madden - but the red lines M gives are all the same length - it would be convenient if there were a Jacobi in the book... even more awesome if Sherlock and Watson could be replaced by Hay, Bly and ? A much more "National Treasure" line of solution-finding, which I admit, though incomplete here, appeals to me.

..

For M:

1) Clearly, I need to find a better resource for learning ciphers than the internet. It told me to reduce the number for O to a single digit. Using 6 for O was great for a variety of interesting wrong answers. Hours of thinking there must be another hidden layer or two and intricacy to the final answer.

2) Did you not know there was a NOVEL about a Euclid Madden who STEERED his trolley into Teddy Roosevelt? Or was that meant to mislead?

Thank you!

Oh! Maybe I'll read the answer. A posting from Dec. 20 says the online solution board doesn't acknowledge the correct answer.

Do I need to read the book by B.S. to answer this?

I used Hint 2 to help guide me. This was a fun one, and helped me relearn things I had mostly brain dumped.

I solved the puzzle, but the online service does not recognize the correct answer.

Oh the old grey cells coming back to life (:

That was harder for me than I'd like to admit. ;)