The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States, leads the executive branch of the federal government, and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces. As the leader of the country with the largest economy and the largest military, the president is frequently described as the most powerful person in the world.
In all, 43 individuals have served 44 presidencies (Grover Cleveland's two non-consecutive terms each counted) spanning 56 full four-year terms. Barack Obama is the 44th president and is currently serving the 57th term, which ends on January 20, 2017.
Most presidencies end with the election of a new president, and one president has resigned his office. There are currently four former living presidents: Jimmy Carter (39th); George H. W. Bush (41st); Bill Clinton (42nd); and George W. Bush (43rd). A few men have died while in office, and that is the subject of this puzzle.
Your task is to find information about those presidents who have died in office. The information isn't hard to find, and I'm not going to try to trick you. This puzzle will be more like a labyrinth than a maze - keep following the path and you will solve the puzzle. You might already know all the information necessary to solve this, but you also might be surprised about some of the information you learn. There are five multi-part steps...
STEP 1
1a) Determine which presidents died in office.
1b) Looking at the causes of death, separate into two obvious categories. There should be an equal number in each category.
1c) Within each category, sort the presidents in descending order according to their age at death.
STEP 2
2a) Find the VP first elected to serve under each president.
2b) Assign a value to the first letter of the last name of each VP. Use the last digit of each number (C=3, M=3, W=3).
2c) Assign these digits to each respective president.
STEP 3
3a) Within each category, identify the president who served the shortest length of time.
3b) Leaving the rest of the digits in order, remove the digit associated with the president identified in the previous step.
3c) You should be left with a 3-digit number for each category. Divide that number by 1,000. This is the adjustment number that will be used to modify the posted coordinates.
STEP 4
4a) Find the first name of each presidential spouse.
4b) Assign a value to the first name of each spouse (C=3, M=3, W=3).
4c) For the two categories, sum these values for each group of spouses.
4d) Assign the presidential category with the highest sum to the north, and presidential category with the lowest sum to the west.
STEP 5
5a) For each of the presidents identified in Step 1a, determine their birth state.
5b) Assign a number to each state equal to its order of admission. (Delaware = 1; Hawaii = 50)
5c) For the two categories, sum the values for each group of states.
5d) If the tens digit for the sum of values is even, add the adjustment amount to the posted coordinates.
5e) If the tens digit for the sum of values is odd, subtract the adjustment amount from the posted coordinates.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.