This was our hardest puzzle since “Oh shoot!”, with only 3 correct submissions. Big congratulations to those who managed to solve it!

A few hints are baked into this month’s puzzle:

• The title, “Long. Journey” (not “Long Journey”) suggests an abbreviation.
• The “o” in “positive” is not a letter, but actually a degree sign.
• The numbers on the left are probably not to be taken as the literal evaluations of the expressions on the right. (For one thing, it seems unlikely that a factorial equals 84514, even if you allow a change of base.)
• The variable names are not A, B, C, D, E, F, but instead are U, N, E, S, C, O. (And appear in that order when you read the first letter in the top 6 expressions.)
• Most subtly, certain digits in the lefthand side are all “small” — namely, the tens and thousands digits are all 5 or smaller.

So here’s what it all means:

– Each of the six letters refers to a unique UNESCO World Heritage Site. Each site has a unique UNESCO-assigned identifying number, called a “reference number”. (For example, the Galápagos Islands have reference number 1, and the Taj Mahal has reference number 252.)

– The numbers given on the left side of each expression are the longitudes of various heritage sites. It turns out that 8°45’14” is the longitude for the Messel Pit Fossil Site in Germany, which has reference #720. 720 is a factorial! The full set of sites / reference numbers for the first 8 expressions are:

2936 –> 0°29’36”W (Forts and Castles of Accra, Ghana; reference #34)

481729 –> 48°17’29”E (Sheikh Safi al-Din Khānegāh and Shrine Ensemble, Iran; #1345)

22130 –> 2°21’30”W (City of Bath, UK; #428)

1281959 –> 128°19’59”W (Henderson Island, UK; #487)

85450 –> 8°54’50”E (Monte San Giorgio, Italy/Switzerland; #1090)

363508 –> 36°35’08”E (Quseir Amra, Jordan; #327)

200350 –> 20°3’50”E (Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines, Poland; #32)

84514 –> 8°45’14”E (Messel Pit Fossil Site, Germany; #720)

From here one can solve to get the following:

U = 1102

N = 243

E = 27

S = 946

C = 2

O = 545

The right-hand side of the final expression evaluates to 543, which is the reference number for Itchan Kala in Uzbekistan. Its longitude (as per UNESCO’s official listing) is 60°21’50”E, hence the answer to this puzzle is 602150.