At a recent geocaching breakfast event, a young woman I didn't
know came up to me. Her geocaching nametag read "Cleopatra". "I
hear you like puzzles. Can I talk to you privately about a
puzzle?"
"Sure," I answered, "Let's go sit at that quiet table in the
corner." I sized her up as we got a couple of appetizers and made
our way to our spot. She seemed like a real outdoorsy type--slim
and muscular, dark complexion, hiking shorts, boots, button-down
shirt tied around her waist, and high-tech backpack. Her GPSr, the
latest Garmin Colorado, showed prominently through a transparent
side pocket in her pack.
"I'll get right to the point," she began as we were settling in.
"I'm an anthropologist working on my PhD in Ancient Civilizations
at CU. I drove all the way down here just to talk to you. I've got
a mystery that involves one of your caches. I didn't want to trust
email for this.
"I'm studying with Prof. Baylor and Nimbus. Our research team
was in Egypt for several months, one of several groups in the
immediate area. The camp next door was headed up by Prof. Green
from Virginia Tech. We went over to share a beer a couple of times
but they immediately hid what they were looking at and seemed
anxious to get rid of us. Green is a mathematician and from what I
gathered, they were looking for Egyptian mathematical
artifacts.
"As we were packing up to return to the US, Green's assistant
Spinney came over to our camp. Green himself had left a few days
earlier. Spinney's eyes immediately lit on one of the papyrus
scrolls we'd found with some Egyptian numbers on it. That was when
something hit me from behind.
"The next thing I knew, I was waking up and our case of
artifacts was gone! I knew it had to be Spinney so I grabbed one of
the Jeeps and zoomed over to his camp. It was deserted. Cleaned
out. I searched the area and found just this one scrap of
paper.
"It looks like some kind of code for where Spinney is supposed
to make the drop. We need to get there before Green picks it up so
we can recover the artifacts! GC19829 is your Deadman's Creek
Overlook cache," she continued, "but I don't know what to do with
those numbers."
"Hmm..." I uttered as I stared at the paper. "The top numbers
look like they could be the minutes part of some coordinates, but I
don't know what to make of the bottom numbers. Deadman's is N39
01.571 W104 55.348. What if we put those top numbers in to make N39
03.757 W104 59.952? Where is that?"
Cleo whipped out her Colorado and punched in the numbers.
"That's just off Mt. Herman Road. That could be it!"
I shook my head doubtfully. "But that's not very close to
Deadman's. You would think they would have mentioned one of the
caches up there instead. Also, that solution doesn't use the bottom
numbers."
"Could those horizontal lines mean the numbers are fractions?
What if you divide?" Cleo suggested.
That's when it clicked. I tapped a few numbers into the
calculator app on my PDA and paused while a feeling of triumph
engulfed me. "Shall we go get the cache? It'll be a bit of a hike,
but we'll be able to get back by lunch."