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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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THE CACHE IS NOT AT POSTED COORDINATES, BUT IT IS WITHIN A FEW MILES. Bring your own pen!
Like so many others, I decided to put out a few caches to celebrate reaching some milestones. This was placed to celebrate my first 4 months of caching, 4 months of finding at least one cache per day, and reaching 1000 finds. We extended those goals, and continued at that rate to six month, and I still failed to get this posted. We are now at 8 months, we intentionally slowed down after six and I have still found at least one cache per day, but hadn't posted this one. At this point, I have had so many puzzle ideas, I am not even that happy with this one, but it is in a lovely place that deserves a cache and it has been waiting half my caching life. Now it has been in place for 4 months and nature and time has hidden it even better than when I placed it. I reduced it's coverage recently to make it easier to find.
During the course of finding these, I have learned to enjoy the brute force solutions. The easiest way to replicate that experience for you is to give you an offset micro where your GPSr will be of little or no help at the final hide location. You may want an old fashioned magnetic compass to help you with this one, but it isn't necessary you will be able to get enough reception nearby to calculate the bearing. Part of the fun of brute forcing can be searching an area for a cache possibly in the wrong area and not knowing if you are in the correct location. Enough about my recent caching history we will get to the puzzle.
This is intended to be an easy puzzle to expand the interests of the puzzle phobic cachers among us, so hints or help could be abundant, if you look or ask. (Many of the other puzzles make no sense to me at least until their theme pops into my head and everything then falls together.) This puzzle is intended to confuse you until you correctly determine its theme. There is lots of information and hints here some of which is designed to give you a false sense of confidence. So don't be too confident with your solution try to use all the clues and enjoy the experience similar to brute force searching. You won't really be sure unless find the cache.
History is all around us, being created all the time, and we represent it with symbols. It isn't necessarily good or bad or even what was intended at the time. History is what is written about past with new biases and perspectives added by the writer. The writer uses symbols and symbolism to communicate to his audience. The starting coordinates for this puzzle, while not at the cache, are near at least one symbol and a sign with the city name, which in itself is symbolic. We stand here (figuratively) in the shadow of a grand old institution associated with many symbols. This institution resides in a city with it's own history and symbols, but both are closely tied, being founded by the same robber baron. There is also a long and proud sporting tradition at this institution. More than twenty years ago, I can remember riding my bicycle through town while hordes of people watched a Superbowl flaunting entirely different symbols. These are just recent memories, as this land has been inhabited for far longer than the institution has existed. Different symbols were used then, but symbols nonetheless were used to communicate.
How to solve this puzzle: You need to determine the keyword associated with the previous paragraph. For this puzzle we want to take a piece of history, one singular Official symbol used to represent this, and manipulate it to generate the coordinates for this puzzle. Number the letters of the keyword from left to right, then re-order them alphabetically, and then assign the new alphabetical name to the numbers.
Some letters may be duplicated, so here is an example.
Key=tall
t=1 a=2 l=3 l=4
a=2 l=3 l=4 t=1
A=2 B=3 C=4 D=1 E=0
N37 SS.TUV W122 WW.XYZ
SS=(2*D)-(2*C)+20
T=(3*D)-6
U=A+C+D-3
V=C
WW=07+C
X=(C*4)
Y=(2*A)-C-D+1
Z=C
Bearing = PQR+4 degrees
P=D-C-1
Q=(2*G)
R=D
These coordinates will not take you to the cache, but to near a Lovely Area sometimes filled with muggles. Late afternoon, evenings, and weekends seem to be the busiest time around here; therefore, the hardest to search. Locate the sign with the name of this area. From the sign, at a bearing of PQR+4 degrees from magnetic north, go about 137 feet to find the cache.
The cache is a well concealed m&m tube (read not visible) hidden in it's own little spot covered by native materials. I believe the hide location goes along with the theme, but may or may not seem to. The actual hide location likely won't be too tough for an experienced cacher. At times this area is prone to heavy muggle traffic. I expect muggles to be within a short distance and likely will even be investigating the exact hide location; therefore, please rehide and recover the cache Very Well! This was made a puzzle in large part to reduce how frequently this is found. If it does get muggled, I may be forced to shift it's location and hide it differently. There is very poor satellite reception if any at the hide location so I have not listed any coordinates for that, and request you don't post a spoiler with that information. If you feel my bearing or distance is flawed, feel free to log your recommendations, preferably using the variables so other can have some fun.
Single digit checksums. Add all numbers together then add the digits of the result until only one-digit results.
Example 2+4+5+6+7 = 24 = 6
Checksum of coordinates = E
West Checksum=6
P Q R Checksum=6
(More than one incorrect answers will generate apparently valid checksums.)
If you are truly stuck or just cautious and want to confirm your coordinates, please feel free to email me by clicking on the link on my profile page.
(2/14/08 Increased difficulty by one star)
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
1) Orexyrl vf n Orne
2) Gur ybpngvba fvta vf ABG gur fgrrg fvta
3) Abg ba cevingr cebcregl
4) Pbbeqvangrf pna or sbhaq jvgubhg qrgrezvavat gur xrljbeq ohg gung vfa'g nf sha, be znlor gung vf zber sha
5) bevtvany gerr uvqr ybpngvba phg gb tebhaq, pbagvahr cebwrpgvba gb arkg ynetr gerr n srj fgevqrf snegure sebz sebz gur fvta.
6) [spoiler (cache)]: rregns brf no gnrqvfe ns
7) [spoiler (puzzle)]: l gh