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Bellybutton Lint in the 3rd Dimension Mystery Cache

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BiIIyBobNosePicker: Sorry, I'm not going to cater to the completely unnecessary permit policy designed to create an unnecessary workload increase to the Rangers who are supposedly trying to find ways to cut their budget. I'm also not going to cater to those geocachers who have taken a harmless, fun activity, and unnecessarily injected their authority into the game.

It's also a ridiculous assumption to believe that someone would travel to the center of a lake without reading the cache page, but placing the coords at an intersection would not encourage them to wander in the street?

No permit. The rangers should be out washing their trucks if they have nothing better to do. Or be laid off.

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Hidden : 1/18/2010
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:


Puzzle cache disclaimer: The cache is not hidden at the above coordinates. It could be anywhere. There are not any hints at the above coordinates either. Anything in or on the cache page may or may not be useful. It's possible that there is no solution, and that thousands of dollars in bribe money to do so may have been paid out. Anything on this page could be a lie, including this sentence. Give up fools. It could be years before anyone solves it.


Below are 2 images of classic bellybutton lint. Cross your eyes until you see three images, and then you will have entered Bellybutton lint of the 3rd Dimension.. jpg122pe-194jpg20wyv+411

The blue colour of Belly Button Lint is specifically mentioned in The Troublesome Offspring of Cardinal Guzman, by Louis de Bernières. A town is being held under siege by bloodthirsty and cruel religious crusaders. Elders from the town go and ask a mad Englishman, Don Emmanuel, for his advice on how to annoy the crusaders as a form of guerrilla warfare. In his reply, Don Emmanuel speaks of BBL as "dingleberries". Strangely, he admits that he does not perform his own BBL removal, but has Felicidad do it for him . . .

"Don Emmanuel grinned, scratched his rufous beard, and said, 'I will give you all the advice in the world if only you can tell me why it is that the dingleberries excavated from my navel by Felicidad are always composed of blue Lint, when I possess no clothes of that colour.' "


After three years of research, Georg Steinhauser, a chemist, has discovered a type of body hair that traps stray pieces of lint and draws them into the navel. Dr Steinhauser made his discovery after studying 503 pieces of fluff from his own belly button. Chemical analysis revealed the pieces of fluff were not made up of only cotton from clothing. Wrapped up in the lint were also flecks of dead skin, fat, sweat and dust. Dr Steinhauser's observations showed that 'small pieces of fluff first form in the hair and then end up in the navel at the end of the day'. Writing in the journal Medical Hypotheses, he said the scaly structure of the hair enhances the 'abrasion of minuscule fibres from the shirt' and directs the lint towards the belly button. "The hair's scales act like a kind of barbed hooks," he said. "Abdominal hair often seems to grow in concentric circles around the navel." The researcher, from Vienna University of Technology also asked friends, family and workmates about their own belly button fluff. Dr Steinhauser established that shaving one's belly will result in a fluff-free navel - but only until the hairs grow back. Other suggestions for keeping the navel fluff-free include wearing old clothes, as they tend to shed less lint than newer garments, which can lose up to one thousandth of their weight to the belly button over the course of a year. A body piercing can also be used, with belly button rings particularly effective at sweeping away fibres before they lodge. Dr Steinhauser, whose other projects have included monitoring the erosion of his wedding ring, said: "The question of the nature of navel fluff seems to concern more people than one would think at first glance. "We hope we have been able to provide information for doctors when they are next confronted with the simple question of 'why some belly buttons collect so much lint and others do not'." An earlier, Australian study of samples from 5,000 people concluded the typical carrier of navel fluff to be 'a slightly overweight middle-aged male with a hairy abdomen'. Researcher Karl Kruszelnicki said: "The reason it is usually blue is that we mostly wear blue or grey trousers, often jeans, and when these rub against the body, the fibres often end up finding their way to the navel." Not all belly button fluff is blue however. In the curious case of Australian hospital worker Graham Barker much of his fluff is red, even though he rarely wears the colour. Mr Barker has been collecting his own navel fluff in jars every day since 1984. The achievement has won him a place in the Guinness Book of Records for the world's largest collection of navel lint.

There is $20 for FTF an unactivated geocoin for STF and $5 for 3rdTF, plus many other prizes if anyone can figure it out. Many thanks to Joe, Jack, Jimmy, Denise the Menise, Sam, Mark, Eadric the Wild, Empress Matilda, Sir Bedevere the Wise, Patsy, and of course the Trojan Rabbit.


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FTF:Trowel32

Hint added 1/24/10 :)
j(wy+v+42+pe)p = (v+ep+42+yw)c

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

gur chmmyr vf n pyvssunatre jvgu na nrevr ivrj

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)