NOTE: The coordinates posted for this cache are NOT the coordinates of the cache container. The cache is within a two mile radius of the posted coordinates though. You’ll need to solve the puzzle below in order to figure out exactly where the cache is hidden. If you have a boat, I suppose you could go to the posted coordinates, although I can’t see how this would help you to find where the cache is really hidden.

Let me begin by saying I HATE mystery caches.

When I first got started geocaching in April 2006, the mystery caches that were in this area at that time were fairly straightforward. They typically involved gathering information from several locations to get the coordinates, or perhaps involved relatively easy puzzles. I can remember having to do a Sudoku puzzle for the first mystery cache I found, which took awhile to do but was still fairly easy. Even the Ground Zero caches, once you know what you need to solve them, are fairly easy. All that has changed though!

In the past year, the puzzles have gotten ever more complex. All kinds of cipher puzzles have been created. Around here, I think this trend got started with Ware’s My Pumpkin Pi? (GC10TYD) by Dosido and Ware’s the Extra Slice of Pie? (GC10Q5K) and Rotten Pie (GC10Q5B) by XiaDog. All three of these caches were hidden to coincide with Dosido’s Winter Warmup event in February 2007. Then, in May, we were treated to QWERTY TEIL TWO (GC12T8A) by WN1E. This is one of the few cipher puzzle caches I’ve managed to solve and I was lucky enough to get First To Find on it after a few other fellow cachers had solved the puzzle but couldn’t come up with the cache.

Then, Western_Mass_Clan took puzzle caches to a whole new level with The Illinois Rail Splitter (GC1194J), Check & Mate! (GC11EAN) and Cache Bot (GC1328N) . I have yet to spend much time attempting to solve any of these, fearing I’ll go mad if I try to tackle these mind-boggling puzzles. Check & Mate! went nearly three months before Dosido finally solved it, so I suppose I’m not the only one who has been dumbfounded by it. In fact, I may very well put Check & Mate! on my ignore list before too much longer! Instead of racking my brain, I decided to come up with a mind-boggling mystery cache of my own, in order to give the local caching community yet another brain teaser, and I think it’s a good one. So, here’s my first mystery cache hide! Enjoy!

We live in a world full of colors. If you consider the entire electromagnetic spectrum, our eyes are tuned into just a small portion of it, which we call visible light, that contains all of the colors that we see. Even so, that’s a lot of colors. Many of us learned about ROY G. BIV, a mnemonic to help remember the colors of the rainbow in order (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet), back in elementary school. Hopefully, you were paying attention. But from these seven colors, along with a few others, a nearly endless palett of different shades can be created. Most computers add different intensities of red, green and blue to produce a total of over 65 million different colors, while the color ink cartridge in your printer may employ a similar principle using cyan, magenta and yellow. Of course, colors can be found in nature, and today are often used as a marketing tool in package design. Make it colorful and they will buy, or at least that’s the hope of most marketing people.

In order to get the coordinates to the cache, begin by carefully studying the colors presented below. They hold the key to solving this puzzle. For clarity, I have included the name of each color below its corresponding rectangle.

M Y S T E R Y C O L O R S

The cache itself is a small lock and lock container that has been carefully camoflauged, using COLORS similar to those of it’s surroundings. If you are able to solve the puzzle, finding the cache should be much easier than coming to the solution was. However, please be careful in retrieving the cache, as the terrain can be slippery, especially when wet. The cache should still be accesible with light snow on the ground, however a deep snowpack may make it diffiuclt or even impossible to retrieve from its hiding spot. The Additional Hint given is for retrieving the cache, not for the puzzle.

In the event that this cache goes awhile without a first finder, I’ll consider adding a hint or hints for the puzzle at a later time. But for now, to start off, you only have what I’ve given you here so far. Good Luck!

You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.

One final note: If you solve the puzzle sucessfully, please allow other cachers the opportunity to do the same by not revealing how you came to the solution in your logs. Feel free to post notes indicating your progress or lack thereof, however. That's part of the fun of a mystery cache!