[Introduction]
Hello, I am Professor Gustov. You may know me as being the official mascot of GHAGAFAP which is Canada's longest running annual event. Welcome to another one of my classes on geocache puzzle solving and more. Within my class you will learn some very valuable puzzle solving skills. As always I will present you with a puzzle that you may find to be part of an Unknown geocache type. I will work with you to help guide you in solving the puzzle so that at the end of this session you will have all the information needed to obtain the coordinates of the geocache.
[Fluff Stuff]
When we were young we learned to write messages with invisible ink. We did this by using lemon juice. We took something like a toothpick, dipped it into the lemon juice and wrote a message with it on paper and then set it aside to dry. To reveal the secret message we held the paper up to a lit candle and the heat from it would discolour the paper where lemon juice was applied and hence reveal the secret message. COOL! Sometimes we even accidently lit the paper on fire. This process works because the lemon juice is acidic and it weakens the paper. When the paper is heated, the remaining acid turns the writing brown before discolouring the paper.
[Puzzle]
There is no puzzle in this section, however the coordinates for the cache are written somewhere within the cache description. You just need to find it using some self control, eh!
[Lesson in Solving]
With the digital age comes new ways of writing secret messages with invisible ink. Many puzzle caches use this method of including invisible messages directly within the cache description. They do this by having the text be the same colour as the background. There are several methods that you can use to find the invisible messages within a cache page. The easiest is to just simply highlight the page which you can do by selecting a certain key combination (hint: I told you the combination in the puzzle section above), using the mouse, or through your browser's menu. The best thing to do is to select everything and then start looking to see what appears that wasn't there before you selected everything. Whatever you do, don't use a lighted candle on your computer screen.
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[Gustov's Geocaching Tip]
Geocaching events are a fun way of getting people together. Hosting an event can be something very simple to do, or you can make it very involved. The most common types of events are picnic type events like GHAGAFAP and meet and greet events at restaurants. The first thing for these types of events is to pick a location and then call them up to see if they are willing to have your group there. After that, you can build on it and involve various activities to be part of the event. Sometimes keeping things simple is the best. When there is too much to do, attendees often can feel overwhelmed. Or you can use your imagination and do something different, like a hike, car rally, adventure to some out of the way location or perhaps even get people together at a location to play a game. I have been to events where I was the only attendee in 2011 on top of the highest mountain in Newfoundland and also attended the largest ever event in Canada in 2008 in Quebec which saw about 850 people from around the world attend. When an event gets to be over 500 people, it is considered a Mega Event and there is a special event icon for that. Events are also a great way of meeting other geocachers and making new friends.
Congratulations, you figured out the secret to finding hidden messages on a cache page. You can find this geocache at N 43° 31.112 W 079° 39.605. Nearby is a cool looking old stone face. |