When I heard that the legendary geocacher Hixon had died mysteriously, I was in shock. I considered Hixon a good geocaching friend who put out some truly mind-melting puzzles. I met him several times and he was always kind enough to give a nudge when I was stuck on one of his puzzles, which was often. The police did not have a clue if foul play was involved, but they were checking all avenues possible as I was contacted by the police and was asked my whereabouts when Hixon was last seen alive.
I attended Hixon’s funeral with many other geocachers from Maryland. Listening to the people speaking, I could tell Hixon was well-liked both inside and outside the geocaching community, despite his impossible 3 star puzzles. As I was walking through the funeral line, I introduced myself to Mrs. Hixon, and she said that Hixon had mentioned me a few times. She then told me that Hixon had lots of geocaching notes in the basement and was wondering if I would like to have them. She said that the Maryland Geocaching Society requested Hixon's little black book on how to solve his puzzles for their museum, and asked if I could deliver the book to them, and that I could have the rest of his notes. I said that I would be honored and could do that.
A couple weeks later, I headed over to the Hixon household with yellowrose70 and HoneyBadger34. Mrs. Hixon let us in, and led us downstairs to Hixon’s puzzle laboratory. She said that she had not touched anything since Hixon had died. The work area was an intriguing place. There were papers everywhere containing ciphers, codes, pictures, diagrams, maps, and anything else you could imagine a puzzle master’s laboratory would have. Above the large desk, were shelves that contained books and DVD’s. There were books on codes and puzzles and dictionaries from several languages. Many of the classics were on the shelf, such as The Red Badge of Courage and Last of the Mohicans, and a stack of Dr. Suess books. I asked her about that, and she said that Hixon loved Dr. Suess and that the boys would come downstairs before bed time and Hixon would read a Dr. Suess book before they went to bed. On the walls around the work area was several posters, one was the movie poster to A Few Good Men, one was a poster of Martin Luther King Jr., one of Ray Rice., one of Mount Rushmore, and strangely one of the current United States Supreme Court.
Mrs Hixon grabbed a sealed little black book and handed it to me. She told me that this was the book of Hixon puzzle secrets, asked me to deliver it to the Maryland Geocaching Society and made me promise not to open the book up. I muttered something about driving the snakes out, and Code Gap A59, but promised not to open up the book.
As I started to look at the rest of Hixon’s notes on the desk, Mrs. Hixon mentioned that just before Hixon died, he had placed a cache for his next puzzle but that he never created the cache listing. All she knew is that the cache was placed in an area Hixon had never placed a cache before but a place he has found caches. She wasn’t sure which of the notes on the table had to do with the puzzle cache. She asked me if I would like to try and solve the puzzle, find the geocache, and then publish the puzzle as a tribute to Hixon. I told her that there were probably better geocachers in the area to do this task, but I am willing to give it a try. Before she went upstairs, I noticed something right away with the notes on Hixon’s desk and asked her a question. Hixon hardly ever used ciphers in his puzzles but everything on his desk seemed to be written in codes. Mrs. Hixon mentioned that he was paranoid about people sneaking into the house and looking at his notes, especially after he found a group of Virginia geocachers in the basement last year, so he put his ideas in code and then decoded them before he published them. She said he would exclaim, “And Caesar isn’t going to help you solve my puzzles.” Mrs. Hixon said she didn’t know what that meant, but I had a guess. Before Mrs. Hixon, yellowrose70, and Honeybadger34 went upstairs to leave me alone in the lab, she stopped a second time and turned to me and said, "I just thought of another thing you should know. Hixon usually proofreads his puzzles before he publishes them, and he always finds errors. I am pretty sure he didn't get to proofread this puzzle, so I would expect and error or two." I was now alone in the lab, and gathered the papers on the desk.
In no particular order, what I have attached to this listing is what I thought could possibly be part of a puzzle.
The cache is a small lock-and-lock. It available from dawn to dusk.
Puzzle#4
Above is a link to Puzzle #4 that you can use to save some time.
