Geocaching Puzzles 101 for Dummies Mystery Cache

Geocaching Puzzles 101 for Dummies

“This cache is not at the coordinates.” Some sharks might be at the coordinates.

I thought I would do a little write up on puzzles for cachers who have not done them before or who have tried them but not done so well. Many cachers either dislike or dread puzzles. They have a perception that if they cannot do them then they are not intelligent. For me, these caches are a mental challenge as hard as some of the caches that present physical challenges. All physically difficult caches may not be for all cachers. Caching is about pushing your limits but you have to know when you’ve reached your limit. In the same way all puzzles may not be for all cachers but there are puzzles that any cacher can do.

The first thing to realize is that if you cannot solve a puzzle it does not mean that you are not intelligent. There are many tests for intelligence and solving caching puzzles is not one of them. Different people think in different ways. It may be that you are verbally oriented, numbers oriented, or pattern oriented and the puzzle requires some other type of thinking. Some puzzles have such esoteric information so limited that they are essentially unfair. I could make a puzzle based on the main streets in Milwaukee and no one but other Milwaukeans would probably find it.

The good news is that you are not alone. The web offers great resources for solving puzzles. Put some of the keywords of the puzzle into Google or Yahoo search engines and you have a lot of information that can be used to solve the puzzle. If I did make a puzzle based on the main streets in Milwaukee and I told you that this was the theme, you could find Milwaukee on Google or Yahoo and find these streets. All new puzzles have their dummy position within a couple of miles of the actual cache. This means that you usually know the latitude and longitude degrees and maybe the minutes. When you come up with a possible answer you can check the position with Google Maps or Yahoo Maps to see if it is a possibility. If it is in the middle of a strawberry field or a building, it may not be the correct answer. Finally, generally the cachers that place puzzles WANT you to find them, so some of them will give additional hints or leads if you try to solve the puzzle but are unable to do so. You may get some hints out of reading the logs and maybe able to ask some cacher that has already solved the puzzle for a hint.

Almost all puzzles are all based on an esoteric theme. Most of the time there are other hints either given on the write-up or the title as to the theme. Below I list some types of puzzles, but because puzzles can be based on any type of information, there is no fixed way of solving them. To illustrate, I have hid my cache and it can be found be solving any one of the following puzzles. Try to solve as many as you can to give yourself practice.

Language puzzles. You essentially have to figure out what language the puzzle is in and translate it. The language can be common like German, French or Spanish, less common like Swahili, or dead like Latin, or Sanskrit. But it can also be languages used to speak with the deaf, the blind, or the ham radio impaired. There can be the coordinates in words or some type of numbers. Essentially every occupation uses its own language. A 409 may mean something different to the police, the fire department or a cleaner. Usually the web page has some clue as to the language being used.

Trente quatre degrés, onze pointillent quatre sept six minutes, nord. Cent et ninteen des degrés, quatorze points trois huit quatre minutes, d'occidentaux.

Math puzzles. Boo! Hiss! Yes, I know. But this is essentially the language of engineers, scientists, and of course mathematicians. If you are not good at math, find someone to help you, like your kids. Some math puzzles require math skills that most high school kids should have. Some require only adding or multiplying. Some have the numbers represented in something other than base 10 i.e. binary 1001010110. Many times on this type of problem the coordinates are represented as degrees.decimal degrees only instead of degrees minutes.decimal minutes because it is easy to work with just one number, degrees. Almost always, you can find information or a formula on the web if you know what you are looking for. Sometimes you can find a page that will calculate the answer for you.

x*x  -85.0484663*x -4076.9575594088 = 0

Game puzzles. These usually involve some knowledge of the game being used as a theme. The clues usually involve some rule or part of the game that will give you the coordinates.

(field goal)(Brett Favre)  (number of players for one team at any time).(number of downs)(touchdown with extra point)(touchdown without extra point)

(length of field excluding endzones+19) (unsportsmanlike conduct-1).(field goal)(touchdown with two point conversion)(number of quarters)

Picture puzzles. Usually the cacher will give you clues to get you into the area and then provide pictures used to find the cache. These are great if you can match the picture with the surrounding area.

Drawing puzzles. These caches offer pictures usually drawn with some image drawing program. These pictures can contain the coordinates hidden somewhere or just a representation of another kind of puzzle. For instance, it could look like a picture but be a math puzzle in disguise.  

Partial coordinates puzzle. The hider places a number of caches. In each cache they place part of the coordinates for a final cache. The advantage is that while you are gathering clues for the puzzle cache, you are also finding other caches. This is a very common puzzle cache. It is not really a puzzle cache but a type of multi-cache where you are getting credit for each leg.

I don’t have one of these since this is a single cache only.

Local clue puzzle. The hider brings the seeker to a spot and then has them look for a number either on a sign or by counting a number of objects at the site. The seeker then uses this information to compute the next waypoint using some formula from the cache web page. An alternative, letterbox caches, is to keep giving clues of local landmarks for each waypoint until the seeker is at the cache location.

I didn’t get time to make one of these up either.

Trivia Caches. These involve collecting some information usually about history or other cachers and using this information to compute the coordinates. The trivia can be online or may have to be collected onsite like local clue puzzles.

(atomic number of Selenium) (first manned spacecraft to land on the  moon). (usual number of strings in a harp)(number of sides on a 6 sided die)

(longest psalm) (days in a fortnight).(number of the holy hand grenade)(novel by George Orwell -1900)

Web/HTML puzzles. Another technique is to somehow hide the coordinates of the cache in the Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) of the cache webpage. The coordinates or a link to the coordinates can be disguised on the webpage somewhere or stored in a comment field. You can see the source for the HTML by clicking on the View menu of your browser and selecting source. It's hard to read but if there is a clues it will usually be between LongDescription and Additional Hints. So you can search for LongDescription and scan after that for clues.

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Mapping puzzles. These puzzles may have you match up a given map with an actual map. The given map may be fictitious, very old, distorted, or only a partial map.  The cache creator may give you a coastline or number of landmark points to match up the given map with an actual map. They may give you part of the latitude or longitude but not all of the coordinates. They may give you a road name or a range and bearing. The trick with many of these is to find the general area first and then work your way to a specific position.

Code/Encryption puzzles. Some of these puzzles may be as easy as rot13 (the encryption used for the hints on the geocaching webpage) or as difficult as impossible (to decodes you need to find a key word or password). One code is a simple cryptogram where each letter has another letter substituted for it. Perhaps the code is an anagram (letters rearranged to spell something else). Codes have a long history and there are numerous types. Almost all of the codes a cacher will used are base on standard types codes. If you know the code type, you can look on the web to see if they have a standard way to break them. Many pages have online programs built in to break the code.

vwanf nfzanb ywta ghxahhd hlhmhv kwzvn ywta dhmhv dzi jzvtnhd,

ehdn wvh ftvgahg pvg vzvnhhv ghxahhd ywtanhhv kwzvn nfahh hzxfn ywta jzvtnhd

Standard puzzles. Many puzzles are base on some other type of standard puzzle like a word search puzzle or a sudoku puzzle. For these case you will need to solve the standard puzzle first. The web has a lot of information on standard puzzles. Keep in mind that if you know the latitude and longitude (since the cache is near the dummy point), it may given you a hint to solving the standard puzzle.

12346W12231193E0192385931237401982378
2223W6938019812338402993123W4081S7328
1E230.18048.918N30.128303.7382173287W
18239N140911S3810E9382381346718202829
1923819.W382134870238738134.109W23738
98490897863194178631348332147E9287823
67328W8378.73847134421984275.98734387
138401.387481327883N87381238127S98172
W7483784785747293038741012378E1209847
102938012983091.89845055123701.827098
W273W98174109842198783W31872309871982
182.30817674.1143N33331273.N178213801
908340985092949083E82W98349852W938345
1982W29010913405904.394953390.9039848
S58958984218.8383980W28094831SE949839
3174.3109W273409821E30S9871.398237378
123847N230874S09823738938E73084298734

In the word search above you are looking for a latitude in the form, (N or S)DDMM.MMM  and a longitude in the form (E or W)DDDMM.MMM. Most of all the latitude and longitude should make sense.

Other puzzles. Too bad. The cacher thought up a new devious puzzle. Look at the puzzle and see if your intuition tells you anything about it. Try to see if the first part of the puzzle maps to the latitude degrees of the dummy point. See if you can see the longitude degrees in the puzzle somewhere. Try some possibilities and see if they give you any reasonable coordinates. If all else fails, give it a rest and try looking at it another day.

9Lh.II hE h8E.hI bII