Ever since I began Geocaching my wife has taken a sort of perverse glee pointing out the geekiness of the sport. Just hearing me call it a “sport” is enough to make her burst out in uncontrollable giggles.
I tell myself “GPS” doesn't stand for “Geeks Playing Scavenger hunt” but when I find myself at work on Monday mornings concentrating on spreadsheets while the Podcacher Pod Cast plays quietly in the background I have to admit that the whole sport/hobby does seem to have that geeky quality to it. After all, that is the show where they utilize polyhedral dice to select random listeners to award prizes to.
Most would define a geek as someone that is obsessed, or at least interested in, computers, technology, science fiction, comic books, video games, Dungeons and Dragons (or various other role playing games), Monty Python, Star Trek, and movies such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and most of all, the supreme deity of all science fiction franchises, Star Wars.
You get a room full of these people (okay, people like me) and you will find we all don’t necessarily enjoy all the things listed above, however, it does pretty much blanket our demographic. Yes I follow Star Trek enough to actually have an opinion as to who is a more capable starship captain, Picard or Kirk, yet I fall asleep trying to watch Lord of the Rings. The I.T. guy down the hall is fond of naming his computer networks after Klingon moons yet he can't recite more than a couple of lines from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
However, if you get a group of us together, and we start talking about what was better, Episode IV or Empire Strikes Back, you would just might have a riot on your hands. Time and time again I have found Star Wars is the common denominator.
So that is the subject matter that I have chosen to test the Geocaching community on in order to find out who is the biggest Star Wars Geocaching geek. Answer this list of questions, use your slide rule to make a few calculations, and you will have the coordinates for the cache.
And if you are lucky enough to be the FTF you will have the distinguished honor of being known as the biggest Star Wars Geocaching Geek around and I will name the cache in your honor.
A = The impressively low number of parsecs that it took the Millennium Falcon to do the Kessel run. Okay, actually it was slightly less than this number but hey; we’re talking parsecs here. Let’s not split hairs.
B = The number of moons on the horizon as Luke looks on longingly just after being told by Uncle Owen he has to stay on the farm for another harvest.
C = The docking bay that Luke is supposed to meet up with Han Solo in order to depart Tatooine.
D = The three numerical digits that make up the last part of the call sign of the storm trooper assigned to guard the Millennium Falcon on the Death Star after a tractor beam pulled it in.
E = What cellblock Chewbacca is supposedly being transferred from in a ruse to gain entrance to the detention level.
F = What cell number Princes Lea is being held in.
NORTH = E-(F-E)+C-(A/2)
WEST = F*B+(E/2)-(D-C)+A+7
The cache is located at: 33 8.(NORTH) 117 14.(WEST) Good luck and may the Force be with you.
Check your solution
If you find solving this puzzle to be too tedious and really not worth your time then congratulate yourself, you are not a geek. You probably never identified with Anthony Michael Hall in any of the John Hughes films, you have no idea what the acronym “WOW” stands for, and you actually had conversations with someone of the opposite sex (not a blood relative mind you) before you graduated high school. You are one of the lucky ones. Leave this puzzle for the rest of us….