Historically,
Battleship has been a guessing game played by two people. It is
known throughout the world as a pencil and paper game and predates
World War I in this form. It was invented by Clifford Von Wickler
in the early 1900s, but he never patented the game and it was soon
published by Milton Bradley Company in 1943 as the pad-and-pencil
game "Broadsides, the Game of Naval Strategy". Later, the game
became known simply as, "Battleship". In 1977 Milton Bradley
released a computerized Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by
Electronic Talking Battleship.
In Battleship (and geocaching
Battleship), there are 5 ships of various sizes arranged and hidden
on a 10 x 10 grid. Each grid location is identified by a
letter (A-J) and a number (1-10). An example of a grid
location might be “A3” or “F10”. There are 100 possible
locations or caches. Your task is to locate and sink these ships by
searching for geocaches that represent the grid locations.
Many of the caches will be “misses” just like the like the Milton
Bradley game. A few will be “hits”. Each hit will give
you partial coordinates for the ship it represents. Once you
have made all the hits on a particular ship, you will have all the
coordinates for that ship. You then must find the mystery
cache for that ship in order to officially sink it. The
mystery cache for each of the five ships will have partial
coordinates for a mystery final. Once you have sunk all the ships,
you will have acquired the coordinates for the final. When you find
the final you officially win the
game!
The five ships that you must
sink:
aircraft carrier (5 hits will sink
it)
battleship (4)
destroyer (3)
submarine (3)
patrol boat (2)
Note the example image above:
Each ship is placed either horizontally or vertically
but never diagonally.
Ships do not overlap one another.
Game Examples
Let’s say you find cache C6 and it's a “miss”.
There will be no coordinates contained within. It is simply
another traditional cache find. Try again at another
Battleship cache.
However, if you find cache E5 and it is a “hit”, you
will find a card listing a ship type and partial coordinates for
that ship's puzzle/mystery cache. Let's continue with
this example. If it was the aircraft carrier in the example
image above, you know that it would require 4 more hits to
sink. Your next search should be either D5 (on the grid space
located directly above), F5 (directly below), E4 (to the left side)
or E6 (to the right side). Once the aircraft carrier is sunk,
you will have the full coordinates for “You Sank My Aircraft
Carrier”. Please note, the caches themselves are not
hidden in grid pattern. However, you should use the grid
provided to keep track of your finds and understand how the ships
are laid out. By the way, "hit" caches are traditional finds just
like "misses".
Game Rules
Please do not indicate in your log when you
find a hit. You don't want to give your opponents this free
information!
Good Luck!
The cache originally contains: carbiners, lanyards, and pencils for
looting. Feel free to take these items without trading. If you want
to leave an item that is up to you but it is not necessary. There
is a surplus of about 100 of these items in the cache and I can
restock if need be. Permission granted from Milwaukee County Parks
for this cache placement. Congrats to Puzzler and Burrgirl for
being FTF!!!