How About A Game Of Scrabble? Mystery Cache

The cache is not at the listed coordinates, but it is less than a mile away. You must play out a game of Scrabble to obtain the Stage 1 coordinates. At Stage 1 you will find another puzzle to solve for the final cache coordinates

For the sake of brevity all dialouge will be identified by N: for Norton and W: for Wes. New tiles drawn after each turn will be in (parenthesis).

Norton and Wes want to go geocaching, but it has been raining all morning. They are at Norton's house, waiting for a break in the weather.

N: "How about a game of Scrabble?"

W: "I guess we might as well. But if it stops raining, let's quit and go geocaching".

N: "That's fine with me. I have the game right here. Draw a tile to see who goes first."

Ironically, Norton draws an N and Wes draws a W, so Norton goes first. They put the two letters back in the bag and both draw their beginning tiles.

Norton's starting rack looks like this. [C I A E H M C].

These are the letters Wes drew. [V R R E E L T]

Norton's mind is less on the game than on the cache they wanted to hunt, so he sees his first word immediately. He lays out his letters horizontally and is able to score Double Letter Value on the first C. He draws five new tiles (H K G E E)

N: "You keep score Wes, and don't forget to give me Double Word Score for that."

Wes looks over his tiles, though his thoughts are more focused on the geocoin he wants to place in the cache.

W: "Ha! You won't believe this. I'm using all of my letters! That's an extra Bonus for me." He lays down all seven letters, using his opponent's A for his third letter. He draws all new letters. (B R L I M O + Blank).

N: "How lucky can you get?"

Norton looks for a way to get the most for his two biggest letters. He remembers what Wes was when he first met him on a trail and introduced him to geocaching, then lays down four letters in front of the R and gets Double for his word. (O R I D)

Wes answers by playing five of his letters, and exclaims...

W: "Well, you're right about that, I used to be just a hiker. And you turned me into a ...CACHER! The other word I'm making is a very small type of cache. The blank is a C. I get points for both words." (G F O O O)

N: "Wow, thank you very much! You played right into my hand. Watch this, it's a a no-brainer!"

He plays three letters.

N: "That's Triple Word Score! Who's winning now?" (N N W)

W: "Oh yeah? Well sign this! Oh, you don't have a pen? Want to borrow mine?"

Wes uses the O and K already on the board and makes a seven letter word. (A Z F O E)

N:"I better use this Triple Word Score before you take it.... this is what I did with my new cache."

He plays two tiles and draws two. (D N). Now he's wondering what to do with all those consonants.

W: "I have more of these than you do, and I believe this game is now tied. ..." as he lays down both of his F's, (you know where). (N D)

N: "Oh, so you wan't to play that way, do you? well you also have more of these than I do..." He plays the two letters he had just picked up, and recieves Double Word Score for them. (A I)

W: "I think I'll use this Z while I can". He adds three letters to the D that Norton just played. (R I + Blank)

N: "I'll say you're in a DAZE! You could have made MAZE and scored double."

Wes looks and notices he also could have made DAZED or DOZEN. I guess he really was in a daze, distracted from the game.

Norton then sandwiches the E in HIKER with an R and I.

Wes: "OK, I know what ore is, but what's a rei?"

N: "That's where I bought my GPSr, at REI." (O T)

Wes remembers where the very first geocache was placed ten years ago, and he plays off of Norm's ORE. (T A Q)

W: "Do I need to tell you what the blank stands for?

N: "I think I can figure that out, duh."

N: "I guess I'll use that Triple Word before you do. Even though I'll get "NANO" points for it, it's still twice as much as you just scored." (A R O)

Wes plays three letters after the blank tile.

W: "You know what they say, Cache In Trash Out".

N: "Three points, don't make me laugh! You must be getting tired with all this mental exercise."

W: "Bored would be more like it." (U I T)

Norton looks out the window.

N: "Is it ever going to stop raining? We're going to have a lot of water to deal with....hey, that's it!"

He makes his word at the top of the board. (S V N P)

W: "You think you're so smart, I can make water too! That puts me just uno points behind..." as he uses his Q and gets Double Letter for it. (I N E)

N: "I just hope this rain doesn't turn into S-N-O-W. That's eight points for me." (S E E)

Wes plays three letters on the O of CITO.

W: "Want to hear my word in a sentence? It was hilarious when you TORE your pants on the barbed wire." (J E A)

N: "Big deal, I still found SEVEN caches after that..." as he plays on the E and gets Double for his V. (A S U D)

Wes shrewdly adds ED to SNOW for Triple Word Score, and surging into the lead. (L X)

Meanwhile Norton is just thinking of how he once made 100 finds in a "span" of seven days. He makes his word and takes back the lead. (P W S)

Wes thinks he better use one of his big letters.

W: "Remember when the police officer saw you with an ammo box under the exit ramp and was going to put you in J-A-I-L?"

He gets rid of his J but only made eleven points. (B E T)

N: "Yes but I got away by making a fantastic J-U-M-P! Thirty points, give up yet?" (I U A)

With the ammo box still on his mind, Wes thought he better use his X, but only gets twelve points for it. (I L)

The box reminded Norton of what geocachers put in it, and he put his letters down at the left side of the board, for just eight points. (Y E T)

Meanwhile Wes was day dreaming about the coyote den he came across in the woods last week. Then he saw a place where he could play two of his letters. He only scored four points for it, as he really has lost interest in the game.(Y G)

Norton then plays a couple of letters below the letter in the middle of the board, while exclaiming...

N: "YO", a geocacher always has to have a good "EYE". He picks up the last two letters. (??)

Just then they both look out the window. It has stopped raining.

Wes plays his Y, and records his score.

W: "I know it's a close game, but I'm getting a little JUMPY, and I really want to get some geocaching in today. What do you say we both subtract our remaining points, and just see who wins."

Norton doesn't see any words he can make on the Triple Word Score, so ending the game now would be his best chance of winning. And he also would rather go geocaching.

N: "That sounds good to me."

So they subtracted their remaining tiles. Who won? What was the score? Does it matter?

N: "So what do we have to do?"

W: "Just follow these instructions:"

"The number of points you scored on your 5th turn, and reverse the digits."

"My score after two turns, minus what I scored on my ninth turn."

"The number of points you got for "geocacher", minus the number of points you subtracted at the end of the game."

"The number of points I scored on my first turn when I used all my letters, minus 20."

"The number of points you scored for "swag""

"The difference of the number of points I scored on my 3rd and 4th turn"

"Add together the points you scored on your 3rd, 9th, and 13th turns."

"The total of my points for my 5th and 6th turns, minus the number of points scored on my 2nd turn."

"The number of points I subtracted at the end of the game."

"Did you get all of that?"

N: "Yep, I got it, here's our coordinates. Check my numbers if you want to. Now let's go get it!"

W: Wait, there's more. These coords only take us to stage 1.

N: "Aww, this is getting too hard."

W: "But we've already come this far. We can't quit now."

N: "OK read the rest to me."

W: Solving the puzzle will take you to Stage 1, where you will be looking for a pill bottle containing eight Scrabble tiles. You must arrange the tiles in crossword fashion using all eight letters and making three words. All three words spell numbers.

The lowest number = A, the middle number = B, and the highest number = C.

Also take note of the number of points scored for each word.

To find the final cache: (Degrees and minutes are the same as Stage 1)

N41 MM . x x x W087 MM . x x x

N . x x x = (A x B x C) + (A x A x B) + (points scored for B, multiplied by 2)

W . x x x = (A x B x 2) + (points scored for A) + (points scored for B)

N: "Fine, I wrote those instructions down in my notebook. Why don't you bring your caculator along too."

W: "Wait, here's one more note"

Please do not post any photos that might give away the location of Stage 1. Please make sure there are no muggles in view when you are retrieving or replacing either stage. At Stage 1 move away from GZ when you are working on the puzzle. Make sure all eight tiles are put back in the container.

Use all the same precautions at the final, since it is also right next to a large portion of visible trail. The original ammo box has already been muggled. It has been replaced with a small Lock&Lock, but it is not far from the original location. Replace it and conceal it well with natural looking cover. Have fun and enjoy your walk.

You can check your coordinates to Stage 1 using Geocheck

So they checked their cordinates and...

But Wes didn't respond, he was already out the door and getting into the cachemobile.

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(You might think that Wes and Norm stretched the rules a bit when forming some of their "words", but at least this one is legitimate)

and the FTF honors go to...