Advertising is a very competitive business - some would say it epitomizes the dog eat dog phrase. Logos are a central part of advertising. This puzzle uses three familiar character logos. Solve the puzzle below to derive the correct coordinates for the cache.
A group of well known advertising icons, consisting of Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Dough Boy (and two of his clones), Tony the Tiger, and Morris the Cat (and one of his clones) were hanging out at Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue in NYC.
Being the big spenders that they are, they decided to take a trip uptown to Barneys New York.
Trouble is, they couldn't all fit in one cab and there were no other cabs available (taxi strike!). Another complicating factor to the journey was the fact that the number of felines (Tony or either Morris clone) could never be greater than the number of dough boy clones in the taxi, or at either location (Brooks Brothers or Barneys), otherwise the dough boys would be eaten by the felines! For the purposes of applying this rule, when the taxi arrives at the destination, all the characters at that destination, whether just arriving in the taxi, or waiting patiently in front of the store, are counted. Of course, these icons are larger than life, so only two could fit in a taxi at one time. Also, there is some odd ordinance in New York City that prohibits cats (sorry Morris) from taking taxis by themselves. Apparently Tony is exempt from this rule because of his roar. So a dough boy or Tony (or both) had to be part of each taxi ride (i.e., the taxi can't be without passengers). Also, the taxi has to drop at least one passenger at the end of each uptown ride.
So to get all six of these characters safely from Brooks Brothers to Barneys will take a bit of ingenuity (plus alot of cab fare). Once you've figured out the correct configuration of taxi rides, you can make note of some facts from your solution, as follows:
- number of uptown (Brooks Brothers to Barneys direction) taxi rides needed to get all six characters safely to Barneys = a
- number of downtown (Barneys to Brooks Brothers direction) taxi rides needed to get all six characters safely to Barneys = b
- number of taxi rides where Tony is riding by himself = c
- number of taxi rides where one or more dough boys are riding by themselves = d
- number of taxi rides before any of the dough boy clones leave Brooks Brothers = e
- number of taxi rides during which both Morris clones are left at Brooks Brothers = f
- number most often associated with company that Morris works for = g
- number of taxi rides during which all three dough boy clones are left alone at either Brooks Brothers or Barneys = h
- the first year of commercials featuring Poppin' Fresh with that silly giggle (according to Wikipedia) = 19jk
- a - b = m
- g - h = n
- a - d = p
- j - k = q
The final cache is located at 47 cm.fnb 122 qg.phe.
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.
Congrats to the Honest_Servius crew for the FTF!
Also, thanks to Stinson HQ for pointing out there are two correct solutions (darn!). The solution I had in mind requires Tony to take the first taxi ride with Morris.