*** The cache is NOT at the posted coordinates ***
Battleship
The game Battleship (also known as Battleships) is 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".
Battleship Game and GPS: Also called Battleship Google Earth is a really interesting application / concept being developed by Julian Bleecker at USC. He decided to perform a lab experiment blending real life, GPS, mobile applications, and Google Earth. The concept is based on the Milton Bradley Battleship Game except in this game you take your GPS-enabled mobile phone and go walking around town to search for a virtual battleship.
Here is Julian's description: One person places their ships using Google Earth and the other person goes out in the normal world with a mobile phone, a GPS connected to the mobile phone. The phone has a small Python script on it that reads the GPS and sends the data to the game engine, which then updates the Google Earth KML model showing the current state of the game grid. When the player who's trying to sink the ships wants to try for a hit, they call into the game engine and say "drop". The game reads back the coordinates at which the "peg" was dropped and shortly thereafter, the other player will see the peg appear at the coordinate it was dropped. If the peg hits one of the ships, it's a Hit, otherwise it's a miss. See the image below on the Battleship Google Earth application:
There is already a Battleship game that includes the usage of GPS technology. But for to solve this puzzle, you are going to apply such GPS technology but in the Geocaching way using the geochecker. Read the instructions on how to play this game and solve the puzzle.
Instructions to solve puzzle:
Battleship Geocaching style: Everyone solving puzzle caches is familiar with the geocheckers. In this unique "battleship" game, a geochecker link will be provided below. This will be your game board. On it you will guess coordinates to try to "sink the battleship-cache". You may start by entering the posted coordinates as one of your guesses.
The geochecker will then give you feedback on your guess. Based on our own "sonar" technology, the geochecker will tell you a range of proximity to the cache. The more guesses you make, the more proximity information you are going to get to solve the puzzle, but use your guesses wisely or the geochecker will not let you do more guesses until you "re-load" the ammo. Use the information wisely and your next guess might be a hit or close to it. Remember that the proximity information is a range of distance with NO DIRECTION. So chose your points wisely and record all the information that the geochecker gives you. You are going to need it. Once you feel that you are close enough to "sink the battleship", you must search the area until you find the cache. If the geochecker gives you exact coordinates, then that would be better for you, but if you feel comfortable with the distance to the target then go for it.
So here is your Battleship geocaching board:
Play Battleship!!
NOTE: This cache is farther than 2 miles from the posted coordinates. This was essential for the type of puzzle as the geochecker will give feedback to the geocacher on the distances. If all the distances guessed are all too small, the puzzle will be harder to do. Nevertheless, the geochecker will tell the geocacher when he or she is close to GZ. An exception to the rule 2-mile radius will be made.
In case you are wondering how does the Battleship board with the "pegs" look like, the image below shows the board with the range circles and some of the guesses as of 9/12/2010
Congratulations to Rattrak on a well done FTF