Rash #9: A Nasty Rash Mystery Cache

This is a mystery cache with two stages. The listed coordinates are bogus. You must solve the puzzle below to determine the first stage coordinates, which are within 2 miles of the listed coordinates.

This nasty RASH is well-protected by rash-inducing obstacles such as overgrown trails, poison ivy, ticks, mosquitoes, bees, wasps, spiders and ants. And..the parking is hard to find. The Harvard trails booklet (available at Harvard town hall) is helpful. The best entry is at a trailhead 200 yards SE of stage 1. This is an easement that is off the main road down a private driveway. You CAN NOT park on the private driveway but you can park fairly close on the public road.

RASH Puzzle Rules: The clues are mixtures of components (words or syllables) that, when verbally replaced with appropriate counterparts, will integrate into answers that correspond to the puzzle’s theme.

1. Relatives are like things. Apples and oranges are relatives in the fruit family; Cupid and Blitzen are relatives in Santa’s reindeer; Mars and Jupiter are relatives in the family of planets.
   
2. Antonyms are opposites: black and white, will and won’t, now and then.
   
3. Synonyms are different words with similar meanings: yellow and amber, cold and brisk, trash and rubbish, near and close.
   
4. Homophones/homonyms Homophones are pronounced the same, have different meanings, and may or may not have the same spelling: merry, marry and Mary. Homonyms have the same spelling and pronunciation but different meanings: bank (edge of a river, carom, or depository).
   

Here are a few explanatory notes to help you solve: If you can get a part of a clue, you can usually reason through the twisted combination of “nyms” to get the whole answer.

• Some of the homonyms are not exact. For example, “day” may be as close as we could get to “Dave.” Such rough homonyms are denoted in italics to alert the solver to beware.
• Hyphens separate syllables (single or multiple) within a single word. For example, Gas-yuk could translate to Air (synonym for gas) – ick (synonym for yuk). This results in Eric (translating the appropriate homophones).
• Multiple words with no space constitute a single syllable or word. (For example, foursidedfigure could be replaced by square, rhombus, rectangle, etc.)
• Underlined words or letters are not replaced; they are left as-is. (For example, the stays as the.)

In this RASH puzzle, the elements correlate to four different, but related themes. The identifiers: 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th are used as placeholders for the four theme words. Most of the elements have an obvious correlation to the theme and some are more indirectly related. Each element correlates to only one theme.

Determine the coordinates from the following observations about the correct answers to the 50 RASH elements.

You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.