[Introduction]
Hello, I am Professor Gustov. You may know me as being the official mascot of GHAGAFAP which is Canada's longest running annual event. Welcome to another one of my classes on geocache puzzle solving and more. Within my class you will learn some very valuable puzzle solving skills. As always I will present you with a puzzle that you may find to be part of an Unknown geocache type. I will work with you to help guide you in solving the puzzle so that at the end of this session you will have all the information needed to obtain the coordinates of the geocache.
[Fluff Stuff]
In 1939 King George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George) became the first reigning monarch of Canada to tour the country. He was accompanied by his wife Queen Elizabeth (Elizabeth Angela Marguerite Bowes-Lyon, also more commonly referred to as The Queen Mother). His first order of business was to meet with the then Prime Minister of Canada William Lyon Mackenzie King who was Canada's longest serving prime minister at 21 years, 154 days. King George VI was particularly interested in Ontario and wanted to see what this great province had to offer and thought it would be great if the two "Kings" would perhaps spend several days on the road together. Four cars were outfitted for their tour, two of which were McLaughlin-Buick Royal Tour Cars built especially for the occasion. The McLaughlin-Buicks were massive vehicles at 6 meters in length. Royal maroon in colour, they were outfitted with exotic wood trim, wool broadloom seating, and had extra interior height to accommodate elaborate royal headwear.
[Puzzle]
King George VI wanted to travel the many highways throughout Ontario, some of which no longer exist today because they were decommissioned and transferred to municipalities. The following are the routes that King George VI would have liked to travel each day, however he had no idea of just how vast Ontario was.
Day 1 - from Perth to Alexandria via Smiths Falls, Kemptville and Winchester
Day 2 - from Chatham to Sarnia via Wallaceburg
Day 3 - from St. Catharines to Niagara-on-the-Lake via Virgil
Day 4 - from Toronto to Paris via Etobicoke, Mississauga, Oakville, Burlington
Day 5 - from Elginfield to Norval via Stratford, Kitchener, Guelph, Rockwood, Acton and Georgetown
Day 6 - from Horne's Ferry to Marysville
Day 7 - from Markham to Ottawa via Pickering, Whitby, Peterborough, Madoc and Perth
Day 8 - from Port Dover to McKerrow via Hamilton, Guelph, Owen Sound, Tobermory and South Baymouth
Day 9 - from Kitchener to Elmira via Waterloo and St. Jacobs
[Lesson in Solving]
The purpose of this puzzle is to obtain the coordinates of the location of where the geocache is hidden, hence we will need to determine coordinates from the information given. The cache description starts with some history about certain individuals. This information although factually accurate on the most part, is just fluff and can be ignored, although it may provide some useful information on where you might want to start with solving the puzzle.
You are looking at the puzzle and perhaps have no idea of where to get started. Since no partial coordinates are given, you are most likely looking for the complete coordinates. Let's look at the title and also read the cache description a few times. There are many references to King and Highways mentioned throughout, so that may have something to do with solving the puzzle. You also see an image of a highway sign, so that again reinforces that perhaps this has to do with highways within Ontario especially since the word Ontario is on the sign. Additionally the 9 routes mentioned are all within Ontario. You probably see this type of sign all the time, but don't know what it's called. Maybe a bit of searching will reveal that these are the signs for the King's Highways within Ontario and that makes sense with your previous observation of the references to Kings and Highways.
Why don't we look on a map for the route mentioned on Day 1 or maybe we can do some googleing. Alternatively we could also search for King's Highways to see what comes up. Logically we are expecting to perhaps find a reference to the number 4 as that would be the first digit of the coords due to the location of where the posted coordinates are. We may even have to use a combination of maps and searches to get all the numbers we need. Let's randomly search for Smith Falls on a map and then zoom out a bit until we see some of the other towns mentioned, such as Perth. There we now notice a highway linking the two towns and it is Highway 43. As we move the map we see that Highway 43 does in fact go all the way to Alexandria and 43 would definitely be the first numbers of the North coordinates so that all makes sense. We can now continue with this process for the rest of the days mentioned with good confidence that we are on the right track in solving the puzzle. One thing you may have noticed is that it was mentioned that some of the highways no longer exist today, so that may add to the difficulty of figuring out some of the numbers, or maybe it won't be a factor, but we won't know until we continue with our work.
After you have done the work of seeing what the nine highways are, you should notice that you have a full set of coordinates of 14 numbers. Many puzzles including this one have something known as a geochecker where you can verify that your solution that you obtained is correct. You can now verify with the geochecker to make sure that your coordinates are correct.
 |
[Gustov's Geocaching Tip]
Hints are an important part of a cache. Geocaches are meant to be found and the purpose of the hint is to help the cacher find the cache if they are having problems finding it. A cacher normally should not resort to reading the hint unless they are stuck. Reading the hint beforehand may result in spoiling the fun of the hunt. With an accurate hint, the cacher should be able to walk away with a smilie or get a good sense if the cache is missing. |