The Smiley face Puzzle series of caches is an attempt to draw the shape of a smiley face on the Geocache map in the farmland north of Saltdean. Until now this area has no caches. In order to place the published co-ordinates precisely in the exact shape they need to be “Unknown” caches that are connected to actual cache sites nearby. All of these actual caches are on or near to public footpaths, and all are less than half a mile from the corresponding published co-ordinates. You could collect all 8 on a circular walk that goes completely around the smiley face. To find each cache location you have to solve a logic puzzle, which you can do at home before you set off caching. You do not need to visit the published co-ordinates, in fact you really shouldn’t because they are all in the middle of farmed land.
To find this cache you need to solve the following Hidato puzzle. Hidato puzzles are not as difficult as Sudoku or Kakuro puzzles, so this is one of the easiest puzzles in the series of 8.
Hidato is a logic puzzle where you have to find the hidden path around a grid of squares. The path is made of sequential numbers. There is only one solution to each Hidato puzzle. Each number must be one square (diagonally or adjacent) from the next number in the sequence. If you are not familiar with the puzzle just type hidato into Google and you will find lots of webs that will help you practice.
At the end of this puzzle each of the 92 squares will contain a different number between 1 and 92. In the puzzle below the black numbers are given at the start to help you solve the puzzle. You need to find the numbers in the remaining squares. The blue letters represent digits in the co-ordinates of the cache, the asterixes represents digits you don’t need for the co-ordinates. (i.e. if you decide the number that goes in the square labeled *G is 89 then the value of G is 9, or if the number that goes in the square labeled B* is 26 then the value of B is 2.
There is a printable version of the puzzle attached below
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.