Puzzle Secrets Revealed - Binary Numbers #10 Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

Tobias & Petronella: Went to check on this cache a few days ago and saw it was gone. The environment has changed too much so we're archiving it. Sorry for the delay.

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Hidden : 12/6/2011
Difficulty:
2.5 out of 5
Terrain:
2 out of 5

Size: Size: micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

The cache is not at the posted coordinates.

This series "Puzzle Secrets Revealed" is designed to help those that are new to working/solving puzzles on this site. The main focus of these caches is to show some of the little tricks that are used to hide or disguise important information such as the coordinates.

On each cache page we will tell you what needs to be done to "solve" that puzzle. This is to show how easy it is to get the coordinates using one or more of these tricks. We will not spoil or reveal the tricks on any other cache page unless we have the written permission of that CO. However what we will be doing is giving you the knowledge on what to look for and a few things to try. On this web site there are puzzles that will use one or more tricks. There are also lot that don't use any. What we will be showing you in this series are things to try first or to try when you are not sure what else to do.

Since we are not computer techs, the examples and methods shown are how we do it. There could be an easier and faster way to do the same thing.

*  *  *  *  *

Before we begin, a few words and ideas need to be talked about. There are many different number and counting systems. The most common system we use is called "Base 10" or "Decimal notation" or just "Decimal". It uses the numbers 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9. In this puzzle we are going to talk about "Base 2", more commonly referred to as "Binary" or "Binary Numbers". It uses only the numbers 0 and 1.

In Puzzle Secrets Revealed - Binary Numbers #01 we looked at how to turn ones (1) and zeros (0) of the binary system in to number values that we are more used to. Here, we are going to turn those ones (1) and zeros (0) in to letters and symbols. One of the more widely-used and oldest computer number/letter systems is called ASCII, which stands for "American Standard Code for Information Interchange". There is a lot of history that has taken place when talking about computers, their languages and number systems, which includes a lot of changes both major and minor. This is just a small look.

What the ASCII system does is to take a set of binary numbers and match it with a letter, keystroke, or symbol. Each of these pairings is given a reference number in Base 10, and these numbers are referred to as an "ASCII Decimal Number".

There are two levels of ASCII but they are sometimes referred to by different names; Basic and Extended, Low and High, Bottom and Top, or Simple and Advanced… to name a few. The reason for this is that the "Basic" group has a Decimal value from 0-127 and represents most the keystrokes on an early-American teleprinter. The "Extended" group has a Decimal value from 128-255 and is for international letters and symbols. In the beginning the "Basic" group used seven Binary digits and was written in a couple different formats such as 1010011 or 101 0011. When the "Extended" group was added a couple of years later, ASCII used eight Binary digits. To make this work all they did was to add a zero (0) to the left side of the numbers in the "Basic" group, which changed the format but not the value. For more information on binary number values or to see why this cache is called "Binary Numbers #10" and not "Binary Numbers #2" see Puzzle Secrets Revealed - Binary Numbers #01 GC37GR9.

Here is a chart of the Basic ASCII codes and its binary and decimal values. For a more user-friendly chart do an internet search for ASCII Codes or go to www.ascii-code.com. The first 32 characters (0-31) in the chart below are unprintable control codes and are used to control peripherals such as printers.


Sometimes people refer to a set of binary numbers that was written to have an ASCII value as "Binary Text". This is wrong. It would be the same as saying "Number Words" or "Language 1, Language 2". To convert from Binary to Text or from Text to binary, there two main ways of doing this. Either use a look-up chart or use an on-line converter. There are many on-line "Binary to ASCII" converters or translators. One of the ones we like to use is this one.

When written out, one of the two main formats is to give each set of the eight binary numbers it's own line:

01000011
01100001
01100011
01101000
01100101

Or run them all together like this:

01000111011001010110111101100011011000010110001101101000011010010110111001100111

There are two important things to remember when writing binary that is to be turned into text.

First – Lower case letters are different from Upper case letters and have different Binary and ASCII codes.
Second – Each letter or symbol must have eight binary digits.


This puzzle (or code) is going to be very straightforward. But remember that in other puzzles the 1's and 0's could be hidden text or any two objects or things. To solve this puzzle you could use a chart or "cut and paste" the information in to our favorite de-coder.

01001110
01101111
01110010
01110100
01101000
00100000
00110100
00110111
00100000
00110010
00110101
00101110
00110010
00110100
00111000

0101011101100101011100110111010000100000
0011000100110010001100100010000000110001
0011010100101110001101000011011100111000


0101000001100001011100100110101101101001
0110111001100111001000000100110001101111
0110001101100001011101000110100101101111
0110111000100000011010010111001100100000
0110100101101110001000000100011101100101
0110111100101101010000110110100001100101
0110001101101011011001010111001000101110


Check your solution

Even though some will be tempted to do this at night, please don't due to the patrolling security for nearby businesses. Even though this is city property, any activity after hours could draw suspicion.

As with all caches, please replace it as you found it so it will be just as challenging for the next person as it was for you. Thanks.

*** Congratulations to macemakaio on his first solo FTF ***

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Abegu Fvqr

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)


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