Let two cachers be letterboxing friends if they've found at least one letterbox belonging to the other. Suppose a cacher has 8 letterboxing friends. Then that configuration is known as an 8-star. The cacher is the center and the eight friends are the points of the star.
To satisfy this challenge you will need to locate an 8-pointed letterbox star and to find 10 caches, namely one letterbox belonging to the center, one letterbox belonging to each of the points, as well as the cache at the posted coordinates.
Consider the illustration above in which an arrow from A to B indicates that A has found B's letterbox. There are two stars of interest. The one with the red center depicts a letterboxer whose boxes have been found by all the blue stars and and has found boxes belonging to each blue; hence those arrows are double headed. You, the green one, must find boxes for the blue one as well as the green one.
FAQ:
- I'm already the center of an 8-pointed letterbox star. Can I just befriend myself to qualify?Yes! Although finding your own cache is generally frowned upon, in this case it makes good sense.
- Why didn't you just make it that one has to be the center of an 8-pointed star to begin with rather than identify one? I would've if I could've, but that would've violated the rule that a cache cannot require other cachers to place caches.
- How should I indicate that I've satisfied the challenge? Any way which is clear and easy to check will do. Two sample logs are given below.
- In your sample log dates aren't included. Why's that? Letterboxing lists are short enough that they're usually easy enough to eyeball.
- I'm still confused. Is there a similar challenge that might answer my questions? Yes, looking at the 5-clique of puzzlers challenge might help.
Update 11/21,2017
The following modification relaxes the qualifications slightly. It should be enough to allow some previous logs that formerly would have been insufficient.
Consider the illustration just above in which an arrow from A to B indicates that A has found B's letterbox. There are two stars. The one with the red center depicts a letterboxer whose boxes have been found by all the blue stars. No longer is it necessary that that cacher has found the boxes owned by the others. Your green star is the center of a star that shows you have found letterboxes belonging to all the others. That's all you need to show now.
(Note that if the green center and the red center were the same we would have the original two-way star although you wouldn't necessarily have to be the center.)