One Art, Please! Mystery Cache

MSU's campus contains a great deal of Art. To find this cache, you will need to locate 23 Arts at various points around campus. You will need to locate each Art, and then answer questions about it.

To make life easier, I've made a .zip file with a copy of all 23 pictures, so if you'd like to grab them all at once for transfer to a mobile device of your choice, you can get them here.

Ready? Here we go!

A. What year was the sculptor of this work born?




B. When I took this, I was standing right next to a light pole. Find the pole, and find a metal tag on it with a triangle on it. What two-digit number is above, and to the right of the triangle?




C. How many lines of text are on the plaque at the base of this statue?




D. There's a park bench that would be a great place to sit and contemplate this man with a ball exploding out of a pyramid. (Now that you mention it, that's inexplicable enough to deserve some contemplation.) The cheerleading team from what year made this state of repose possible?




E. What Messier number would be associated with this sculpture?



F. Figure out where I was standing when I took this. Turn to your right. What two digit number is above the handle of the first door you face?


G. In what year was the speech quoted on the southeast side of this statue given?


H. How old was the sculptor when this work was donated to the university? (Don't worry about months or anything, just do the obvious calculation.) Update - 5/3/13: Passed a construction crew removing this one this morning. The plaque is still present, however. The sculpture was located on the vehicle turn-around in front of the Wharton center box office. Update - 5/8/13 OK, now the plaque is gone too. The answer to this question is 54.


I. Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey! Don't look away - don't even blink! Based on the TITLE of this sculpture, how many total figures should be standing here? (Since I posted this, the number of figures actually present has changed. The answer to the question has not. Someone must have blinked.


J. How many letters are there on the THIRD line of the plaque on this statue?


K. On the wall of the building near this statue, there's a plaque commemorating civil war veterans. In what year was it presented? (Currently inaccessible due to construction - the answer is 1911)


L. On what day of the month of May did the thing this rock commemorates happen?


M. How many years did the sculptor work on this object?


N. On the wall just to the northwest of the sculpture there are a number of pipes. What number? (Double check: They're in two groups, one of which has three times as many as the other group. Count 'em all.)


O. How many dollars would you have had to cough up to get your name on the nearby plaque?


P. How many little dots are there in the first Braille word on the plaque for this statue? (The first word is only four letters long, don't go counting the whole line.)


Q. How many bolts hold the plaque onto this statue's base?


R. Someone made the location of this statue possible. Take the first letter of their first, middle, and last name. If you had one more letter, those four letters would all be in a row in the alphabet. What is the value of the missing letter in Roman numerals?


S. Stand where I was standing when I took this. Turn to the right and figure out which shelter is nearby. Take the letter of the shelter and... (and I promise this is the ONE and ONLY time you will have to do this in this puzzle) tell me what letter of the alphabet it is. (A=1, B=2, blah, blah, blah)


T. How many punctuation marks are in the inscription for this statue?


U. Stand where I was standing (I was on a sidewalk) when I took this. Now face west. Think about direction, wonder why you haven't before. Also, note the big two-digit number on the sign in front of you. (Note: the sign is presently missing due to construction. However, it should be fairly easy to determine what the number was.)


V. This Art is part of a series of Arts. What number in the series is it?


W. How many words appear in ALL CAPS on the plaques for this fountain?

Whew! That's a lot of Arts. You may wish to take a camera with you in case you make a mistake on the next bit, and don't want to have to go back to double check things.

Now to work out the coordinates. This is meant to be as simple as possible. No ugly math like Don't Touch It, It's Evil, I promise. Each step will give you a big number. To double check that you have the right answer, you should add all the digits in the big number together and see if you get the checksum for that step. If you do, excellent!

Once you've verified your coordinates in the geochecker, all you have to do is work out the combination to the padlock, and you can go grab the cache!

..oh - did I not mention the padlock? There's a padlock. It has four digits in the combination. Don't go get the cache until you know what they are, and don't try to work them out till you've found the statues. If you want to verify them with me before you leave, feel free to send me an email, and I'll be happy to give you a yes or no.

A few more notes - this is rated a terrain 3 just because of the amount of distance you have to cover. The sculptures themselves are mostly handicapped accessible (although at least 1 isn't.) The final is more like a 2.5. While the final is available 24/7, I would strongly advise not going for it at night alone. One more caveat - one of the sculptures is not, technically, on the MSU campus, but rather right on the border. And only one is south of Service Rd.

Have fun!

Voted one of the Lansing Area's Top Caches for 2015.