10K Star Challenge (10K Smiles for BlackJeep1989) Mystery Cache
Eagle1977: Shutting down area caches. All challenges are being archived due to caches expecting a free find because of qualifications being met yet without having to sign a log. These are not virtuals.
10K Star Challenge (10K Smiles for BlackJeep1989)
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Welcome to the 10K Star Challenge!
10K: ten thousand
Star: a point of difficulty or terrain
Challenge: something that requires achievement prior to successful logging of the cache.
The 10K Star Challenge is a celebration of BlackJeep1989's 10,000th find! As the 'King and Queen of Southern Illinois Caching' (quoted from a GONIL with a load more caches than I'll see in a while), they have taught more teams to geocache than I can recall and have been featured in numerous articles on the subject. Their challenges, puzzles, and interesting hides have kept everyone in the area guessing and they have pushed the D/T ratings whenever they can... legitimately.
What is a 10K Star Challenge?
A star is a point of difficulty or terrain. For instance, a 1/2 cache gets one star for difficulty and two stars for terrain, there fore making it a three star cache. To qualify for the 10K Star Challenge, you must have logged 10,000 stars worth of finds. How in the world can you calculate that?!?
Simple.
On your Geocaching.com Statistics tab, add your average difficulty rating to your average terrain rating and then multiply the sum of the two by your total number of finds.
For instance, on the day I logged this, I had an average of 1.67 for difficulty and 1.63 for terrain. A sum star average of 3.3. Multiply 3.3 by my total caches of 5531, and I have 18,252.3 stars worth of finds. An overachiever could technically qualify with only 1,000 finds if each find was a 5/5.
Not every cacher will qualify. This challenge exists to celebrate those cachers who go for more than 1/1 finds. If you do not qualify, you can find the cache and record your name in the paper log but until you qualify, no smiley is possible for you. Feel free to put a note on the cache page stating you signed the log and what your star count is. When you qualify, add your find online and again, let me know your count.
Congratulations to BlackJeep1989 for 10,000 finds and to the rest of you qualified cachers for having fun with my favorite game.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
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