On Golden Pond-Scytale Cipher Letterbox Letterbox Hybrid

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parkctnuts: difficult to maintain

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Hidden : 9/28/2012
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
2.5 out of 5

Size: Size: regular (regular)

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Geocache Description:


The starting coordinates will take you to the shelter house at the Henry County Outdoor Education Center. This cache was placed with the permission of the Henry County Solid Waste Management. They own the land around here which is set up as a wetland wildlife habitat area for the enjoyment of outdoor enthusiast and also school education (Part of the ODNR WILD-kids WILD-school sites Program). Since this is an education center, we are going to learn how to construct a Scytale (rhymes with Italy) Cipher. The scytale cipher was used by the ancient Greeks & Spartans as a battlefield communications tool dating back to 500 BC and consists of a cylinder with a strip of parchment (scroll) wound around it on which a message is written. When unwound, the message is encrypted. It had the advantage of being simple, fast, and accurate (important for battle communication) and the courier could transport the message from the sender to receiver who each had an identical diameter rod for making and decrypting the code.

      In order to complete this field puzzle and find this letterbox, we will describe where the components of the Scytale Cipher are hiding and you must reconstruct the Cipher assembly in order to receive the rest of the clues for the location of the letterbox cache. As a bonus, there will be a clue written on the backside of the scroll in order to find the location of a Mystery cache at this location. Now let's go find those components for the "Scytale Cipher Letterbox":
      From the shelterhouse look off to the west and you will see a martin birdhouse perched on top of a 25 foot high pole. Head to that location and you will find a small footbridge that leads to nowhere. Under the east end of the bridge you will find a 1-1/2 inch PVC pipe which will be your cylinder. Take this with you to the next location. Now continue to walk around the pond to the furthest point away from the shelter house. Here you will find a pair of twin cottonwood trees each about the same size. Around the 1st cottonwood you will find a small lock box cabled to the tree, which contains the scroll. The combination for the lockbox is written on the center of the PVC pipe. Take the scroll with you and walk 50 feet further up the trail to a point where the trail splits to the right and left. This is the point where the scytale instructions begin. Wrap side "A" around the PVC pipe. Slots are cut into the pipe to hold the scroll in place. When you wrap the encrypted message around the pipe the newly decrypted message will give you the instructions to complete the letterbox journey. Good luck and happy hunting.
As required by groundspeek, the coordinates for the cylinder and the scroll have been listed as GPS coordinates, however to replicate the true letterbox experience, we strongly suggest not using the waypoints to find the multicache stages of this letterbox. .

Feel free to trade trackables or trade items but please do not take the stamp or ink pad. We handmade this stamp in appreciation for the land manager responsible for this area, allowing us to place this letterbox and other caches here at this location. He is deeply involved in the Pheasants Forever program hence the stamp of the flying ringneck silhouette.

     As an added bonus, a clue to the mystery cache at this location can be found by flipping the scroll over to side "B". When you have completed the exercise of building a Scytale Cipher, please return all of the components to their proper location so that the next cacher can enjoy this educational experience. Thanks

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

Fvqr "N" tvirf gur ybpngvba ns gur Yrggreobk Fvqr "O" tvirf gur ybpngvba bs gur Zlfgrel Pnpur

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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