A Tribute to the Cribbage Gods Mystery Cache
A Tribute to the Cribbage Gods
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(micro)
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Another well-known geocacher from the area and I attempted to play in a tournament. Apparently the Cribbage Gods either wanted to toy with us, or we did not pay appropriate homage prior to the tournament.
This is a meager attempt at not having happen again what happened that Saturday.
Picture me bowing, cringing, snivelling....
The invention of Cribbage, Crib for short, was attributed to the poet Sir John Suckling (1609 – 1642) by his biographer, John Aubrey.
Sir John Suckling
Suckling was something of a scoundrel by all accounts, “the greatest gallant of his time, the greatest gamester both for bowling and cards, so that no shopkeeper would trust him for sixpence”. He was an expert at cards, dice and bowls as well as being a womanizer and notorious wit on top of his poetry day-job! His most notorious feat was begun when he distributed large numbers of packs of marked cards to the aristocratic populace around England. He then followed up this preparation by going around the country playing the local gentry at Cribbage for money, managing to earn himself around £20,000 (about £4 million in today’s money). His lifestyle eventually led to his downfall, however, when in 1642 he allegedly became involved in a plot to free the Earl of Stafford from the Tower of London. In an effort to escape the consequences of this, he fled to Paris and there committed suicide by poisoning himself at the age of 32.
Cribbage, or crib, is a card game traditionally for two players, but commonly played with three, four, or more, that involves playing and grouping cards in combinations which gain points. Cribbage has several distinctive features: the cribbage board used for scorekeeping, the eponymous crib or box (a separate hand counting for the dealer), two distinct scoring stages (the play and the show) and a unique scoring system including points for groups of cards that total fifteen.
It derives from the earlier game of Noddy.
Cribbage was immortalized in Charles Dickens's, the Old Curiosity Shop, with the exploits of Richard Swiveller and his self named Marchioness. Richard Swiveller, a somewhat eccentric young man, who liked standing on his head in fits of high emotion, one day observed someone peeping through the keyhole at him at the place where he worked. On suddenly opening the door he found a young girl, dressed in rags, and a prisoner and slave to his employers. Richard Swiveller befriended the girl, who he named the Marchioness, and taught her how to play cribbage. (There is a wonderful picture from an illustrated edition showing Richard Swiveller, with top hat on and beer tankard by his side, expansively looking on at his pupil, the Marchioness, with the caption 'The Marchioness, holding her cards tight in both hands, considered which to play'.
Later on, overcome with emotion at recent events, Richard Swiveller takes to his bed seriously ill. On waking he thinks he is still in a dream as he sees the Marchioness, (who having escaped is now nursing him), playing cribbage by herself until he notices that she has omitted to take the two points for a knave and he shouts '2 for his heels!'. The Marchioness jumps up with joy and they live happily ever after playing cribbage into the long winter evenings.
Cribbage holds a special place among American submariners, serving as an "official" pastime. The most famous incident related to cribbage in the Navy occurred in 1943 aboard one of the war’s most celebrated submarines, the USS Wahoo. For the Wahoo’s fourth war patrol, it was ordered to head to the extreme northern reaches of the Yellow Sea, an area where no sub had gone before. The waters near the Dairen Peninsula were shallow, and crewmembers grew nervous as they glided into dangerous territory. To take their minds off the tension, the sub’s commander, Dudley “Mush” Morton and his executive officer, Richaed “Dick” O’Kane, began a game of cribbage. Morton dealt O’Kane a “Perfect” hand — the highest possible score for combinations in a single cribbage deal. Back-of-the-envelope calculations were done, and 216,000 to 1 were the odds thrown out as to the chances of that happening. The crew’s spirits were bolstered by what they felt was a very lucky omen. O’Kane had his fellow officers sign the five cards and he framed them. Rear Admiral Richard Hetherington “Dick” O’Kane. O’Kane has the distinction of directly participating in more successful attacks on Japanese shipping than any other fighting submarine officer during the war. Good fortune did prevail on the patrol – at its end the Wahoo had set a record for the number of ships sunk. It continued for O’Kane too. When he was detached from the Wahoo and given command of the Tang, that sub broke the former’s record for most ships sunk in a single patrol. And while he was captured by the Japanese when the Tang was sunk by an errant torpedo that circled back and hit it, O’Kane survived the war, and was awarded the Medal of Honor for his “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity” during his submarine’s final operations. O’Kane’s lucky cribbage board has become an important submariner tradition; since WWII it has been passed along to the oldest active submarine in the United States Pacific Fleet. Once the sub is decommissioned, it is given to the next oldest submarine, where it is placed in the wardroom. The famous crib board currently resides aboard the USS Bremerton, which launched in 1978..
What you waited for..........
careful, the cribbage gods are watching
.....how to find the cache!!!!
Substitute answers from the questions into the coordinate scheme
N 45 AB.CDE
W 094 FG.HIJ
You need A cards in a row to count it as a run.
If you are still on B street, and your opponent goes out, you are 
A player/team must score 12C points before their opponents do in order to win.
If you have 3, 5, 5, Q in your hand and a 3 is cut, the value of your hand is D points.
If you have 90 points, you need E points to avoid being 
Knobs adds F points to the value of your hand.
A player has G points in their hand if they claim to have a "19" hand.
Having "three of a kind" (other than 5s) in your hand is worth H points.
A "perfect" hand is worth 2I points.
"His Heels" is worth J points to the dealer.
Hope you have good luck and don't get the
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Lbh ner ybbxvat sbe n ovfba ghor.
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