Tangle Towns (level 3 - FINAL) Mystery Cache
Tangle Towns (level 3 - FINAL)
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Congratulations to NoBucksRanch for the outstanding FTF
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The final is NOT at the posted coordinates, this is a puzzle cache. Do not go there, as there is nothing of interest there. You must solve the puzzle below to get the coords.
Back when I lived in L.A., one summer the Los Angeles Times featured a game called Tangle Towns. There were 3 rounds of puzzles, each progressively more difficult. How it worked was in the first round is each day they published two puzzles, each one was a box with an outline of a state and a bunch of letters that you had to unscramble to spell a city which is in that state. There were a total of 50 of such puzzles. If you completed that level, then the next stage had the outlines of two states and a bunch of letters which you had to unscramble to spell two cities, one in each of the states. I believe there were 20 or 25 of those puzzles. If you successfully completed that level, the final level had a big box of 500 letters which were to be unscrambled to spell cities in any of the 50 states with the ultimate goal of leaving no letters, or as few as you could. That involved several long days poring through atlases (back around 1980, there was no internet). There were cache prizes for the top 3 players. I successfully completed the first two levels, and finished in the top 20 in the final round, out of the cash, but managed to leave only 10 or 15 letters unused. I remember when they published the list of winners, one person did successfully utilize all the letters.
It was a fun game and I thought I’d bring that game to geocaching.
THIS IS THE THIRD AND FINAL ROUND.
You will be given a list of letters and must utilize ALL of them to spell out 20 U.S. cities that have a population of 300,000 or more based on the 2010 U.S. Census. (See related web page for link).
Once you've created your list of cities, put them in ALPHABETICAL ORDER. There are no repeat cities, (ie: if a city appears twice in the list in two different states, it will only be here once).
Then use the information below to solve for the final coords:
A=1, B=2, C=3, … I=9, J=0, K=1, …. X=4, Y=5, Z=6.
HINT: You will be using the values of certain letters of certain cities (ie): if the 2nd city is Los Angeles and it's the 5th letter, that would be the letter N which would have a value of 4 (being the 14th letter. (Ignore spaces between 2-word cities).
The final is at North AB CD.EFG West HIJ KL.MNO where:
A = 5th City (7th letter)
B = 11th City (5th letter)
C = 20th City (3rd letter)
D = 17th City (9th letter)
E = 6th City (3rd letter)
F = 14th City (5th letter)
G = 15th City (9th letter)
H = 1st City (2nd letter)
I = 12th City (1st letter)
J = 8th City (5th letter)
K = 19th City (4th letter)
L = 3rd City (4th letter)
M = 18th City (1st letter)
N = 10th City (7th letter)
O = 9th City (10th letter)
You also need to know how many of each letter to use, so here's the list: A(20), B(3), C(7), D(8), E(15), F(2), G(4), H(7), I(18), J(1), K(3), L(19), M(1), N(7), O(12), P(6), Q(0), R(14), S(17), T(11), U(4), V(6), W(2), X(0), Y(1), Z(0).
You can check your answers with geochecker.
(visit link)
Please bring your own pen as there isn't room for one.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Chmmyr: Frr Eryngrq Jro Cntr
Pnpur: Zntargvp, hfhny ybpngvba.
Treasures
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