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Harvard Freshman Dorms Mystery Cache

Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
1.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   micro (micro)

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Geocache Description:

Sit back and relax in Harvard Yard as you figure out this puzzle involving the 17 freshman dormitories surrounding you. All Harvard undergraduates live together in Harvard Yard during the first year.
Solving the puzzle and finding the geocache does not require physically being on Harvard property. Please respect Harvard property and student privacy.


The Freshman Dorms


Posted coordinates are NOT where the final container is hidden. Must solve puzzle, go to final location based on your answer, find the final container, and then sign the log, to qualify for are Found.


First-year students live in the Yard, Apley Court and the Union Dormitories, at the geographic and historic center of College life. Accommodations range from eighteenth-century buildings, which housed the earliest Harvard students as well as George Washington's troops, to Canaday Hall, the newest dormitory at the College completed in 1974. Classrooms and libraries are immediately at hand, and Annenberg Dining Hall is only a short walk away.

Most dorms have suites for three to six students. Suites contain from two to four bedrooms and a common room. A few have their own baths, though most share a bathroom with other suites. The FDO assigns students to suites rather than to particular bedrooms, and in almost any suite students should expect to share a bedroom for at least part of the year. Some dorms contain doubles, usually one fairly large room with a shared bath. Very few singles are available. Source

The Dorms: Apley Court, Canaday Hall, Grays Hall, Greenough Hall, Hollis Hall, Holworthy Hall, Hurlbut Hall, Lionel Hall, Massachusetts Hall, Matthews Hall, Mower Hall, Pennypacker Hall, Stoughton Hall, Straus Hall, Thayer Hall, Weld Hall, Wigglesworth Hall

The Objective

The 17 cryptic clues will give you an ordering of the 17 freshman dorms. Find a way to fit these 17 dorms in the 8 x 16 grid provided, then find the answer to the question below. Use the alternate name for the answer to decipher the code.

The Puzzle

  1. Far away across the oceans, an undiscovered paradise
  2. Lewd messed up
  3. If you remove all of the double letters, you'll get an anagram of a tiny fib
  4. Sounds like a kind of structure when pronounced backwards
  5. Anagrams to the kind of smell you might find after a rainstorm
  6. It may be pushed or ridden
  7. Throwing a hind end
  8. Becomes a phrase that is sometimes seen before a verb if you remove the first and last letters
  9. Expressions of displeasure about arithmetic
  10. Sounds like something you might find in a box of moldy cereal
  11. Is related to restaurants if you remove the first letter and spell it backwards
  12. Contains only letters from the name of a badger-like Pokemon, used multiple times
  13. Lincoln before Green Bay
  14. Contains only letters from a sweet sugary food, used multiple times.
  15. A good shovel
  16. Contains only letters from the name of a constellation, used multiple times 
  17. Can be heard next to a word related to the study of the body

Widener Library has a copy of this Harvard collection.
The key to this cipher is this collection's alternate name.

DXSZLGNTXBDXZHSYGYEWNEVVLTSWMHIOMTBHHSUCZSHNLZECNDIZZEIHVXEDMEMGVZZ BWHFLMJGFQVXAZEESRIXSBKXFYGOATTWOWMSCYBKAZESLLEMMSXSJXFVRPYKZVEGGBP


Validate your final coordinates with certitude.

2016/06/04 Proudly adopted by Dr.MORO, from creator Encircled

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

chg gur qbezf va beqre ba gur tevq, gura ernq qbja bar bs gur pbyhzaf. gura hfr gur nygreangr anzr sbe gur nafjre.

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)