Firstly – know what you are looking for. There are 5 types of mystery caches:
- A Bonus cache – Clues to the bonus geocache location (often coordinates, or partial coordinates in several geocaches) are hidden in one or more other geocaches. Generally, clues for a bonus geocache should not be placed in another bonus geocache, and the bonus geocache belongs to the owner of the geocaches where clues are found.
- A Multi mystery – basically the same as a multi cache, but with extra thinking required to decipher waypoints or collected data to determine the final location. Typically cannot be worked out in advance of arriving at the posted coordinates and proceeding from there.
- A Field puzzle – where usually finding the container is straight forward but opening it to get to the logbook requires manual dexterity or a special tool. I would include beacon (also known as Chirp) and night caches here as a special tool is usually necessary.
- A Challenge Cache – a relatively new mystery cache which requires that geocachers meet a geocaching-related qualification or series of tasks before the challenge cache can be logged. Often it is hidden at the posted coordinates, the hard part is qualifying for the find. Challenge geocaches must contain the word "challenge" in the geocache name.
- A Puzzle cache – what we are looking at here today, where the geocache page provides a puzzle to be solved to generate coordinates for the geocache. The information to proceed to solve the puzzle is on the page … but rarely is it that simple.
If what you are faced with is a Puzzle cache, then a couple of starting points:
- If the listed coordinates are not for the geocache location, the true geocache location should be no more than 1-2 ‘minutes’ (2-3 km) away. Some really old mystery caches did not have to adhere to this proximity rule, but usually this is your starting point.
- Check the Difficulty rating. If it is under a couple of stars difficulty, then the coordinates you seek aren’t too deeply buried. More stars, more difficulty. A full five stars is unlikely to be straightforward, or a single step.
Not all puzzles are hard. Some aren’t too difficult at all once you understand what you need to do with them. Here are some pointers for all puzzles:
- Read the hint
- Phone a friend (but at least make a reasonable attempt first)
- Contact the hider (after all they really do want people to find their cache, that’s why they hid it – but do try and make an effort first, they are proud of their puzzle and want you to solve it properly)
- Check possible answers out on Google Earth for sensibility.
- Many puzzles will include a geochecker, but usually these limit your guesses.
- Hang out with other cachers at events, or socially or on facebook. For a cup of coffee many will happily spill the beans – at least on how to go about doing a puzzle or how to find a well hidden one.
Every cache, ultimately, is at a unique location on the earth. At a set of co-ordinates your GPS reader (GPSr) can point you to. You are trying to find out what those are for this puzzle, and then you just have to go there.
- The coordinates you seek are a series of numbers that tell your GPS unit about a very specific part of the earth. About a 2m square area for coordinates in Degrees and Minutes, to three decimal places.
- For example: S28° 39.625 E151° 49.625
- But that’s not the only way to describe a geographical location.
Decimal -28.66042 151.82708
Degrees/Minutes/Seconds S28° 39' 37.512" E151° 49' 37.488"
UTM 56J E 385382 N 6829074
British Grid 24069722 -76590823
This cache is at : 56J E 385306 N 6826649
