In 2015, Pi Day has a special significance, because it falls on 3/14/15, so the day and two digit year match the first four numbers in Pi following the decimal point — 3.1415 — making this day a once-in-a-lifetime coincidence.
To celebrate this special occasion, it seems like a special pi (or pie) puzzle is in order. This puzzle is not intended to be too difficult, but it may require that you brush up on some middle-school math and geometry skills.
My mom baked me a delicious blueberry pie, which is my favorite. The pie was baked in a (very precise) 12 inch diameter pie pan. I invited a bunch of geocaching friends over to share the pie. Before long, my friends and I had devoured almost all of the pie, leaving only a very narrow slice remaining.
Because we are the curious sort, we decided that we would like to know how much of the pie we had eaten. So using an unusually precise measuring device that I happened to have on hand, we found that the circumference (or to be technically correct, arc length) of the small remaining sliver of pie was precisely 12.958237 cm. Using that information, we were able to determine the surface area of the pie that we had eaten (in square centimeters).
When I saw the result, I said , “What a coincidence! If I take the three digits before the decimal point as XXX, and the first three digits after the decimal point as YYY, it turns out that using the format N 30° 23.XXX W 097° 44.YYY, this matches the exact coordinates of a new cache that I hid yesterday.” Before I knew it, my caching friends were bursting out the door to go find the new cache.
So hurry and solve the puzzle yourself, and see if you can beat the others to the cache!
(Please use stealth, and bring your own pen.)