A Puzzle-Cache How-to!
Some advice on how to approach a puzzle cache.
Nothing is random.
This simple piece of advice is far harder to implement than to say. In 2013, while working on a local puzzle cache, a fellow cacher and I had to make three or four different ventures out. The devil was in the details, we will say, and when we cottoned on to the trick to the cache, we both stood back and said, in unison, "Nothing is random".
Over the next two years, I have applied this mantra to puzzle caching in Vancouver, Prince George, and Edmonton. That's a distance of 1500 linear kilometers, or 562500 square kilometers. And at each puzzle cache, I have examined the cache information and thought 'Nothing is random'.
The trick is to train the mind to process all aspects of the cache. Sometimes it helps to print off the information, but a good puzzle cacher can move beyond. Sneaky details of dictum pop out - word choices; grammatical errors; spelling choices; punctuation. Everything has the potential to be a hiding spot. Picture caches can hide enormous amounts of information within the coding of the image if the author has a basic ability with photoshop.
In some cases, it helps to consider what we consider random to be. Math classes teach probability as a study of random events, but random is then defined only in terms of outcomes - flipping a coin gives heads or tails (2 results); rolling a standard die gives a number between one and six (6 outcomes); spinners can have any number of results. Random number generators are typically not truly random either - the most commonly used random number generators take the decimal time off the system clock (when computer based). So if we wanted a 'random' three digit number using a computer, the computer dips into the time when we make the request and spits out the hundreds place of decimal time.
Another aspect of puzzle caches is often the red herring. Nothing is random, but some details are intended to deliberately draw attention away from the solution. These details can easily distractify puzzle cachers from the details they are striving four.
Finally, when a cacher realizes the solution to a puzzle cache, the solution is typically elegant. There is an implicit beauty, and quite often a level of sarcasm, that weaves behind the fabric of the cache and that, when the solution is made, all of the details fall into place.
It is my hope that, after the dozens of hours put into this solution; the two pounds of paper scribbled on, annotated, and shredded in frustation; the thirty minutes of fruitless or fruitful internet searching; you find the solution, sit back and say to yourself
"Nothing is random"
Congratulations to G33k8tyg33kitty and KaneNorth for the FTF!
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.