Hello Geocachers! There are many of us out there who are addicted to the thrill of geocaching, and there are many types of geocaches. I don't know about you, but whenever I find a great geocache I get excited that I was able to figure out where it was hidden. However, with puzzle caches I get to experience that thrill twice, once when I solve the puzzle and then again after I find it.
After setting up many puzzle caches in Korea I have noticed that there are quite a few geocachers who actively avoid finding puzzle caches. Perhaps it is because the puzzle seems difficult, is a tedious extra step to excitement, or just don't know where to start. I want everyone to experience the joy of finding puzzle caches so I have set out to create a new series of easy puzzle caches designed to teach you how to become a puzzle master.
This puzzle was the first attempt at a puzzle teaching series for me and it has turned out to be trickier than I first thought. That being said, this will be my intermediate example of this kind of puzzle. Stay tuned for an easier 101 puzzle that will teach you even more about list type puzzles.
Thanks!!
One of the most common types of puzzles in the world is a list puzzle. Most cache coordinates in Korea will be made up of 15 numbers N37° XX.XXX E12X° XX.XXX or 16 numbers if 037° is used. This means that if you see a list of 15 or 16 numbers it is very likely that every item can be associated with a number.
For example, if I had a puzzle titled Who? and the puzzle list was as follows.
Jon Pertwee
Sylvester McCoy
Patrick Troughton
Christopher Eccleston
Jon Pertwee
Christopher Eccleston
Peter Davidson
William Hartnell
Patrick Troughton
Colin Baker
Peter Davidson
Colin Baker
Colin Baker
Sylvester McCoy
William Hartnell
If you were to take a quick trip to this Wikipedia page then you would quickly discover that list pertains to the order of actors that played The Doctor and that it gives you the fake coordinates for this puzzle cache.
The key to solving this type of puzzle is finding the pattern among the listed items. The most powerful tool I like to rely on is Google. When it looks like a list I like to google the numbers that should make the 37 or 126 part of the coordinates. For example, if you google Jon Pertwee and the title together you should discover that he was the third actor to play The Doctor. From that point you have discovered the most basic pattern for a puzzle.
Some puzzles might not list out 15 items and can include less. For example, if you see
My Bonnie
Yellow Submarine
Please Please Me
Abbey Road
Help!
Rubber Soul
Yesterday and Today
Revolver
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Let It Be +1
Then it would become obvious to anyone who knows the Beatles that these are names of albums, but only ten are represented. This usually means that the numbers for N 37 and E 126 can be assumed, especially in Korea where there are only a handful of numbers that can make the North and East degrees. Diving further into the problem you find that the years the albums were released fit a pattern that represent the coordinates for the virtual points of this cache.
On a list there is one other thing that cannot be forgotten. Sometimes there are modifiers to the numbers that the list gives. Above on the Beatles albums list there is a modifier for the album "Let It Be" that indicates +1 to the number meaning fund the year that matches 1970 = 0 and then +1, so your final number is 1.
Now it's your turn. Use your new skills to find the coordinates to the geocache. Good Luck!
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.