I Love The 90s — Pogs Mystery Cache

Pogs had to be the biggest craze for me during my first year of junior high. Everywhere I turned everyone was playing pogs. It was the biggest thing to hit junior high schools since who knows? I so loved trying to win some pogs even though I lost more times than I won but it was all could since I just enjoyed the heated competition that would come about especially when we would play for the big "bucks" — slammers. Ahhhh . . . the memories . . .

Pogs was a game of chance like most games and with the right skill, you could win a fair amount or if you lacked the skills, you would walk away with none.

Basically, two players would stack pogs face down on a surface. Let's say I want to put down two pogs. My opponent would match that and put down two pogs on top of mine. All pogs would be face down and then one player would use something known as a slammer to throw down on top of the stack in hopes that the pogs facing down would flip over and face right side up. Any that did, that person would take them. If any were still facing down, the opponent would then try the same technique to turn them over. This would repeat until all pogs in the stack are facing up.

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The cache is not at the posted coordinates but within a 3 km radius.
Please figure out the following game of chance to get the final coordinates to the cache:

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So, since we aren't necessarily playing pogs here but trying to solve for some coordinates, let's incorporate some pog action to figure out these coordinates, yeah?

Let's first solve for the North coordinates:

If we have 50 pogs in total and there are 2 people who want them, how many does each person get so that both players have an equal amount?

After each player has his or her fair share of pogs, let's start to play! The two players want to try a hundred games total but one of the players says to the other that they have already used up two of the games because one, they had to count up the original stack of pogs and two, they had to divvy them up. So if two games have already been used up how many games are remaining?

And there you have it — the north coordinates!

Now for some east coordinates:

Since a pog is like a coin, meaning it has a "heads" and a "tails" side, I guess that means the probability of it landing on either side (provided that the pog is hit with enough force to flip it over in the first place) is 50% or 1/2, right? You do want it to be on one particular side, right?

So now that they game is underway, the two players set five pogs each face down. One player throws the slammer down but none turn over! So next, the opponent delivers with force and all but three turn over. How many pogs did the first player get and how many pogs did the second player get?

Now there are 3 pogs left on the surface. If one of the players only wishes for two to land face up and he delivers his slammer with enough force to cause only those two to flip in the air, what is the probability in percentage that both those pogs will land face up?

And every game of pogs has two players.

And there you have it — the coordinates for east!

I hope you enjoyed our little game of pogs this fine day. I hope to see you again real soon.