Geocaching is essentially a high tech treasure hunt. Those of us who play use hints and information to lead us to the right location. Not exactly “X marks the spot”, but close enough. One type of puzzle cache takes this a step further and turns finding the right coordinates into a hunt of it’s own. This treasure hunt could take place in the real world or on a screen. The information you’re searching for varies greatly, sometimes you’ll be told to go and find something that’s at a specific location, sometimes you’ll need to get your Google on to search out trivia or historical information and other times you might need to search for information within the geocaching platform itself. Either way, you will need to collect information and answer questions to get the final answer. As long as you know what information you’re looking for, this type of puzzle cache is normally not too difficult to solve, it just requires patience to seek the answers and care to make sure they’re correct.
Some examples of caches that use this skill are: the Anniversary of Geocaching series by steve4nlanguage (GC5Z0DA, GC6PYKA, GC7ARAH), Xian Gong Miao Trail by rudychung (GC6VXR6) and Little Silver by monkey_travels (GC6R003).
PUZZLE GYM SERIES
TREASURE HUNT TEASERS
ONLINE SCAVENGER
For the amateur detective out there, heading to my profile page and scanning through my geocaching logs tell the story of my recent life. Since I only got back into this activity in 2016, I first need to fill you in on the start. In 2014 I was single and living in Hong Kong. Whilst there, I met and began a courtship with a charming Taiwanese person. In the July of 2015, I took my first visit to her home country and the trip persuaded me that I wanted to continue the relationship and return home with her again someday.
Well, within months, work had got in the way of life and we found ourselves separated by the Taiwan Strait, she in Taiwan and I in Hong Kong. Nevertheless, we continued our relationship long-distance and began an almost year-long period of occasional visits to each other. My second trip to Taiwan was around December of 2015 and it was shortly after this that I signed up for a geocaching account, (the last time I had played was way back when I was still in uni).
During third visit to Taiwan, I introduced my partner to the delights of geocaching, and this is where you can do your sleuthing:
A - GC6?YZZ The first geocache I logged in Taiwan.
B - The number missing from the title of the TYPE I wrote a DNF log for. (TYPE1?)
C - The total number of DNF logs on my third visit to Taiwan. (Remember, my third visit was the first visit that I geocached on.)
D - The total number of caches logged on that third visit. (Any kind of log counts.)
For my fourth visit, we ventured to the southwest of the country.
E - The month in which I visited Taiwan for the fourth time. (All these visits have caused no end of hassle for me whilst trying to do anything here which requires a passport!)
F - The number of traditional caches found on my fourth visit.
G - The number of different types of caches found on this visit.
By this point I had committed to seeing if I could relocated to Taiwan and was in the process of bringing things to a close in Hong Kong. When I was ready to leave, I took a little extra time off to attend a friend’s wedding back home and my charming friend came with me.
H - GC4Z?E4 The last geocache I found in Hong Kong before heading home. I wish I could say that the multicache series before it were my last since they would have been an amazing way to cap my geocaching time there. If you ever get a chance to visit Hong Kong DO NOT MISS THIS AWESOME SERIES - seriously, it blew my mind.
J - Whilst in the U.K. I encountered my first (and so far only) webcam cache. The time recorded on the webcam in my log was 13:4?:50.
After an exciting two weeks, we returned to Taiwan to see what life would bring. As I write, my charming person is snoring beside me, (a frequent response to my mention of geocaching), but that’s fine by me, we all have our own ways to relax.
K - The number in the geocaching name of my charming person. (My fourth visit to Taiwan might be a good place to start.)
Checksum: A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+J+K = 54
N25 (J-D)(F+A).(G+C)(E+C)(K-F)
E121 (H-B)(F+G).(E-B)(CxA)(J-G)
Cache contains information required for GC7EV23.