I am by no means a mystery cache expert but I enjoy them very much. This Puzzle Gym series is intended as way for new cachers to build up their puzzle stamina and for the old timers to get in a bit of training to stop them becoming rusty. Please ask for help if you’re stuck, I want these to be solvable. Enjoy!
One type of puzzle cache you might come across involves pictures, in fact there are a whole range of ways in which pictures can provide you the clues to solving puzzle caches.
Starting with the most basic, you might be presented with information in picture form which you have to decode someone into coordinates. As with other types of puzzle cache, it’s helpful to remember that you’re looking for something which will give you coordinates so around here that means you’re looking for two sets of numbers N## ##.### and E### ##.### (although since you normally will be able to guess the first two for north and first three for east, you might only be looking for ten numbers). There are many ways that this can be hidden in a picture: numbers, text and items could be photoshopped in or out, pictures can be manipulated by colour or orientation.
Images can be used to hide or hide clues in other ways, you might need to match pictures to locations, times or names. For example, sometimes you need to go to a location and search for what you see in a picture on the cache listing. Or maybe you need to match faces to names or events to dates. For these last two you might find that you need to do a little bit of reverse image searching (many search engines now will allow you to upload images in order to find out what they are), this type of cache is like a picture-based treasure hunt.
Finally there are the sneaky photo data hides. This category of hides contains some of the hardest types of puzzles to crack. You could be searching for information in the source code of a picture (on a mac control+click and then choose inspect, look for the information which starts with <img). You could find the information in the metadata of a picture, to do this you would need to save the image and inspect it on your computer, (different platforms have slightly different ways of going about this). The owner might have hidden information in the title or description of the image or the image itself might function as a link to a site that provides further details - in fact there are so many complex ways to conceal information in pictures that I’m not even go to try and cover them all!
Some local caches which use pictures in a variety of ways include steve4nlanguage’s Flash Gordon (GC70DDW), JoyChang’s Don Quixote de la Mancha (GC78JX2) and Haima’s Pictograph (GC39NBF).
Remember, in caches with pictures you might find that all the words are just a red herring!
PUZZLE GYM SERIES
PERPLEXING PICTURES
THE YEAR OF THE COW
I grew up in an area surrounded by farmland and so as a child I could easily distinguish a Belgian Blue from a Holstein or (my favourite) a Highland Cow. Very few kids growing up in Taiwan will have had the same opportunity, and for those growing up in Taipei the numbers are even smaller. At GZ you will find a small slice of countryside life tucked away into the city.
Opening hours are listed as 6:00am to 11:00pm.