This puzzle cache has been placed at Holmebrook Valley Country Park with the kind permission of Chesterfield Council. It is not at the posted coordinates so you will need to solve the puzzle to work out the actual location. Access is available 24 hours on foot although the free car parks and entrance are locked at night. The container is a small clip-top-lid plastic container with logbook and pencil, plus a little room for the odd trackable. This final location is at:
N 53° AB.CDE W 1° FG.HIJ
The Puzzle
There are 3 steps to solving this puzzle:
- solve the answers to the ten questions;
- convert these answers to the 2-character abbreviations;
- cross reference all these two letters on the grid to obtain the final ten number answers needed for the coordinates.
This puzzle has a theme of US states so you may need a mixture of general knowledge and a little bit of research to work out the answers. Each of the 10 questions (labelled A to J) will ask you to figure out which of the 50 states in the USA are being described, with every one being a different state. Once you have an answer then you will need to look up what the 2-character abbreviation is for that state, for example Alaska would be AL. These abbreviations are technically the postal abbreviations which only came in after zip codes (postcodes) were introduced, not the shorthand abbreviations such as Connecticut which is abbreviated to Conn. but for the purpose of this puzzle it would be CT. Use the list below to look up the 2-character abbreviation as they are not necessarily the first 2 letters, sometimes it is the first and last letters, sometimes the first and a notable middle letter, or multi-word states tend to use the first letters of each word, e.g. New Hampshire would be NH.
Once you have the 2 characters then you will need to look at the second table (at the bottom of the 10 questions) which cross-references the 2 letters of the alphabet. For the first character you need to look along the horizontal, and for the second character you need to look up and down the vertical. For example, California is represented by CA, so you would look along to the 'C' column, then move up that column to the 'A' row. The answer for that state would therefore be the character which is in that box (in this example CA = 3).
Please note that the cross-reference grid is not 26x26 letters as not all are used in state abbreviations and so these unused letters have been left out, giving a grid 19x19 letters.
Repeat this for every question and you will have your 10 digits for A to J which will reveal the final location of the cache.
Handy Tips to guessing the states:
- The 10 answers A-J do not necessarily start with that letter, in other words answer A does not have to start with the letter A
- Take care with your workings as there are a few steps and a mix of letters so check your answers as you go along
- Some of the 'facts' about each state could refer to more than one as the information is gleaned from various websites, but it is not unusual for several states claiming they are the driest, or most central or first to sign the Declaration Of Independence etc. Each answer has several clues in it though so use them all to avoid these contradictory factual claims, and some clues may be notably easier than others.
Questions:
Question A:
The only state named after a US president, this state contains the Northwestern most point in mainland USA. It has more glaciers than the rest of the mainland states combined, and is home to the Mount St. Helens volcano which exploded outwards in 1980. The state is also home to Amazon.com and Microsoft, and often gets its name confused with the nation's capital in the District of Columbia which is far, far away but shares a similar name (thanks for the confusion George).
Question B:
Having the highest state capital above sea level, this state also hosts the Rio Grande river which runs the whole length of it. Despite not being a state until 1912, the territory of the same name was created by congress in 1850, and included all of this state and Arizona, plus parts of Nevada, Utah and Colorado which make up the four corner states with this state. It was named by 16th century Spanish explorers, and to this day it is officially a bi-lingual state with 1 in 3 households speaking Spanish. It was also possibly visited by aliens in an infamous suspected crash of a spaceship back in 1947.
Question C:
Known as ‘The Great Lakes State,’ it is also where Motown music originates from, with Detroit being the MOtor TOWN of the US (at one point producing 75% of the world’s cars). The state has more lighthouses than any other US state and the most freshwater coastline in the US. It is also the home of a worldwide cereal brand that brought us the characters Snap, Crackle and Pop.
Question D:
This state housed the first presidential mansion, and once hosted the US capital city in Philadelphia, which is where the Declaration Of Independence was signed in 1776. The first American flag was made there and it is the place where you’ll find the iconic Liberty Bell.
Question E:
The name comes from the French translation of the native American name meaning ‘Great River’ and it has the most sets of double letters and most occurrences of the letter ‘i’ out of all the state names. When it was accepted into the union in 1817 only the western half was allowed as the state; the eastern half became the Alabama territory and was admitted as a state 2 years later.
Question F:
Renowned for having just one star on its flag, this state is home of the Alamo and the American football team the '------ Cowboys.' There was an old soap opera running from 1978 to 1991 which was set around a ranch in the same city of the Cowboys and focused on a family obsessed with oil and money. The first word transmitted from the moon on July 20th 1969 was a city name in this state; a year later the famously ill-fated Apollo 13 mission had a message with the same place name followed by “… we have a problem.” There was another of this state's cities mentioned in the 1971 song which asked “(Is this the way to) --------” and the state itself got mentioned in an 1853 song about a yellow rose.
Question G:
The major cash crop from here is tobacco. It is home to the Blue Ridge Mountains, and also the US Navy’s Atlantic fleet and largest ship building yard. There is an iconic 5-sided government building here which is the largest office building in the world with 68,000 miles of internal phone lines. Nearby is the tomb of the unknown soldier in Arlington National Cemetery.
Question H:
Despite being nicknamed the 'Silver State' it actually produces more gold here. It is also known for a lot of money flowing through it with one area being the gambling and entertainment capital of the US, sung about by Elvis as being a 'Bright Light City'. This same city has more hotel rooms and suites than any other city on earth, and also copies other cities with a mock New York and Venice, and mock structures such as an Eiffel Tower, Statue Of Liberty and giant pyramid. It shares a boundary with Arizona, including a state line (and time-zone line) half way along a very famous dam. With a lot of desert this is certainly one of the driest states in the nation, and those deserts hosted the largest number of nuclear tests and an infamous Area 51.
Question I:
Despite not being the state capital, the famous city with the same name as this state is known worldwide, strangely nicknamed after a large version of a common household fruit. Its proper name is also so well known that Sinatra sung it twice. This is the home of the Empire State Building, Central Park, and the Yankee Stadium, all contained within just the very bottom tip of the state.
Question J:
This rather protruding state has one popular tourist destination which has the highest number of amusement park visitors in the country, where you can see film sets, roller coasters, 2 metre tall mice and dogs walking around, performing dolphins and much more. The state has the American alligator as the official state reptile, and many marshy wetlands where you can see them in the wild. For the high fliers it is also home to the Kennedy Space Centre.
When you have the full coordinates you can check on the website puzzle-checker to see if you are right.
There is also a cryptic puzzle hint (see below) which describes the surroundings of the cache when you get there. You will need to abbreviate these additional states to read the hint properly.