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Broad River Cryptography #1: Caesar Cipher Mystery Cache

This cache has been archived.

profzoom: This puzzle series was an absolute blast to put together, and congratulations to the brave few who went through the effort to solve them! The original goal was to have 15 caches forming geoart in the shape of the Greek letter/mathematical constant pi (π), but I never did get around to finishing those last two puzzles.

Due to the low find count and difficulty of keeping all 13 caches maintained, I've decided to archive the series.

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Hidden : 1/20/2019
Difficulty:
3 out of 5
Terrain:
2.5 out of 5

Size: Size:   small (small)

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Geocache Description:


The purposes of this geoart series are twofold: to bring cachers to the watershed of the North Fork of the Broad River in Stephens and Franklin Counties and to serve as an introduction to the fascinating field of cryptography.


According to the historian Suetonius, Julius Caesar encrypted military messages by shifting their letters three spaces. For example, if Caesar wanted to instruct one of his generals to "ATTACK AT DAWN", then he would send the encrypted message "DWWDFN DW GDZQ". (Of course, we're pretending for a moment that Caesar and his generals spoke English...) D is 3 letters after A, W is 3 letters after T, and so on. Then the general would decrypt the message by shifting each letter back 3 spaces (D back to A, W back to T, and so on).

Of course, we're not limited to just 3 spaces. We could use 4 spaces, 5 spaces, or whatever. In fact, the "Additional Hints" on every geocache page are encrypted by shifting each letter 13 spaces. This method of encryption is known as a Caesar cipher or shift cipher.


To find this geocache, decrypt the message below using a Caesar cipher. You will need to figure out the number of spaces that are being shifted.

WXACQ CQRACH OXDA CFNWCH NRPQC CFX OXDA NRPQC FNBC NRPQCH CQANN BRGCNNW CFX BNENW XWN


Congratulations to AndrewsFamily78 for FTF!

Additional Hints (Decrypt)

ybpx a ybpx haqre n ebpx

Decryption Key

A|B|C|D|E|F|G|H|I|J|K|L|M
-------------------------
N|O|P|Q|R|S|T|U|V|W|X|Y|Z

(letter above equals below, and vice versa)