A lesson on some other coordinate systems followed by an exercise for the reader.
Introduction
This is the sixth in my series of caches meant to teach people some ways to solve puzzle caches. Please read the information above the line in Puzzlers Lesson 1: Alphabets. There are a whole lot of different ways to encode coordinates, so I will only cover in detail ones I've seen used for geocaches and some others that look interesting. You should become familiar with the others just in case someone decides to use one for a puzzle.
Hint: I intend to throw in one of these other, non-discussed coordinate formats later.
What 3 Words
What 3 Words is a proprietary geocoding system specific to this one company. That means that if this company ever goes out to business, this system may very well go away or may not. However, it reduces every 3 meter by 3 meter square on land into three English words. (It is also available in other languages.) Imagine figuring out what three out of a geocache listing to use for the answers to the puzzle. It numbed my mind thinking of the ties I could make you see the platter.
To get the three words you can enter an address, a business name or a coordinate. However, the coordinates must be like 41.194183, -112.114850 for the posted coordinates. I haven't figured out how to get coordinates out of the web interface so I used the satellite view to find the location then used Google Earth to enter coordinates until I got the same location. They encourage you to use their app to navigate, but I haven't installed it, so it is quite possible to find locations (see above) without their app.
8 November 2019: The geocaching toolbox has a way to convert What-3-words to coordinates.
Maidenhead Locator System
The Maidenhead Locator System (or "Maidenhead" for short) is a coordinate system used by amateur radio operators to give location information to the accuracy desired. The coordinates are transmitted in character pairs. The first of each pair is longitude and the second is latitude. Each pair of characters alternates between letters and numbers.
Quoting from the Wikipedia article:
To simplify manual encoding, the base for the first pair of letters—traditionally called a field—was chosen to be 18, thus dividing the globe into 18 zones of longitude of 20° each, and 18 zones of latitude 10° each. These zones are encoded with the letters "A" through "R".
The second pair of numbers, called a square and placed after the first pair of letters, uses a base number of 10, and is encoded using the digits "0" to "9". This is where the alternative name "grid squares" comes from. Each of these squares represents 1° of latitude by 2° of longitude. For additional precision, each square can optionally be sub-divided further, into subsquares. These are encoded into a second pair of letters, often (but not always) presented in lowercase. Again, to make manual calculations from degrees and minutes easier, 24 was chosen as the base number, giving these subsquares dimensions of 2.5' of latitude by 5' of longitude. The letters used are "a" through "x".
For even more precise location mapping, two additional digits were proposed and ratified as an extended locator, making it altogether eight characters long, and dividing subsquares into even smaller ones. Such precision has uses in very short communication spans. Beyond this, no common definition exists to extend the system further into even smaller squares. Most often the extending is done by repeating alternating subsquare and square rules (base numbers 24 and 10 respectively). However, other bases for letter encodings have also been observed, and therefore such extended extended locators might not be compatible.
So, the greatest accuracy standardized for Maidenhead is 2.5 minutes of latitude by 5 minutes of longitude. If you recall from Puzzler's Lesson 4: Coordinates this gives an accuracy of (approximately) 4500 meters (latitude) by 7000 meters (longitude). This is not even close to the accuracy needed to locate a geocache. It is given as an exercise to the cacher to be able to figure out how to decode Maidenhead coordinates. The one Maidenhead one that I have tried decoding hasn't worked out for me.
Geohash
The Geohash is an open standard for geocoding. It uses the digits and lower-case letters, except for a, i, l & o.
These 32 characters are then used to get binary digits (bits) used to subdivide the globe. The first two bits divide the globe into eastern/western hemisphere and northern/southern hemisphere. Additional bits subdivide these sections of the globe into smaller and smaller sections until you get precise enough to locate a geocache.
If you want to know more please read the actual Wikipedia article.
For instance, the posted coordinates for this cache would be "9x262g0mw8k9" in geohash.
Plus Code
The "plus code" or Open Location Code is a shortened version of latitude/longitude coordinates. "It was developed at Google's Zürich engineering office", according to Wikipedia. A Plus Code does not contain any vowels or symbols that may be easily confused for each other. These are 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, C, F, G, H, J, M, P, Q, R, V, W & X. After 8 characters a plus sign is used to set characters apart.
You can read all about how it works or about half way down this web page is a way for you to convert Plus Codes. You can make your own Plus Code by finding the coordinates on Google maps and looking down the left column.
The posted coordinates for this cache is 5VVP+M3 Hooper, Utah or 85H95VVP+M3.
Other Coordinate Systems
This is a location where I will list other coordinate systems that people report to me. Message me if you find another coordinate system that you would like added here.
Puzzle
Now, on to the puzzle: Remember the caches in this series that you have done before and solve this puzzle.
IxBFBuDhwvwg
Congratulations to Dix1 and Del2u for being First to Find.