Background
"Cache Rich" SouthWest England
You know, they say that the southwest is "Cache Rich" - thousands of caches of all sizes in just about every available spot. 19,475 at the last count. 2543 Mystery caches like this one. Every footpath, every corner of every town. Particularly in Devon. You hear stories all the time of caches being found by accident or failing review due to insufficent separation.
If you look at the stats, the number of caches has exploded since 2000 and still climbing in its 20th anniversary year. Assuming the trend continues, the numbers of caches might double over the next 5 years - where are they all going to go?
Experiment
Take the published location of this cache for instance. N 50° 47.225' W 3° 32.735'. We could just go and look for the cache at the location provided, but as I am sure you have determined, its in the middle of a field, so not that useful. Not all is lost though....it looks fairly central to this part of Devon, so we could make use of the degrees and minutes and work with that. We don't have to throw away all the decimal minutes either. Since we are trying to "get back to somewhere you could place a cache", lets work with the latitude since most of the paths nearby are either up or down.
Why not start with the minutes of the latitude. We'll keep the 5 digit number there (47225) but we will add some random value to it. Now humans are known for their bias and not always being that random (which is a key argument here), so we will have to make sure we are being random which is probably more than just thinking of a number - but that's a good start. Lets think of a number greater than 100 comprising of 3 different digits. Now to ensure it is random, we are going to mathematically 'shuffle the deck' by switching the order of the digits (highest to lowest) and subtracting from the same number ordered lowest to highest etc.
That will give you some random 3 (or possibly 4) digit number that we can just subtract from our original minutes of latitude (reinserting the decimal point).
How about longitude? Again, keep the original 5 digit number, 32735, and add our random number obtained as above (XYZ+ZYX).
Lets just summarise what we did. We thought of our own number and we even mathematically shuffled it. All we have to do now is put it altogether and see if I am right...I am quietly confident...
.....A random cache in Devon awaits you.
Admin
- Caution - Since I don't know where you will end up - although I've set up a geochecker, I did that with my set of random numbers so have noidea if it'll work with yours.
- I have played safe with the selection of attributes - please stick to your abilities.
- I also don't know the cache size - it's very random
- Since I don't know your cache location, I might not be able to confirm that you logged the cache. You might have to provide some photographic evidence etc
- Don't blame me if you get lost and fall into the mud.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.