Official Stuff
Cache is NOT at the posted coordinates.
Cache is inside the Auburn Public Library. It is available the following hours:
Monday-Friday: 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Saturday: 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Sunday: Closed
Note that hours are subject to change and holidays may affect this schedule. Be sure to check before you go…
Explicit permission for both the inside and outside hides was granted by the Auburn Public Library.
About this Cache
This cache is a two-stage mystery cache.
To find the cache, you will need to do the following:
- Solve the puzzle below. It will cover a number of common codes and one cipher. Numbers 1-17 will give you the coordinates for stage 1 of the cache. You can verify your solution with the Certitude checker on this page.
- Go to stage 1. You are looking for the information for stage 2. Use this information to find the cache and sign the log!
The final is inside the library and only available during library hours. Both stages of this cache are wheelchair accessible.
Note that all that is needed to get the stage 1 coordinates are solving the items 1-17 below. However, if you solve the remaining items, you will get a valuable hint that will help you locate stage 1!
The puzzle is rated a 3.5 difficulty. The actual hide is about a 2.5 Difficulty (Though the hint will help)
The Puzzle
I was climbing a hill to a cache the other day, and I got one of my favorite songs stuck in my head. The lyrics go like this:
The time between the notes relates the color to the scenes
A constant vogue of triumphs dislocate man, so it seems
And space between the focus shape ascend knowledge of love
As song and chance develop time, lost social temperance rules above
Then according to the man who showed his outstretched arm to space,
He turned around and pointed, revealing all the human race
I shook my head and smiled a whisper, knowing all about the place
On the hill we viewed the silence of the valley,
Called to witness cycles only of the past
And we reach all this with movements in between the said remark
As I was singing, it was really hard to see. I was wishing there was a different way to read the cache information. I couldn’t help but think about how computers translate the keys on a keyboard to a code they can recognize. When I got to GZ, there were two trees to choose from, and I couldn’t help but think of various “two-thing” ciphers! All of this made me think we could do a cool puzzle that features book ciphers, braille, ASCII code, binary, Morse, and Baconian code! How fun!
If you are familiar with these types of codes, you can jump right into the puzzle! If you are not, there is some information below that will introduce you to these various codes (and one cipher!
To find the cache, solve the puzzle below! There are a total of 24 items you must decode. We will tell you what several are, but you must figure out the last few. Read the entire message to get the coordinates to this two-stage puzzle cache! There is a Certitude checker that you can use to verify you solved it correctly. Note that the puzzle includes a hint. You only need to enter the coordinates into Certitude to confirm your answer. However, the only hint you will get will be from solving the puzzle!
Remember! Sometimes things will not be as they appear! Additionally, it’s not beyond us to use some techniques covered already on GC9MVHZ - GGPS-01 Puzzle Hide- Intro To Basic Concepts!!
The following clues use a book cipher
1. 2224 1232 3331 1461 1112
2. bar bar bar bar / bar bar bar gjb / guerr gjb guerr gjb / Gjb Gjb Gjb Guerr / Guerr guerr svir bar / Guerr gjb sbhe gjb
3. 100110011010000010100111000011100011001111000100011
The following clues use braille (grade 1)
4. 
5. 
6. Monochrome pentapeptides. Bicycle quadratic. Monolith biweekly quadruplet pentamer. Monosyllabic bilateral pentarch. Bipedal triceratops Quadrophenia pentathlete.
The following clues use ASCII Code
7. 070 105 118 101
8. Winston Churchill, Irving Berlin, Walter Breuning, Ruthie Thompson
9. 87, +14, +14, +1
The following clues use binary code
10. 01011010 01000101 01010010 01001111
11. 🐯🏈🐯🐯🐯🏈🐯🏈🐯🏈🐯🐯🏈🐯🐯🏈🐯🏈🐯🐯🐯🏈🏈🏈🐯🏈🐯🐯🏈🐯🐯🐯
🐯🏈🐯🏈🐯🏈🐯🐯🐯🏈🐯🏈🏈🐯🐯🏈
12. George Washington was a GREAT GREAT first president!
The following clues use Morse code
13. ..-. --- .-. - -.--
14. AB BB AB B
15. (4.2 x 5 + 67.27 – 15.22) + (4.7 x 3.6) + (5.1 x 7.2 x 9.3 – 27) + (52.3 x 95)
The following clues use Baconian code
16. AABAAABAAAAABBAAABBBBAABBBBAAA
17. 🥓🥓🍳🥓🍳🥓🍳🥓🥓🥓🍳🥓🍳🥓🍳🥓🥓🍳🥓🥓
18. THIS CODE IS A TOUGH ONE!
You Have the Coords, but if you want a hint...
You now have all the information you need to put the coordinates in the geochecker below and get the coordinates for the first stage of this puzzle!
To get your hint, you will need to decode the following items. Each one uses a different code/cipher type. YOU will have to determine what it is! We will tell you that the 6 items here use the code/cipher methods used above. Eash is used ONLY ONCE. So, if you get a clue and you used the Baconian code, you won't use that again.
19. I am too darn tired. I can accept. Ox farm. I love. A cat.
20. 🍔😁🥧 🌭 🌮🥰 🤣🍗🥩 😲🥦😛🥨 😜😲😡 😇🍦🥧 🍕
21. $33.35 $1,122 $13.76 $2176 $231.35 ($16.17 + $16.17)
22. His sincere hope was everlasting, joyful, happy existence. But, painful thoughts created tough scenarios to tackle. He persevered and nothing would prevent his joy!
23. 0 11 100 0101
24. HC CB GC CB GA CB GB CB HD
Checker
You can validate your solution with the Certitude checker below! Note: Enter ONLY the coordinates into the checker (Do not enter the hint information).
Some Additional Information about the Code/Cipher Types Used
This cache page reinforces the concepts covered at the GGPS-02 Event- Basic Codes event. It utilizes the techniques covered at the event! The items covered were book cipher, braille, ASCII, Baconian, binary, and Morse.
What is the difference between a “Code” and a “Cipher”?
Put simply codes are replacements. For example, in Morse code, the letter “S” is replaced with three dots (…). EVERY time you see …, it will represent an “S”. It does not change. Codes can substitute for single letters or entire words. There are established codes (Like Morse or Baconian), but codes can also be created for a single use.
Ciphers on the other hand will vary based on information used to encode. For example, a book cipher may read 1422, but if used with the Declaration of Independence, it will yield a different result than if used with the Gettysburg Address.
Following is some more detail on these different codes/ciphers used.
Book Ciphers
Book ciphers use some common text to encode a message. The text can be a famous book (Benedict Arnold used the book, “Commentaries on the Laws of England”), a poem, a song, or any created text. The only requirement is that the text is known to both the encoder and decoder.
Book ciphers can be done a number of ways, but a typical book cipher will map to a word or a letter by giving the following information:
- Page, verse, or paragraph number
- Line number
- Word number
- Number of letters in the word.
Here are a couple of examples of book ciphers using the Gettysburg Address:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent,
a new nation, conceived in Liberty,
and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation,
or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.
We are met on a great battle-field of that war.
We have come to dedicate a portion of that field,
as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives
that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
To select a word, you could use the following cipher:
- Page/Verse Paragraph = 1 (1st paragraph)
- Line Number = 1
- Word number = 4
The book cipher would be 114 and the result would be 7.
Similarly, you can choose individual letters
- Page/Verse/Paragraph: 2 (2nd paragraph)
- Line number = 5
- Word number = 4
- Letter number = 4
So, 2544 would map to “T”
When using a book cipher it is critical that both the encoder and decoder know the text used. It is also critical that the text used is not affected by versions, word wrapping, font size, or other things that can affect the order and count of words, paragraphs, pages, etc.
Note that you may not know right away if the cipher is using words, letters in a word, or just letters in general. It may take some trial and error to determine what the cipher is referencing.
Braille
The origins of braille trace back to the French army. In 1819, Charles Barbier, concerned about soldiers’ exposure to enemies when using lamps to read messages, devised a system of “Night Writing” that used a 12-dot cell to create the alphabet and create a message that could be read by touch and not require light.
Later, Louis Braille (Blind himself in an accident) would create what would become the standard for this communication. He changed it to a 6-dot cell count, which could be read by the fingertip in a single pass (unlike the 12-dot cell).
While meant to read by touch, braille can also be expressed graphically.
Here is what the alphabet looks like
Additionally, each dot in a braille cells is assigned a number.
You can express braille in a puzzle by either showing the dot position on a six item grid, or by referencing the numbers. If you were trying to show the letter “P”, you could show that as 1,2,3,4 or 1234.
Note that in braille, there are two types in use today:
- Type/Grade 1 (uncontracted): This type uses all 26 letters of the alphabet. It is often the first braille learned by students
- Type/Grade 2 (contracted): This is the most commonly used form. It takes advantage of several shortcuts to use fewer letters to represent whole words. This not only reduces the space required for braille text, but also makes reading it faster.
There are plenty of online braille converters and alphabet keys to help you translate braille.
ASCII
ASCII is an acronym for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It was developed from telegraph code starting in 1960. It uses numbers 0-255 to map all characters used in electronic communication. A sample of the ASCII conversion is below.
Note that in ASCII, upper and lower case letters have different values. There are also codes for punctuation and other keyboard functions (Like a carriage return).
To encode or decode a message using ASCII, there are several online converters. The process is as simple as matching the letters/characters you want to the codes established. “Hello” = 72 101 108 108 111.
Baconian Cipher
The final two-character cipher we will discuss is the Baconian Cipher. Though, I’ll admit, I always call it the “Bacon” cipher. I mean, who doesn’t LOVE bacon??
The Baconian Cipher was created by Francis Bacon in 1605!!! Wow! That’s an old cipher!! In Addition to serving as the Lord High Chancellor of England from 1617 – 1621, he is also known as the “Father of the Scientific Method”! Wow! And he created a code that Geocachers can use!!
His code was based on the idea that a secret message could be encoded in the way text is presented. He would use two different fonts or typefaces, each representing a value of either “A” or “B”. He created an alphabet based on this. “AAAAA” was “A”, “AAAAB” was “B”, and so on. Bacon’s code grouped his letters into groups of 5 characters. He originally based his code off the Latin alphabet, which doesn’t have the letters “J” or “U”. A later change was made to include these two letters.
To convert a message, look for the “A” and “B” characters. Here is a sample message:
This Message Is A Bacon Cipher
You notice that some of the letters are in red and some are in black.
We can assign “A” to the red letters and “B” to the black letters. Doing that, we get this message:
AAAABAAAAAAAABAABBBAABBAB (Note: we have removed the spaces as they are not needed)
Now that you have your code, you can Google to find a Baconian decoder. When you find your favorite one, create a folder called “Geocaching Puzzle Decoders” in your favorites/bookmarks and save it there!!
Note that we guessed as to what “A” and “B” were. We may have guessed wrong. Many of the online decodes allow you to easily “swap” A and B, so if you don’t get a readable message, try that before giving up.
Morse Code
This is probably the most “famous” of the codes that use two characters. The code was created by Samuel F. B. Morse and first used around 1844 (He had developed a slightly different version in 1837). Morse was one of the inventors that helped pioneer the telegraph machine and played the key role in creating the code that would be used to transmit messages with the machine.
The basis of the code was a series of electronic pulses of different lengths. A short pulse and a long tone. These became commonly known as “dots”(.) and “dashes” (-). Original telegraph machines actually made notations on paper, but experienced operators were able to translate the code directly, making the paper unnecessary.
Morse translated the entire alphabet to a series of dots and dashes. In 1848, Friedrich Clemens Gerke made a number of changes, and his code was eventually adopted and is referred to as “International Morse Code” and was made the worldwide standard in 1865.
There are tons of online Morse code translators out there. Use your favorite search engine to search for “Morse Code Translator”. You should have plenty of choices, each with pros and cons. When you find your favorite one, create a folder called “Geocaching Puzzle Decoders” in your favorites/bookmarks and save it there!!
Binary Code
In the computer age, Binary Code is an important concept, so it might be surprising to learn that the invention of the modern binary number system is attributed to Gottfried Liebniz in 1689!! And actually, the binary systems even pre-date that! The Chinese were using a binary system going back to the 9th century B.C.E.!!!
The basis of the binary system is using two characters to encode a message. Most often, the characters are zeroes (0) and ones (1). Binary strings are often arranged in strings of eight digits (or “bits”). Using just 1’s and 0’s, a string of 8 characters can take on 256 combinations, allowing for binary code to translate to a wide number of characters. Making things a bit more complicated, binary can be converted to several different character sets—hexadecimal, octal, decimal, ASCII or more!
One of the most common conversions in Geocaching puzzles is conversion of binary to text. This is often done via the ASCII character set. In ASCII, there are 128 characters defined by a numeric code. So, for example, the ASCII code for “A” is 0065. The number 65, expressed as a Binary number is 01000001. So, 1000001, translating from binary to ASCII is “A”. Note that in ASCII, “A” is a different value (65) from “a” (97).
You can find tons of binary translators using your favorite search engine!! When you find your favorite one, create a folder called “Geocaching Puzzle Decoders” in your favorites/bookmarks and save it there!! Remember that it may take a couple of tries based on the character set you are converting to!
About the Georgia Geocaching Puzzling Society
The Georgia Geocaching Puzzling Society was created in 2022 to support the Georgia puzzling community. The goals of the organization revolve around the three "E's":
- Educate: teach important skills and help geocachers find important resources to help them solve puzzles.
- Encourage: Encourage people to look at puzzles and develop a love of puzzling and hide more puzzle caches!
- Engage: We want to engage and create a community that supports creating and solving puzzles in Georgia!
We hold events the around last weekend of the month in various locations. You can search for "GGPS" to see all of our scheduled events!