The cache is not at the posted coordinates. Instead solve this puzzle to get the coordinates of this cache. The hide is a 1 and the puzzle would be a 5, but given that I tell you what to do, I feel a 4 is appropriate. Some work is involved though.
There is a saying in Dutch "In Mei elke vogel legt een ei.", which translates to "In May, every bird lays an egg". Some birds lay their egss slightly earlier, and one of those birds is the Lapwing bird. This habit triggered a tradition in the Netherlands to see who could find the first Lapwing egg, the so-called 'Kieviet ei jacht'. Finding the first egg would indicate the start of Spring and would be reported in the newspapers.
Since 2015, you are no longer allowed to pick up the egg, but the hunt still continues. Many believe that this tradition led to what is now the traditional Easter Egg hunt.
Knowing it that, it is your turn to hunt. Your hunt is to find numbers that will give you a location for a geocache. The hint involves a picture full of eggs and hidden numbers.
Please take a look at the image below. There are many numbers associated with the image and hidden in it. I used 15 different techniques to hide numbers. Your job is to find and extract all the numbers and add them together. After you found them all, you have to add another number given below and that will give you a coordinate.
View image here
Here is how the numbers have been hidden:
- We will start easy. Just count the numbers of eggs on the page.
- We can shade a part of the picture and hide a number. In this case, it is a 4 digit number. Pretty easy to see I think if you are looking for it.
- Now look closely. There a 10 digit number hidden on the page in a very small print. (some arrangement of these digits 0111233679)
- Always remember the usual suspects. Can you find morse code on the page? We are looking for a 21 characters text, given you a three digit number.
- Are you familiar with snooker? Remember those morse code numbers? Well use the same sets and make 21 composite numbers using the snooker colors. Sum the 21 numbers together to get a 5 digit number. (Checksum: 12)
- The image a a regular 11 digit file name. Can you find it? It is encoded in the source code. Try saving the file offline.
- The height and width of the image can be used for coordinates. They are often three digit numbers, so ideal for coordinates. In those multiply the height and width in pixels to get your number. (checksum 21)
- The image also has a size in bytes (not kilobytes). Another great number to use. (checksum 33)
- Do you know how to get an image's EXIF Information? Well there is a 13 digit number hidden in the EXIF data.
- See, there are sooo many ways to hide numbers. I literally just copied text after the end of the file and hide a number. It will be obvious once your find it.
- Numbers can also be hidden in the background colors. There is slight variation in the background colors given you a 12 digit number. A fill bucket function can expose it. (checksum 64)
- Numbers can also be hidden by use slight variations in text colors to spell out a hidden text. A fill tool won't help now but a color select tool will show it and expose four digits spelled out. (Checksum 14)
- Let's do more with colors. Let use the HTML color code of the "Number Hunt" to give you a hexadecimal number that can be converted to decimal. It can also be calculated from the RGB color if you prefer. Checksum: 29.
- Stare at the picture. If you are good, you can see two word forming a two digit number. It is called a stereogram. If you don't see it, then use tool like most people do.
- Ever heard of steganograpy? Important to know is that used this website. as there are many different ones that all work different: https://stylesuxx.github.io/steganography/
Did you find all the numbers? If you and I didn't make a mistake, then you will get a number with a checksum of 68. Now add 320791599221861 and you will get a 15 digit coordinate.
Use the checker below to verify your coordinates.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.