“So You Think You Know …” is an occasional series of mainly cryptic puzzles, a bit like cryptic crosswords. Each one is based on the area of a single district / borough council, in this case East Staffordshire (up until this one, all the others have been in the East Midlands). The bookmark list links to others in this series and also the “An A to Z of …” puzzles, which follow the same idea but for a specific town or parish.
East Staffordshire is a borough council, with its headquarters at Burton upon Trent. Its western boundary is the River Dove, which separates it from Derbyshire; it has borders with three other Staffordshire districts, namely Staffordshire Moorlands, Stafford, and Lichfield. East Staffordshire contains some 820 square miles and has a population of around 124,000. From a Geocaching perspective, East Staffordshire played host to the 2022 West Midlands Mega at Uttoxeter.
There is no need to visit the posted coordinates, which are at Burton Town Hall – they are not relevant to the puzzle itself.
For this puzzle, you need to solve the clues below to identify 20 place names in the district – some are sizeable places, others may be quite obscure. Local knowledge might help, but it is certainly not essential - a good map will come in handy though. Most of the answers are a single word, but some are two words. If you think you have come up with the perfect answer to a clue but cannot find it on a map the chances are that you need to think again.
- Bird on the bog
- Chilly barrier
- Derby County’s projection
- 8 + 24 + 54 + 60 (but not in that order)
- Fitzgerald’s pitch
- Gallery & tump
- In a pickle
- It seems that the Princess Royal is not very tall
- Libra ascendent
- Members of the alnus family
- Negative. On the other hand….
- Nigel Pargetter came a cropper here
- Nurse.Ten.Blog. But it’s not What 3 Words
- Quercus is finished by the sounds of it
- Radiant tuba
- Secret or puzzle
- Shield dog dashes out
- Sound like a witch. And not….
- Squeezed timber, or so it sounds
- Voice of the Queen Vic’s landlord
Once you have solved them all, put the 20 place names into alphabetical order, and then use the following to calculate the coordinates.
The cache is to be found at N52 AB.CDE W001 3W.XYZ, where:
A = Number of letters in the 4th place name, minus number of letters in the 9th place name
B = Number of letters in the 10th place name
C = Number of letters in the 2nd place name
D = Number of letters in the 16th place name
E = Number of place names beginning with the letter A, plus number of place names beginning with the letter R
W = Number of letters in the 8th place name
X = Number of letters in the 5th place name, minus number of letters in the 6th place name
Y = Number of place names beginning with the letter G
Z = Number of place names beginning with the letter H