I was recently called to a puzzle that intruigued my greatly (no, it wasn't anywhere near here). The cache is posted as a d5, and the FTF took 10 days to claim. Folks were talking about how much paper they wasted trying to solve it and how painstakingly brutal it was. I noticed something in the algorithm that made it distincly easier than the CO intended. Rest assured, I have not made that mistake here.
So, here it is....no hook, no internet research, no advanced computer degree required. This is it, it's all right in front of you. Copy it into paint, or print it out and grab some erasable colored pencils.
Some rules to help you:
-Connect each icon with its matching icon by moving through the maze one square at a time moving horizontally or vertically only (no diagonal moves!). Every path's start and finish is given.
-A path cannot cross itself OR any other path along the way.
-Every icon path occupies at least 10, but no more than 50 blocks.
-No one path will occupy all 4 squares of any 2x2 area.
-Every square will be used exactly one time.
-Thick black walls are not to be crossed.
-The cache icons were chosen completely at random - the frequency, rarity, desirability etc. of any given cache icon has no bearing on the number of steps you can expect to take compared to any other icon.
To get the final coordinates, once you are finished with the puzzle (and double checked you've followed all the rules), put the icons in order by the number of blocks each occupies. Every two digit number will be followed by the first letter of the cache type, so for instance, if you had 50 blocks on the traditional path and then 47 blocks on the letterbox path, your key starts with 50T47L. As there are 16 total paths and each value is between 10 and 50, you should end up with a 48 character key that goes ##letter##letter and so forth in descending numerical order (remember, every 2-digit number should be unique, and they should sum to 400).
You can validate your puzzle solution with
certitude.
To avoid any confusion, use these letters:
A for Adventure Lab, A for APE, C for CITO, E for Earthcache, E for Event, G for GIGA, G for GPS Maze Adventure, H for HQ, L for Letterbox, M for MEGA, M for Multi, M for Mystery, T for Traditional, V for Virtual, W for Webcam, W for Wherigo. If you aren't sure which icon is which, maybe this isn't the puzzle for you.