“An A to Z of …” is an occasional series of mainly cryptic puzzles, a bit like cryptic crosswords. Each one is based on a single town or parish, in this case the parish of East Leake. (I figured that so many cachers visit East Leake these days that they ought to have something a little more difficult to get their teeth into!)
The bookmark list links to others in this series and also the “So You Think You Know” puzzles.
As with all these puzzles, it is of help (though not essential) if you can find a definitive map showing the boundary of the parish – one is available online.
There is no need to go anywhere near the posted coordinates, which is a rather damp location anyway.
Your task is to use the clues below to identify 20 street names in the parish, and then use the answers in a few calculations to arrive at the final cache coordinates. For all of the answers you need to miss out words like “road”, “lane”, “avenue”, etc; likewise, if a street name begins with “The”, this should be omitted. Most of the answers consist of a single word. If you find an answer to one of the clues that seems ideal, but you can’t find a matching street, then the chances are that you are wrong.
- After short company’s tick
- Bovine stumble
- Charlotte or Emily
- Chilly start - north or south
- Close to paradise
- Countries by the score
- Former Lovers’ character
- Friends would have one
- Lyme Regis school
- Master
- Not a green door
- Not a wooden crossing
- Princess or corkscrew
- Spanish for a Norwegian ride
- Tasty elf
- The 37th C in C
- This doesn’t sound like me
- Very illuminating
- Without Jim, she got mixed up
- Wonder ‘orse
Once you have solved them, put the 20 street names into alphabetical order, and then use this to calculate the coordinates.
The cache is to be found at N52 AB.CDE W001 VW.XYZ, where:
A = Number of letters in the 10th street name
B = Number of letters in the 17th street name, minus the number of letters in the 15th street name
C = Number of street names beginning with the letter C
D = Number of letters in the 20th street name
E = Number of letters in the 5th street name.
V = Number of street names beginning with the letter O
W = Number of letters in the 13th street name, minus the number of letters in the 14th street name
X = Number of letters in the 8th street name, minus the number of letters in the 18th street name
Y = Number of street names beginning with the letter L
Z = Number of letters in the 9th street name
The final location is well away from the village, but it is still within the parish. There is somewhere you can park close to the cache if you choose to drive there.