Okay, students. Listen up. We can go geocaching as soon as we finish our lessons for the day. Johnny put that way. I told you once already. Now, who can name the novel that starts with the famous line: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Anyone?…Now let’s not always see the same hands. Ok, Mary. That’s right! A Tale of Two Cities. And who is the author of this great first line? Yes, Charles Dickens. Very good. Now, the coordinates for today’s geocache are: N 32 AB.CDE W 117 VW.XYZ I want you to read each of the following great first lines of literature, identify the novel, and the author. Then take the first letter of the author’s last name and convert it to a number where A is 1 and Z is 26. Then, I want you to add three (3) to the number. Alright? Finally, throw out the first digit for any number over 9. That is, 17 becomes 7, 23 becomes 3, etc. Use that number as the appropriate digit in the coordinates above. Everybody got that? What’s wrong, Tommy? Okay, but hurry back and don’t forget to flush. Suzie, you look confused. Let’s go back to our example. Dickens begins with a D. D is the 4th letter of the alphabet. We add 3 to 4 which equals 7. So, in that case the correct answer is 7. Another? Hmmm. Okay, how ‘bout this one: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Annie, you were first. Very Good! It’s from Anna Karenina by… anyone?… Leo Tolstoy, correct! Tolstoy begins with T which is the 20th letter of the alphabet, add 3 to get 23 and strip off the 2 to get 3. Got it? Now, get to work and I’ll tell you what else you need to know about this cache when you are finished.
A) The great fish moved silently through the night water, propelled by short sweeps of its crescent tail.
B) It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.
C) As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.
D) Call me Ishmael.
E) Who is John Galt?
V) Let me say this: being a idiot is no box of chocolates.
W) It was a pleasure to burn.
X) Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Y) Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Z) If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap.
Okay, time’s up. Everybody finished? Good. The School Bus is going to drop you off at the published coordinates at the top of the cache page. From there - Billy, you do that again and you will be sitting outside Mr. Brown’s office while we go geocaching - from there, it is a nice, easy hike to the cache location. The cache is a medium tupper-like container filled with various geoswag. Everybody bring their GPS unit, extra batteries and geoswag? Good. And I don’t have to tell you that if you take something, leave something of equal or better value. Don’t forget to log in and NO BUSHWHACKING. Class dismissed. Let’s go!
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.