The Smallest Champaign-Urbana Park Game Mystery Cache

Play the "Smallest Champaign-Urbana Park Game" by first finding the featured park, and then finding an even smaller one.

Smallest Champaign-Urbana Park Game

THIS CACHE IS NOT AT THE POSTED COORDINATES, BUT IT IS WITHIN TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND MILES.

Our team is made of UIUC grad students and postdocs from many places around America and the world. We are surprised by how small many of the Champaign-Urbana parks are. For example, one of us would jog & bike around Victoria Park while a postdoc in London. We are confused and don't understand the smallness of some of the Champaign-Urbana parks. To help us discover how small a park can be, please play our "Smallest Champaign-Urbana Park Game".

How To Play Rules:

To play, do all of the following:

1) Find the current smallest park from the picture, or by deciphering the "Smallest Park Location Puzzle" on this webpage (which will yield the GPS coordinates of it). Go to that location, and get the name of the park. A picture of the park is included below. Find the GPS coordinates of the approximate center of the park, and take a picture with you and your GPS in the park, with the coordinates on the GPS display readable. The picture will demonstrate that you visited this park, and show what its coordinates are. Try to do this with one photo, but more is ok if necessary.

2) Find an even smaller Champaign or Urbana Park District park. For this purpose, "park" means a region that has a well-defined boundary and is officially marked by an official "Champaign Park District" or "Urbana Park District" sign at the location of the park (note that this also included those little green signs with a stylized tree icon on them). If the park boundaries are ambiguous, do your best to determine them and explain the ambiguity in an email to us. Calculate the area of this park to the best of your ability. For the purpose of calculation of the area, you may approximate the region of the park by a simple shape, but that shape must contain ALL of the park. For example, if your candidate is an oval, you may use as the area of the park the area of a rectangle that contains all of the park. Of course, your candidate does better if the determined area is minimal. Let us assume that we can measure areas with, say, an error of 10%. We want to be 90% confident that your candidate park area is smaller than the current "smallest park" area posted here. Thus the former must be equal or less than 82% of the latter. Example: the current smallest park is 1000 square meters - the successful candidate must be less than or equal to 820 square meters.

3) Take a picture of your candidate park. All of the park must be in the picture. The picture must not be edited, but you should cover any part of a sign displaying the name of the park prior to taking the picture. Record the name of this park exactly as it appears on the sign. Also record the GPS coordinates of the park. If this park is recognized as the new "smallest park", the encrypted text on this page will be changed to give these new coordinates upon decryption, and the cache location puzzle will be changed so that this new park name will yield the same cache coordinates. That is, the cache location will stay the same - the park name, park location puzzle and cache location puzzle will change. The picture of your park will be used by others to find the park, or verify that are at the correct spot if they decrypt the park location puzzle and get the coordinates. It will expedite the verification process if your picture shows the official Champaign/Urbana Park District signs. Otherwise, please take a second picture - of the "Champaign Park District" or "Urbana Park District" sign at your park's location and post that also. Again, you should cover identifying information on the sign - like the park name - as we just need to see from the sign that indeed your location is an official Champaign/Urbana Park District park.

4) Log your find. Post the GPS coordinates of the current park and the picture of your GPS at the park (from #1), the area you calculated for your candidate park (from #2) and the picture of your candidate park (from #3). Then email us the GPS coordinates of your park and its name exactly as it appears on the sign. Do not post the GPS coordinates of your candidate park or its name, as this is a challenge for the next person. Assuming you have met all of the conditions, your candidate park will become the new "current smallest park", and you will bear the title of "Omniscient Supreme Master of the Champaign-Urbana Smallest Park Game", until you are unseated by a challenger. If your candidate can not be verified to meet one or more of the above conditions, you will be emailed a description of the problem and your find deleted. Once the problem is corrected you may repost the find.

We would like to see a steady progression of smaller parks - so if you know of one much, much smaller than the current one it would be kind of you to allow others to first find intermediate sized parks.

Strategy Suggestions:
If you find a smaller park, it is of course to your advantage to include the least amount of unique background in the photo - making your park harder to find with the photo. You can pick the least revealing angle for the photo, and teammates can cover/block unique background objects - as long as the above rules are satisfied. Also, if your park has lots of trash, consider that a freshly CITO-ed park will generally be harder to identify from the photo. Be creative! As the parks get smaller it will become much easier to take photos with little identifying background info in them, and the difficulty rating of this cache will increase. Thus the longer you wait to log your find, the higher the difficultly rating the find will carry - but don't wait too long!

Current Smallest Park - Found By Mean Gene and roelsch, Omniscient Supreme Masters of the Champaign-Urbana Smallest Park Game:

Picture of the current smallest park:

Former Omniscient Supreme Masters of the Champaign-Urbana Smallest Park Game:

1) Team Armadillo
2) kidd-romain
3) Ma n Pa
4) Mean Gene and roelsch