One quiet weekend morning, just around sunrise, I came upon a juggler standing near the intersection of NC 751 and Fayetteville Road. I found a place to park along the road and walked toward him. He was juggling six balls: a baseball, a football, a basketball, a tennis ball, a volleyball, and a golf ball. He seemed to have an affinity for the number six, since I noticed he was singing "I Got Six," one of the lesser-known of the "Schoolhouse Rock" songs: "I got six, that's all there is…"
"Not exactly 'Three – It's a Magic Number,'" I said.
"Hmpph!" said the juggler. "Six is twice as magic as three!" and with that, he stopped and dropped all the balls he'd been juggling into a large burlap sack. "In fact, I used six to make a very magical geocache, within a couple miles of here. Now exactly where it is: That's the puzzle."
"Ah! A puzzle cache!"
"Yes, indeed; it's a six-stage multi that starts with a puzzle. You see, I have assigned six attributes to these balls I've been juggling, perhaps you noticed some of them?"
"All I noticed was the variety. I mean, juggling a golf ball and a volleyball – that's pretty impressive."
"Ball type is one of the attributes of which I speak," agreed the juggler. "But there are others. There is a color, a letter, a shape, a scent…"
"A scent?! And wait, I didn't notice the balls being any special colors or shapes."
"I painted a shape on the ball, and my paints are scented. I used each of the six colors and scents once and only once… the six letters and six shapes, too: once and only one"
I was counting on my fingers. "Ball type, color, letter, shape, scent… that's five attributes."
"Yes, and number is the sixth. The numbers come from the cache coordinates, so they can repeat, as needed. They're the last three digits of the latitude and the last three digits of the longitude."
"Will you tell me the coordinates of this cache?" I asked.
"Then it wouldn't be a puzzle, now would it?" he replied. "Here's how it works." He showed me a set of coordinates, with the degrees and whole-number minutes provided, but with three blanks after the "." for both latitude and longitude.
"So, you didn't write out the last three digits of latitude or longitude," I said, as I copied down the numbers he'd shown me.
"Oh, I wrote them out all right. As I told you before, I wrote them out on the balls. I placed them in a line, the last three digits of latitude, in order, followed, immediately to the right, by the last three digits of longitude, also in order. Then, I juggled them, but not until I wrote down the following clues to putting them back the way I had them."
The juggler handed me a sheet of paper, upon which was written the following:
- The oval is painted red.
- The 'B' is on a baseball.
- The 'C' is enclosed in a square.
- The ball with the ‘D’ belongs immediately left of the purple-painted ball.
- The rectangle is green.
- The golf ball smells of patchouli.
- The yellow paint carries a sandalwood scent.
- The ball that belongs third from the right bears a painted oval.
- The tangerine-scented ball belongs immediately right of the basketball.
- The football belongs immediately right of to the sandalwood-scented ball.
- The ball that smells of mint belongs in the left-most position.
- The lavender-scented paint was used to draw the triangle.
- The 'D' smells of musk.
- The tangerine-scented ball belongs next to the ball with the circle on it.
- The circle belongs immediately right of the pentagon.
- The blue-painted ball belongs immediately right of the yellow-painted ball.
- The golf ball belongs immediately left of the ball with the 'D'.
- The baseball belongs immediately right of the volleyball.
- The 'F' is on a tennis ball.
- The yellow-painted ball belongs immediately right of the black-painted ball.
- The ‘A’ ball belongs somewhere to the right of the ‘E’ ball.
Below these bullet points, at the very bottom, was a number/letter key:
A=0; B=1; C=F=4; D=E=3
The only other message on the page consisted of these words: "There is a parking lot just west of the trailhead, across the street."
"That's all you need to know," the juggler said with a smile, then he walked away and quickly disappeared from view.
"But wait!" I called. It was too late. There was something bizarre about the coordinates he'd given me. I looked at what I'd written down before, copying without thinking. It read:
N 55 124._ _ _, W 210 134._ _ _
First off, those didn't make any sense as coordinates. And second off, they certainly didn't look close to here, but the juggler said the cache was within a couple miles. I set a waypoint at the intersection where he told me this, and have used those coordinates as the stated ones for this cache page. But I haven't actually found the juggler's cache, since I cannot solve his puzzle. Can you?
P.S. Once you've solved the logic puzzle and are on to the number puzzle, please take special care with the part after the ".". This'll take more than Googling a converter. You'll need to know or learn a tiny bit about the underlying principle. Still, it's not too hard (and it can be Googled). Good luck!
NOTE (2/3/13): For some reason, I've added a lock to the final cache. You'll find the combination at the penultimate stage.