About This Series
I love puzzles and have been solving puzzles, not just puzzle
caches, for as long as I can remember. I do the various puzzles in
the paper every day and I've got puzzle books and puzzle stuff all
over the place.
Since I began geocaching, I have been intrigued with puzzle
caches and I think they are twice as fun as traditional caches. You
get to enjoy the excitement of the hunt and the thrill of the find
twice - first when you solve for the real coordinates, and then a
second time when you find the cache itself! It is like two for the
price of one. Totally cool.
However, I have learned that a good many geocachers out there
just stay away from puzzle caches. Some just don't care for them,
but others I have heard from tell me that they just don't feel like
they know how to begin solving them or they feel too dumb to solve
them. And to avoid those unpleasant feelings, they just avoid
puzzle caches altogether.
If you fall into this category, or if
you just want to get a little bit more insight and some strategies
on how you can approach solving puzzle caches, then this series of
puzzle caches is probably just right for you! If you are already a
puzzle master and just want to flex your puzzle muscles, let me
know and I can point you in the right direction for some utterly
difficult puzzles to test your wits against. This series is not
that kind, it is a teaching and learning experience. Kind of like
going back to school.
I do not claim to be a puzzle expert by any means. Most of my
puzzle books are not even close to being completed. Knowing that I
freely admit to be far from the expert in the field, please accept
this series merely as my humble offer of some of the things I have
learned, experiences I have had, which I will share with those who
want to learn. And it is also my offer to share with those who want
to learn MORE about puzzles, because I would like to see more
cachers enjoy puzzles and the thrill of trying to solve them. Maybe
you will see that new cache published with a blue question mark and
leap on your steed, with joust in hand, ready to give battle with
confidence rather than dread.
This series is planned to be ten caches. The first nine will
provide lessons to assist you in building your puzzle-solving
skills. Each will contain a lesson centering on a specific puzzle
skill, examples of how to apply that skill, an exercise to test you
on that skill, and a cache to find as a reward for your efforts.
Study the lesson, complete the exercise, and you'll find the
location of a cache.
Each of the caches will contain a piece of information you will
need to help you take the final exam (which will be the tenth and
final cache in the series). When you visit each cache, you will
need to bring something to record those clues for later ... like
paper and pen/pencil or perhaps a camera. (Or a hammer, chisel, and
very large rock would work but might prove cumbersome and time
consuming.)
One final note: Each of these caches will have an unactivated
geocoin in it as a First to Find prize. Crew416's rule: IF YOU
HAVE BEEN FIRST TO FIND ON ANY CACHE IN THIS SERIES, YOU MAY NOT
NOT NOT FIND OR LOG ANOTHER ONE IN THE SERIES FIRST UNTIL IT HAS
ALREADY BEEN FOUND AND LOGGED BY SOMEONE ELSE!!! That means
there should be 9 different First to Find cachers on the first 9
caches in this series. The final exam will be open to all and will
also contain a nice geocoin prize for the first finder. This will
give a lot of new puzzle cachers the opportunity to be First to
Find on a puzzle cache, perhaps for the first time ever. This
should give more cachers the thrill of solving and being there
first and score a new geocoin prize and one experienced puzzle
solver doesn't end up with all the coins. So shall we begin?
Lesson 1: Strategy
"I have no clue where to even
start...Help!!?!!"
"Where do I start?" is probably the best question I've ever
heard or been asked when it comes to puzzle solving. When I set out
to tackle a new puzzle, here's the general strategy I use to try to
pick it apart.
1. Begin with the End in Mind
This is one of Stephen
Covey's
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It simply means that
you should try to visualize what your result will be before you
start looking for it.
For example, suppose I told you to go find a regular-size
traditional cache at a particular set of coordinates. You would
already have an idea of how big that would be and would focus your
efforts on things at those coordinates that could be about that
size. You would approach the same set of coordinates very
differently if I told you it was a magnetic nano cache instead of
an ammo box.
Puzzle caches are the same way - the descriptions typically give
you hints as to what their solutions will look like. The solution
to a puzzle is typically (but not always) a set of coordinates, so
keep an eye out for ways in which coordinates might be
represented.
In our area, the north coordinates are usually expressed in
seven digits and the west coordinates are usually expressed in
eight digits. So, a pair of seven things in a puzzle description is
a strong hint that those things will ultimately become the north
coordinates in your solution. A pair of eight things in a puzzle
description is a strong hint that those things will be the west
coordinates in the solution. A pair of five things might be the
coordinates of the minutes, using along with the degrees of the
posted coordinates. A pair of three things might be the fraction of
minutes in each coordinate.
Ultimately, you are looking to use the data provided to come up
with the coordinates. Look at the information provided with the
idea that you are going to have to convert that into numbers, or
words that spell out the numbers, which will be the cache's
coordinates.
2. Take Stock of What You Know
Make a list of the basic facts as presented to you. Don't let
your own biases or preconceptions limit or polarize your thinking.
Just get a quick inventory of what you're given and keep it
separate from what you think you know about what you're
given. For example, consider this little brain teaser:
Plant ten trees so that
the trees are in five rows of four trees each.
Five rows of four trees seems to imply that twenty trees are
needed, so it's clearly not possible to do it with ten. But no
constraints on how those trees can be arranged are given ... in
fact, there
are at least six different ways to do it.
Puzzle writers often exploit the differences between what you
know and what you assume. It's always best to avoid jumping to
conclusions unless you are totally sure of the facts on which those
conclusions are based.
3. Look for Patterns
Many puzzles involve recognizing and using patterns of
information. Being able to spot those patterns is often the key to
solving the puzzle. For instance, suppose you were given the
following information:
Green-0 Yellow-5 Red-3
Violet-4 Blue-4 Orange-6 Indigo-7
You might notice that those are the basic colors of the rainbow
- the rainbow is the pattern. Arrange the numbers in rainbow order
(ROYGBIV) and you get "3650474", which could be "N 36 50.474" (half
of a pair of coordinates).
Any time you see some common thread among the information bits
that you're given, that might be significant. Information can be
ordered (such as the colors of a rainbow) or unordered (like a
league of professional sports teams).
Just because the bits of information you've got can be grouped
or interpreted in a logical way doesn't mean that it's relevant to
the puzzle. There's no real general-purpose way to tell what's
relevant and what isn't - good puzzle writers like to keep you
guessing about those sorts of things. Figuring out what's important
and what isn't is often a matter of trial and error.
4. Make Educated Guesses
Sometimes you've drawn all of the conclusions you can from the
facts of your puzzle but you still don't have it solved. Now what?
This is where educated guessing comes in.
You may know educated guessing by its more formal name: the
Scientific Method. You make a guess, then you do some tests to see
if that guess is true or false. If it's true, then you add that
guess to your knowledge base. If it's false, you scrap it, go back
to the point where you guessed, and guess again.
Consider solving a maze. You know where the start and the end
are, but you have no idea which path is the proper one. So you
start at the beginning and work your way through it until you come
to a fork. Now you've got two or three different paths you can take
... but which one's the right one? The only way to find out is to
pick one and carry on. If you come to a dead end, then go back to
that fork in the road and go the other way.
But suppose you've made your guess as to what the right path is
and you come to another fork in the road. Now you've got to
guess again. Keep track of your guesses so that you can "unwind" in
case your results based upon your guesses turn out to be wrong.
If you're a video gamer, marking the place where you've made
a guess is like reaching a save point - if you mess up later in the
game, you can always return to your last save point.
5. Find the Light Switch
In 1995, Andrew Wiles
proved one of the most famous conjectures in all of mathematics,
Fermat's
Last Theorem. His proof, which he constructed in secrecy over
seven years, was long and complex. He described his work in proving
the theorem this way:
Imagine that you are in a large, unfamiliar mansion at night and
all of the lights are off. You slowly feel your way around the
room, discovering what objects are there by touch, slowly learning
where they are in relation to one another. Eventually, you find
your way to the wall and locate the light switch and turn it on.
All of the sudden, you can clearly see everything. Then you move on
to the next dark room and start over again, repeating the process
until the whole mansion is illuminated.
Some puzzles are like large mansions with many rooms, while
other puzzles may be more like a one-room apartment. These rooms
may come in different sizes with different numbers of objects in
them. But typically there is one small key - one "light switch" -
that illuminates each room. To solve the puzzle, your mission is to
find that key.
For instance, you may not know what to make of this:
0x24 0x32 0x1da / 0x77
0x2b 0x14d
But when you discover that "0x" means that the numbers are
hexadecimal (base 16) instead of base 10, then decoding them to "36
50 474 / 119 43 333", or "N 36 50.474 W 119 43.333", becomes
trivial.
Resources you can use to discover things like that will be
covered in the next lesson.
Exercise 1 (and a great rule for puzzle
solving): No Whining
Penobscott and Gertrude are hosting a picnic for their friends.
Penobscott prefers wines from as far north as possible, while
Gertrude likes wines that come from the westernmost vineyards.
Here is the price list from their local wine shop:
Red Wines |
Hobart Muddy, 1986 |
$23 |
Acqua del Piatto Merlot (Sonoma), 2003 |
$119 |
Starboard, Batch 11 (Napa), 2001 |
$17 |
Nobel (Stockholm), 1968 |
$36 |
Mocha Java Zinfandel (Madagascar), 2005 |
$42 |
White Wines |
Yukon Gold, 2004 |
$43 |
Conch Republic Chardonnay, 1982 |
$42 |
English Breakfast Chenin Blanc, 2007 |
$45 |
Gewurztraminer Crème (Bavaria), 1979 |
$46 |
Samoan Sailor Sauvignon Blanc, 1991 |
$44 |
Sparkling Wines |
Tortoise and Albatross (Galapagos), 1835 |
$529 |
Stolichnaya Shampanskoye (Murmansk), 1989 |
$690 |
Don Ho Ukelele Brut (Hilo), 1966 |
$620 |
Perth Pink, 1972 |
$289 |
Spasmi Dolorosi Del Rene Champagne (Argentina),
2003 |
$325 | |
Penobscott and Gertrude each chose a red, white, and sparkling
wine to bring to the picnic. Based upon their choices, can you
determine where the picnic will be held?
First to Find Honors Go To: jsemanajr
This cache placed by a member of
Dry Creek Geocachers