THE ABOVE CORDS
ARE NOT CORRECT.
Take the lesson offered below and then work out the puzzle quiz.
About This Series
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!
I found a series similar to this one in the
Fresno area, along with another one in
Florida that were quite helpful. With permission from COs of
those series I bring you this series as a teaching and learning
experience, kind of like going back to school.
I do not claim to be a puzzle expert by any means. 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 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.
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 5 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 |
$27 |
Acqua del Piatto Merlot (Sonoma), 2003 |
$122 |
Starboard, Batch 11 (Napa), 2001 |
$22 |
Nobel (Stockholm), 1968 |
$40 |
Mocha Java Zinfandel (Madagascar), 2005 |
$41 |
White Wines |
Yukon Gold, 2004 |
$10 |
Conch Republic Chardonnay, 1982 |
$12 |
English Breakfast Chenin Blanc, 2007 |
$15 |
Gewurztraminer Crème (Bavaria), 1979 |
$16 |
Samoan Sailor Sauvignon Blanc, 1991 |
$14 |
Sparkling Wines |
Tortoise and Albatross (Galapagos), 1835 |
$756 |
Stolichnaya Shampanskoye (Murmansk), 1989 |
$940 |
Don Ho Ukelele Brut (Hilo), 1966 |
$876 |
Perth Pink, 1972 |
$789 |
Spasmi Dolorosi Del Rene Champagne
(Argentina),
2003 |
$589 |
|
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?
Congrats to ShaadowTech for
FTF