The Pineville Geocachers club is at it again. At their last meeting, DouglasFirr insisted that he had the best method for hiding a geocache in a pine tree, while Coney438 insisted she had the best method, and pretty soon everyone was arguing about the best camo, the best hide style, the best height, the best color, etc. Tempers and voices rose, and it looked like fisticuffs were about to break out when PineSolver (as usual,) came up with a great suggestion:
"Pineville has just opened up its City Park to geocaching. Why don't we all pick a pine tree there and hide a cache in it in our own style? Then we can see which caches bring the most joy to searchers."
After everyone regained their tempers. it was agreed that this was a perfect solution, since there were 51 pine trees in the City Park, and there were 51 members of the Pineville Geocachers club. Each member chose one of the trees, and all trees were chosen by exactly one member.
A map of the City Park is given below. Note that it is a perfect square, with 16 rows, 16 columns, and 256 total cells. Groundspeak waived its normal rules about distance between caches (after all, learning the ultimate Pine Tree hide style would be an important gift to mankind), and each member placed a hide in their tree.
However, each member wanted to watch cachers search for their cache, and so all 51 members set up a tent in a cell contiguously North, South, East or West of their pine tree. Due to the bad blood that still existed from the near melee, no cacher set up their tent in a cell touching another member's tent (even diagonally), although some did set up tents in cells touching another members pine tree. All 51 tents were inside the park.
The map below shows the location of the 51 trees in the City Park. The numbers on the outside of the grid show the number of tents set up in that row or column. Some rows and columns have an asterisk, question mark, or missing number. An asterisk is always a 3 or a 4. The asterisks, question marks, and missing numbers are for you to determine.
There is a 3x3 pond in City Park, with a single-cell island in the middle. (In other words, 8 cells make up a ring around a single-cell island.) This pond may be on the edge of the park, but it is entirely within the park limits. No tree or tent is in the pond or on the island.
Each tree is associated with a single geocacher's cache, and that geocacher has a tent in one of the squares adjacent to that tree. That tree and that tent are paired together. Two cells are adjacent if they share a common side. Two cells touch if they are adjacent or share a common corner.
The cache can be found at N4A BC.DEF W093 1G.HIJ, where:
A= the number of tents touching the pond
B= the number of tents in the row marked by a question mark
C= the number of tents in the column marked by a question mark
D=one-half the number of tents on the main NE-SW diagonal
E= the number of tents on the main NW-SE diagonal
F= the number of tents touching 3 or more trees
G= the number of tents in the island's column
H= the number of tents in the island's row
I= the number of tents to the south of their paired trees
J= one-quarter of the number of tents touching exactly one tree (rounding down, if necessary)
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com.
This cache was featured on the GEOCACHING PUZZLE OF THE DAY BLOG on 4/3/15.