CrunchyFrog83's "Games on our Shelf" series of puzzles reminded me of a magazine I have loved ever since it first came out in 1977: Games. It features a wide variety of verbal and visual puzzles, brainteasers, trivia quizzes, and many other features, as well as reviews of new board games and electronic games.
One of my favorite Games puzzles is "Battleships" (also known as Bimaru, Solitaire Battleships. or Battleship Solitaire). Below is an easy one for you to solve. From that, you'll be able to get coordinates to the cache.
This grid represents a section of ocean in which a fleet is hiding. This fleet consists of one battleship (four grid cells in length), two cruisers (three cells each), three destroyers (two cells each) and four submarines (one cell each). The ships may be oriented either horizontally or vertically, and no two ships can occupy adjacent grid cells, not even diagonally. The digits along the grid's right and bottom edges indicate the number of cells in the corresponding rows and columns that are occupied by vessels.
Notice that three "shots" have already been taken to start you off. They show two grid cells with water (no ships located there) and the end of one ship. See if you can plot the locations of all 10 ships.
Once you've located the fleet, it's time to calculate the coordinates. If a letter is on a ship, use the size of that ship. E.g., if A is on the battleship, then A = 4. If A is in open water, then A = 0.
The solution is: North (A+B) (B+C) ° D (A+E) . (F+G) B E West A C K ° (E+G) (H+I+J) . K (F+J) (A+B+C)
Note: As of Sep. 21, '13, the cache location has changed. The puzzle stays the same, but when you enter that solution in the checker, please make a note of the corrected final coordinates that are provided in the checker.
For those of you who solved this before Sep. 21, '13 (or if you don't want to verify your solution in the checker), here is an offset: To N subtract 0.175; to W add 0.017
