Oh give me a clone,
of my own flesh and bone,
with the Y chromosome changed to X.
So when it is grown,
my very own clone,
will be of the opposite sex.
This cache provides an opportunity to play with heptominos. A
heptomino is something that is composed of seven squares that are
connected together on their sides. Allowing them to be flipped and
rotated, there are exactly 108 different heptominos. It is possible
to use the whole collection of heptominos to construct all sorts of
patterns.
We created patterns for the 12 letters in the name of this
cache, and set out to fill them with the heptominos, with a twist.
One heptomino has a hole in it that makes including it in a block
letter problematic. So we left it out, and instead, we CLONED one
of the others to replace it.
After a month of intensive computer searching, a full solution
has not yet been found. We simplified the search to exclude the
word "OF", and a solution popped out after a few days. We then
constructed a rough "OF" out of the remaining heptominos so that we
could get this cache in place. The computer search continues, and
if a full solution is found, we will update this cache to include
it. That should not change the difficulty of what you need to
do.
Update! The process searching for solutions
for filling the letters was stopped May 21 16:28 2003 PDT (the
system needed rebooting). It had been running continuously since
Feb 23 10:43 2003 PST. In that time, it found 84096 different ways
of filling the letters CLONE MY OWN with heptominos, which used
1250 different sets of heptominos. For each of those sets, none of
the leftover heptominos could be used to create even just the O of
OF. We have not decided yet whether to start it back up where it
left off; it probably has a year or so left to run...
To find this cache, what you need to do is to find the two
identical heptominos. One of them may be flipped and/or rotated
from the other. They could be in any letter. Note the value in both
clones, and apply that to the minutes value in the latitude and
longitude, based on the colors. If the two heptominos are of
different colors, then apply the one of the color that occurs
inside of the other in a standard primary rainbow to the latitude,
and the other to the longitude. If the colors are the same, apply
the sum of the two values to both coordinates. What are the chances
we've made it easy for you? 
There is
a larger version
of the puzzle available if the one below is too small.
The area with the cache closes at dusk. It's much busier than
the parking lot would indicate, so please use discretion when
seeking and replacing the cache. We saw several aliens and their
dogs while placing the cache. The location is both kid and dog
friendly and the walkway is stroller and wheelchair accessible.
The container is black and filled with usual cache goodies, many
of which DenaliNW provided to spawn the clone. It's within 10 feet
of the main walkway. There is no need for any real bushwacking.
We're launching our first travelbug, Eureka!, here. We hope that
Eureka! will find many puzzle caches to visit.
Finally, we liked the general area of this cache so much that we
added a Bonus
cache so you can explore more of it. Update:
The bonus cache location has been destroyed, and it is no longer
available.
