Historically,Battleship has been
a guessing game played by two people. It is known throughout the
world as a pencil and paper game and predates World War I in this
form. It was invented by Clifford Von Wicklerin the early 1900s,
but he never patented the game and it was soon published by Milton
Bradley Company in 1943 as the pad-and-pencilgame "Broadsides, the
Game of Naval Strategy". Later, the game became known simply as,
"Battleship". In 1977 Milton Bradley released a computerized
Electronic Battleship, followed in 1989 by Electronic Talking
Battleship.
In Battleship (and geocaching
Battleship), there are 5 ships of various sizes arranged and hidden
on a 10 x 10 grid. Each grid location is identified by a
letter (A-J) and a number (1-10). An example of a grid
location might be “A3” or “F10”. There are 100 possible
locations or caches. Your task is to locate and sink these ships by
searching for geocaches that represent the grid
locations. Many of the caches will be “misses” just like the
like the Milton Bradley game. A few will be “hits”.
Each hit will giveyou partial coordinates for the ship it
represents. Once youhave made all the hits on a particular
ship, you will have all the coordinates for that ship. You
then must find the mystery cache for that ship in order to
officially sink it. The mystery cache for each of the five
ships will have partial coordinates for a mystery final. Once you
have sunk all the ships,you will have acquired the coordinates for
the final. When you findthe final you officially win
thegame!
The five ships that you must
sink:
aircraft carrier (5 hits will
sinkit)
battleship (4)
destroyer (3)
submarine (3)
patrol boat (2)
Note the example image above:
Each ship is placed either horizontally or
verticallybut never diagonally.
Ships do not overlap one another.
Game Examples
Let’s say you find cache C6 and it's a
“miss”. There will be no coordinates contained within.
It is simply another traditional cache find. Try again
at another Battleship cache.
However, if you find cache E5 and it is a “hit”,
youwill find a card listing a ship type and partial coordinates
forthat ship's puzzle/mystery cache. Let's continue
with this example. If it was the aircraft carrier in the
example image above, you know that it would require 4 more hits
tosink. Your next search should be either D5 (on the grid
spacelocated directly above), F5 (directly below), E4 (to the left
side)or E6 (to the right side). Once the aircraft carrier is
sunk,you will have the full coordinates for “You Sank My Aircraft
Carrier”. Please note, the caches themselves are
nothidden in grid pattern. However, you should use the
grid provided to keep track of your finds and understand how the
ships are laid out. By the way, "hit" caches are traditional finds
just like "misses".
Game Rules
Please do not indicate in your log when youfind
a hit. You don't want to give your opponents this free
information!
Good Luck!