Take a chance, do a dance
the FTFers have ants in their pants
Across ten states, a few oceans and seas
this Eureka puzzle has strange properties
A thimble or a cannon can be forged from iron ore
As can railroads that travel from Ohio to Baltimore
Travel around and make twenty sawbucks each trip
In a wheelbarrow, a car or a battleship
You might see a dog with a shoe or a hat
while you work hard to become a fat cat
This monolog poem is hefty with many a clue
So the puzzle below is simpler to do
This is a 6-stage multi-mystery cache. The listed coordinates are NOT for the final cache or the initial stage. You must solve the puzzle below to determine the coordinates for stage 1. You need to make some keen observations outside your normal frame of reference and decipher the coordinates below. The final coordinates are within 2 miles of the listed coordinates.
Consider the following list of sentences. Each sentence contains a few hidden elements. Together, the elements from each sentence will form an obvious pattern or connection to a common theme. To solve this puzzle, you need to:
- Discover the hidden elements in the sentences below and deduce the theme that binds those elements together.
- Determine the one missing element and using that element as a basis, answer the questions below to decipher the coordinates.
- From North Carolina to Pennsylvania, we drove through 100s of miles of calm pacific wilderness.
- Mom and pop enjoyed cruises on the Baltic, the Adriatic, and the Mediterranean seas.
- The Titanic was designed and built to circumvent North Atlantic icebergs.
- Good oriental cuisine is hard to find along I-91 from Derby Line, Vermont to New Haven Connecticut.
- It cost James only $10 to see Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie in a New York theater in 1945.
- The planning board walked briskly to the parking lot when the meeting adjourned.
- The NCAA final four included Duke, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky.
- I read in GQ magazine that Sal Bando’s son was a surprisingly short linebacker who now lived in Scranton Pennsylvania.
- The General Electric Company sponsored deep-water workshops to research coastal wind energy.
- The newest Charles Schwab office opened in West Virginia and specialized in large estates.
Once you know the missing element, resolve the coordinates by determining the following facts.
The cost of the missing element has been $XYZ since 1935.
L = X (the digit in the 100s place)
M = Y - X
The Nth letter of the missing element’s name is actually misspelled.
P = The one numeral whose letters (i.e., "O-N-E", "T-W-O", etc.) are jumbled up in the letters of the missing element.
Q =The sentence number that the missing element should have been included in to be consistent with the theme.
R = The number of consonants in the missing element's name.
S = The number of vowels in the missing element's name.
The first stage can be found at:
North
42 2P.RMN
West
071 3Q.LSL
Ready: Solve the puzzle.
Set: Find some free parking.
GO!
You can check your answers for this puzzle on Geochecker.com.
NOTE:
Bring a penny with you in the field, you might need it along the way. Also, bring a pencil and paper to write down the coordinates and keep track of what you find at each stage. The final cache poses a challenge for you when you log the find.