Gryptic puzzles are a sort of mini-crossword puzzle without the clues; they were invented by Les Foeldessy. There are 12 words, each with at least 6 letters. 6 of the words are horizontal and 6 are vertical, and they cross in a 6x6 square grid. You're given all the parts of the words that stick outside of the grid, and maybe some letters in the grid, and you have to figure out the rest of the letters in the grid. Here's a sample Gryptic puzzle, to make sure you understand the rules:
Feel free to solve it if you want to, or you can click here for the solution.
Gryptics are hard to create; sets of 12 words that mesh that way are quite rare. I thought about writing a computer program to automate the search, but since I was only planning to make a few of them, I settled for using a computer-searchable word list and doing most of the work on paper. I may have made the wrong choice; creating each one took several hours of frustration.
It shouldn't take you nearly that long to solve the 3 puzzles below. To make things slightly easier, I've included at least one word related to geocaching in each puzzle.
Once you've solved the puzzles, you'll need to count how many times certain letters occur in the answers. NOTE: Only count the letters in the 6 by 6 grids; ignore the letters outside them.
Let A be the number of times that the letter "I" occurs in the grid for puzzle #2.
Let B be the number of times that the letter "E" occurs in the grid for puzzle #3.
Let C be the number of times that the letter "A" occurs in all three grids.
Let D be the number of times that the letter "N" occurs in the grid for puzzle #2.
Let E be the number of times that the letter "E" occurs in the grid for puzzle #1.
The coordinates of the cache are
N 40° 51.ABB W 124° 09.CDE
If you think you've figured out the coordinates, you can check them with certitude:
You can also see who else has solved the puzzle. Note: You can remain anonymous if you want to; incorrect guesses are always anonymous. (Puzzle makers, you can create your own certitude links here.)
I suggest that you park at the Humboldt Coastal Nature Center on Stamps Lane, and start your hike on the Wildberries Trail. The cache is a SnapWare container, about 2 by 4 by 6 inches.
Congratulations to AlpineOwlet for FTF!
On 9/25/2018, this puzzle was
