Rules for this puzzle: No intentional red herrings, no oddball (fishiness) methods of presenting coordinates (UTM, for example, or also having coordinates read backwards), and no leaving off the N32 and W97 just to make it more difficult. There may be more than one layer on this puzzle. Collaboration is allowed and you may ask me for hints after there has been a FTF. The posted coordinates are bogus and random.
The difficulty is probably equal for the puzzle and for the hide. As for the puzzle... I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I kept forgetting about it. It kind of reminds me of a Bennet puzzle in presentation.
20 17 4 24 33 29 4
14 12 6 17 33 27 -2
This puzzle went two months without a local solver (the remote, usual suspects, solved in 24 hours - kudos to you folks!). So, what is the difference? What skill sets are they employing that made this puzzle so much easier for them? Well, I thought that might make this a good puzzle modification to explore that territory (I've mentioned before, if a puzzle goes unfound/unsolved for an extended period of time then the CO should change their puzzle - I'm owning up to that statement). Here we go down the rabbit hole...
First of all, if you try to blindly solve this puzzle without knowing what is going on, you are likely going to fail. It is the equivalent of solving a rotating ASCII shift cipher without knowing the password - it can be done, but surely there is a better way. I mention, in the hint, "look for a pattern of how you might arrive at 32 and 97". So, knowing I don't play unfair, this means 20=3, 17=2, 14=9, and 12=7. You also know it has something to do with ASCII because of the puzzle title and the fact I provide an ASCII table in the images area.
So now what? Well, lets assume it is an ASCII shift cipher - that isn't a far stretch. An ASCII shift cipher is basically a Caesar cipher except instead of shifting just the alphabet you shift the entire ASCII table of 127 characters. So what happens when you take 3 in the ASCII table and shift it 20 digits? You get a G. What happens if I shift a 9 in the ASCII table 14 digits? You get a G... interesting. Shift a 2 by 17 digits? You get a C. Shift the 7 by 12 digits. Also a C. Even more interesting. Do you see a pattern yet? Go solve it!
This is why I like this puzzle. It is a prime example of using what you know to figure out what you don't know. There is really no other practical way to solve it.
You can validate your puzzle solution with certitude.