Welcome to
Sam and Eulalia Frantz Park, home of Dublin's famous "
concrete cornfield". The published coordinates are for parking near the field of corn. To begin the puzzle, proceed to the southeastern-most ear of corn. You will need to bring something with which to take notes and a calculator if your GPSr, PDA or cell phone is not already equipped with one. Please do not attempt to "brute force" the find as the cache is nearly .5 miles away.
The field of corn is arranged in a staggered array, with parallel rows running northeast on a 39.6° bearing (±.3°). The longest row points directly to the intersection of Frantz and Rings roads. If you are not seeing this, you'll want to walk around a little until it becomes apparent. There may be incidental rows, but only the rows running SW to NE are meticulously aligned to run parallel to one another.
Once you are oriented, make your way to the southeastern-most ear. Notice that this ear is in a row by itself. This is Row "A" and it contains exactly one ear, so make a note: "A=1". Now proceed north (use the sidewalk if you prefer) and record the values for the next several rows, then follow the sidewalk west and get counts for the remaining rows. If you've done it correctly, you'll end on Row "M" with a value of 2: "M=2". Now add up the row counts and you should have a total 109 ears in 13 rows (A to M). Order and accuracy are important.
After all that walking, a bench seems inviting. Just south of Row "M", you'll find shade, some benches and also five plaques running from north to south. Plaque #1 is north, and Plaque #5 is south. You need to find several words on the plaques, each of which is listed as follows: (#Plaque / Line / Word). For example, Plaque 1, Line 2, Word 6 "AMERICAN" is listed as (#1 / 2 / 6). But first, a primer to help you crack the cipher: (#1 / 7 / 2) "HAD" and (#1 / 2 / 5) "NATIVE" both decode to a value of 24.
For LATITUDE, find these words on the plaques, decode them and then do the math:
X = (#4 / 5 / 14), Y = (#4 / 1 / 1), and Z = (#1 / 9 / 2), N40 assumed
For LONGITUDE, find these words on the plaques, decode them and then do the math:
X = (#2 / 6 / 10), Y = (#5 / 11 / 5), and Z = (#3 / 11 / 7), W83 assumed
Now you have everything you need to solve for the final coordinates. Use the equation: X / Y + Z and round to #.### for both LAT and LON. You will travel to the site on main streets and use public parking, not corporate lots. Paved surfaces lead to within 300' of the hide. When you see a triangular cluster of 3 trees with an organic pedestal in the center, you are very close to the hide. You will need to bring a writing utensil to log the cache, so...
Sanity checksums:
- The example numerals in 4.321 sum to 10.
- The solution numerals in Latitude sum to 23 (excluding N40).
- The solution numerals in Longitude sum to 20 (excluding W83).
- Multiplication and division always precede addition and subtraction.
- 5.123456789 rounds down to 5.123 while 5.987654321 rounds up to 5.988
