Cow Spots

Never mind - already created. Topic locked.

Carmine Soprano comes to mind.

Agreed.... as one of TT's co-conspirators, {and older brother}, I can confirm that all of those puzzles are dramatically different. Quite deliberately so. Jeff and I have always tried to come up with new and original ideas every time we make a puzzle. The advice I can give you on our puzzles is to: 1) Assume nothing 2) Brush up on alternate coordinate systems 3) Prepare to have to learn something you may not know about 4) Stock up on Excedrin

As a puzzle cache creator, I've had many people ask to borrow cache ideas before. Personally, all I ask is that the cache creator credit me on their cache page. I can think of at least 5 or 6 caches out there that other cachers were nice enough to ask to copy from me. And on one of my puzzles, I did the same thing --- asked to borrow an idea and gave credit on my cache page. Having looked at tons of puzzle caches out there though, I'll say this -- it is EXTREMELY difficult to come up with a completely original idea. Tons of puzzle ideas out there. Some of them are overused (SuDoku and resistor color code come to mind) but that doesn't matter if the idea is new to your area. I'm actually flattered if someone likes an idea I've put together. In my opinion, it would be a waste of time to try to patent an idea. But if you do a straight ripoff of someone else's idea, and they find out (which has happened to a couple of people I know of) don't be surprised if they're not too happy about it. Asking for permission is just plain polite. --Dave, The Cow Spots

While it's true that much of Metro Phoenix is Micro City, you'll find some good sized caches in Thunderbird Park, Papago Park, and South Mountain Park as well.

The thrill for me of puzzle caches is the variety of forms they can take. There's certain types that don't do much for me, though --- like any other type of caches, you can't satisfy anyone. I wish we had a separate category for the "read a bunch of stuff off the markers to get the coordinates" or "visit 5 caches and get the info from inside" puzzles. To me these are more of multi-caches or offsets than true puzzles, because you KNOW exactly what to do. With a good puzzle, you may not know how to solve it at first glance. I don't necessarily mind the "Google-search" subset of puzzles, if I've actually learned something new and/or useful; if I'm forced to look up minutiae about Pauly Shore movies or the 1974 Chrysler LeBaron, I'll likely to be less impressed.

I've seen puzzles even easier than your sig line.

You can do some fancy-shmancy figgering to determine the antipode on Earth of your coordinates. But if you live almost anywhere in the USA, the opposite area on the globe is the Indian Ocean, and Mozambique turned out to be the nearest thing for a looooong way.

While seeing this new puzzle come out, I revisited Rupert's first cache... and actually managed to crack it. I'm visiting Jersey in September, but the first cache is probably too far away to justify hitting for the short time I'll be there... ... unless I can crack Constance's at the same time.

My Ugly Pig Travel Bug has logged about 11000 miles towards its eventual goal of Mozambique, and it's gotten some great stories along the way.

Yeah, besides... what's a First Find anyway? It's Just Another Number.

The arrest appears to have happened on April 20th. The latest news I was able to find was that he was scheduled to have a pretrial hearing on July 11th. Nothing further, though with the zeal that the press jumped all over this story when the arrest became common knowledge -- I'm sure it'll pop back up if and when the trial date comes around. Again... not taking sides on this issue, just something to throw out there and let people be aware of.

That's my little brother. He's a little.... manic about FF's sometimes. I probably don't have much room to talk myself, but he kinda takes it overboard. Just ask the guys in San Diego. On a brighter note, it looks like the New Cache Notification Tool is coming out of debug mode very soon (although it's a premium member benefit) Instant Log Notification Feature

Without debating the ethics of 'wardriving', here's a link to the article where a man was arrested in Florida back in April for sitting in front of someone's house 'stealing' his wireless Internet while in a parked car. Wi-Fi cloaks a new breed of intruder - St. Petersburg Times, July 4th Apparently he was charged with a third-degree felony in Florida for unauthorized use of a computer or network.

Here's a new tool (currently in beta form) for the FTF freak in us all. Notification Service (beta) Share and enjoy

Out in Arizona a Geocacher has created their own site to monitor the active caches in the state : Deepsouthwest Geocaching Project Basically, it's another way to look at the data - primarily by assigning challenge points to a cache based on the number of finds and the age of the cache. He also has a bunch of rating categories for Total Finds, Total Puzzle Cache Finds, etc. I include it here since one of his rating categories is FTFs. Even the cache creator acknowledges that there's no way to automate true FTF standings, since Groundspeak doesn't care (why should they?) and the only other alternative is to do it manually since many times the first find log to the page is not the First Finder at all. His compromise for his ratings is to divide the First Find point equally among all people that find the cache the first day. It's not a perfect solution, but it's the best automated solution I've seen. --Dave, The Cow Spots

It would depend on the distance between the 51 legs and whether there was a great payoff at the end. If you had me drive 100+ miles to find a flippin' bison tube at the final stage, I'd probably steal it.

1) Place new cache 2) request cache to be activated on a Saturday morning 3) Stock cache with White Jeep Travel bug 4) Set up lemonade stand and lawn chair 15' feet from cache 5) **STEP MISSING** 6) Profit!

#1 - The first rule of Approver Club is, you do not talk about Approver Club.

I'm not going to get into name-calling here. Grow up. My point was, and remains, is that if you have a question about a puzzle cache, it's usually a better idea to ask the cache owner than to post in the forums about it. And the poster who provided "too much information" in their post did a far worse disservice than you did anyway.

Unless the puzzle cache creator is just plain sadistic, they want the cache to be found. Maybe not immediately, but most puzzles will have some type of guidance as to the type of puzzle you're looking at. Which means hints are usually there from the cache creator, even if they're not immediately obvious.

It's generally considered bad form to ask for solutions to puzzles in the forums. It's even worse form to provide them.

None of my queries have successfully generated in over 48 hours, and much longer in a couple of cases.

Puzzle geeks: Contact me privately for a wicked cool tool extenstion for Firefox that I've got a link to. Don't want to spoil the fun for every geek out there. --TT-- Just give credit to ShadowAce and The Cow Spots for FINDING that Firefox extension, Jeff.

Jeep and Groundspeak are already aware of the problem, and have tried to remedy the situation for 2006. Here's a sneak preview of next year's Jeep Travel Bugs.