Mom-n-Andy

I think if someone has to ask, it's too soon.

I must be missing something. There does not seem to be a geocache GCHQ. That's the name of an intelligence agency though.

Why not just ignore cache owners who use gcrm, since you know there's a good chance their caches aren't maintained?

Nope, it just means that after you've solved the puzzle or otherwise obtained the actual coordinates you can substitute the actual coordinates for the false ones in the cache page. Nice try though.

The question seems moot, as the cache has been archived because the logbook was a USB drive.

I wouldn't do it. People shouldn't mess with bird nests or bird boxes either. How would they know that a nest placed high was the cache or was an actual nest with eggs in it?

I'd send a nice note to the last finder and ask where they hid it. Some people (not necessarily the most recent finder) do tend to move caches to "better" hiding places.

I think somebody got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

My take is that it is not a good idea to desensitize kids to the dangers of electrical shock. That is what you're essentially doing by encouraging people to put their hands on and under electrical equipment. And geocaching is supposed to be family friendly, so a hider should always assume that kids might be along for the hunt.

I wouldn't leave any kind of food in a cache, but you could always ask the CO if he'd like to meet you at the cache and hand it over there. As a jam maker myself, I understand where you're coming from, but some people might be uncomfortable eating home canned food of any kind.

There's a ton of geocaches in that area, including the 30 Years of Pacman series centered on http://coord.info/GC28XNV. Neat to look at on a zoomed out map. looks like a crazy guy with a gun situation rather than a private property issue.

Small flashlight, tweezers, extra pen, extra batteries. A couple of disposable exam gloves if COs in your area like to hide caches in icky places.

When I am out hiking or caching alone, or with a group that doesn't include my spouse, I wear a RoadID bracelet. It has my name, spouse's name and contact numbers, drug allergies and medical conditions. I also have ICE info in my phone but with a bright red thing on my wrist first responders can get the needed info immediately.

Sounds like what you describe could make a good Challenge, sans the tobacco.

I'm with you. I don't give a hoot about how anyone else plays. In our area there is a group that meets for breakfast once a week and then goes caching together. The breakfast is posted as an "event" and some attendees log it each time they attend. You would not believe the snarky comments that get thrown around about those players! Why would someone care whether someone else does this?

Looks like somebody didn't renew their domain name rights.

Well, I wanted to take people on a walking tour of a certain neighborhood. To do that I'd need to direct them to start at certain coordinates or at a certain street corner. Doesn't seem like you can do that. You can put in coordinates but you have to choose one of the nearby locations that are already in their database. Those locations seem mostly to be businesses. Seems goofy to tell someone they should start at XYZ Hair Salon when you really want them to start at a sculpture on the nearby street corner. I guess this would be okay if you want someone to go to Java Joe's Coffee Shop and drink a latte, but I don't see the point of making that a challenge.

We're Mac people so PC games would be bad swag. How about baggies full of assorted Legos?

Looks like Darick isn't playing. How about ... Yugioh cards?

That is not a one time pad cipher. As someone else pointed out, the key length must be at least as long as the cipher text to make a one time pad. Try decrypting your cipher text using rumkin's Vigenere cipher decoder and see if that works. Once you've done that, repeat using the autokey Vigenere decoder and see if it works. Why or why not? You are doing absolutely the right thing to work the ciphers by hand, if your goal is to understand them and not just get to the cache as quickly as possible. Of course once you understand what's going on, the computerized decoders eliminate a lot of the drudgery!

Kudos to you for trying the one time pad by hand. Now that you've paid your dues, check out the online decoder at rumkin.com. You mentioned that you had considered Mod 26. Another variant that is sometimes used is Mod 36 - this incorporates the 26 letters and the numerals 0-9. There are other variants as well that use punctuation characters.

We had a similar series released recently - 20 themed caches plus two "mystery" caches. You need to find a code in each of the 20 and use the codes to find the two mystery caches. All were released within minutes of each other. The series is very popular and some people even took the day off from work to attempt all of the caches the day they were released. Early communication with your reviewer is a must. Our local reviewer will check coordinates ahead of time - we submit an active cache listing with a note saying "for coordinate check only" and the reviewer deactivates it after checking the coordinates. Then the CO can work on the cache description as much as desired. I assume all reviewers would do something similar.

That's really helpful, I don't know anything about how far apart the gaps are for each minute in coordinates. VMey Play around with google earth a bit. use the ruler tool to measure different distances from a point and watch what happens to the coordinates at the bottom of the screen. You'll soon get a feel for it.

Because puzzle caches are typically within 2 miles of the posted coordinates, you already know what A and F must be, and you can narrow down B and G quite a bit. After that it is a process of elimination and logic. You will find google maps, bing maps, and google earth to be very useful in eliminating potential coordinates. Those are general approaches for solving this type of puzzle. Beyond that, ask the CO as most are very happy to help, at least after FTF.

You did good.