niraD

It is considered inappropriate to post puzzle spoilers/explanations in a public forum like this. Try asking the cache owner for hints via email. Or as coggins suggested, you can set it aside for now and come back to it when you have a bit more experience with the kind of puzzle caches hidden in your area.

There's one around here that was recovered about half a mile from it's proper location, floating in the slough. But that's nothing compared to the tens or hundreds of miles some of these have traveled. Wow!

That sounds fun. Some of the "in plain view" caches that I've found have been placed within a few feet of an obvious hide location (lamp post, guard rail, park bench, etc.). It's amazing how easy it is to search the obvious hide location over and over and over, rather than stepping back to look around for other possible hide locations.

Actually, letterboxes do have log books. When you find one, you're supposed to stamp your personal log book with the stamp in the letterbox, and you're supposed to stamp the letterbox log book with your personal stamp.

A while back, The Rat offered a puzzle-solving class as an event cache. His slides are available here: http://thegba.net/resources/general_information.php Among the tips he offered: Identify the theme. Check the cache title, the hint, the HTML source, the graphics (including names/URLs), any links (including URLs), whatever is at the posted coordinates, etc. If you can figure out the theme, then you should look for numbering systems that are associated with that theme (zip codes, area codes, telephone keypads, episode numbers, etc.). Around here, coordinates will have 15 digits, and will look like "N 37° xx.xxx W 122° xx.xxx". So when I'm solving a nearby puzzle, I look for a group of 15 things, and then I look for ways to get the digits 37xxxxx122xxxxx from them. In general, I look for ways to get the number 37 (or the digits 3 and 7) from something near the beginning of the puzzle, and the number 122 (or the digits 1, 2, and 2) from something near the middle of the puzzle. (Of course, you'll need to adjust this for the coordinates near you.) Other useful resources include the Puzzle Solving 101 Series http://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.a...ef-901807ba9c98 and this "Solving Puzzle Caches" article http://bcaching.wordpress.com/2008/08/05/puzzles-part-1/

In my experience, a high difficulty rating sometimes makes it easier to find a cleverly camouflaged cache. You can ignore the obvious 1-star hiding spots, and spend your time looking for something much more interesting. And I've also seen dumb luck in action. Sometimes, the first thing you touch just happens to be the cache.

It's worth noting that they are not "Groundspeak's geocaches". Groundspeak just provides a listing service that geocache owners can use to publicize their geocaches. There are other listing services, and some caches are listed with more than one listing service.

Signature items are trade items, not substitutes for signing the log. So go ahead and write the date (or the GCxxxxx number, as I do) on your sig item, but also sign the log.

In addition to tweezers (for extracting logs from very small micro-caches), I've seen the term used for magnetic pick-up tools, mechanical grabber tools, and other tools that allow you to extract a cache that you can't touch from its hiding place.

One of my favorite caches is a multi-cache on school grounds. It was placed with the blessing of the school staff, and it highlights the murals painted on the campus by students. The owner emphasized that visitors were welcome when school was not in session. It was a maintenance headache because the cache kept getting muggled. Eventually, the owner moved the cache off campus and replaced the regular container with a micro.

I type in the coordinates only once. Then I bookmark the results page. Then I just use the bookmark. I've got several "Nearest to ..." bookmarks, for different locations that I frequent regularly. I've also got multiple "Nearest to ..." pocket queries.

Sometimes, it's an excuse for a trip, whether that trip is a detour of a few miles on my bike ride to/from work, a hike of several miles through the woods, or a drive to somewhere off the beaten path. Sometimes, it's about interesting places, whether those places are historic, scenic, or artistic. (I especially enjoy caches that draw attention to public art.) Sometimes, it's about the challenge, whether the challenge is solving a puzzle, finding a well-camouflaged cache, or retrieving a cleverly placed container. (I especially enjoy on-site puzzles and caches with 4-star camouflage.) And sometimes it's about companionship, although I don't make it to events, unevents, and group hikes very often...

Consumer GPS receivers are accurate to about 10' under ideal conditions. In practice, accuracy of 15-25' is typical. Since that applies both to your receiver and to the receiver used to hide the cache, you should expect the cache to be within 20-50' of where your GPS says it is. One complication with automotive units is that they like to keep you on the road. Check whether the device has a "pedestrian mode" or something similar. Well, I've found hundreds without a GPS receiver, just using the satellite view of Google Maps. That's pretty cheap, but the satellite images in your area may not be detailed enough, and may not be calibrated well enough. I've read recommendations to look for a used handheld device. I got my first GPSr from woot, and my second was given to me by a friend who had a better one for his own use. But now I mostly use the receiver built into my Nexus One.

The first "micro in the woods" that I found was rated without the hints, and the cache description mentioned that you should subtract one star from the difficulty for each hint you used.

It's hard enough to keep caches full of trinkets safe from muggles. I would expect it to be much harder to keep them safe from muggles if the caches contained cash. And as others have pointed out, you may be required to comply with your local "gaming" laws, given the combination of "pay to play" and cash awards.

FWIW, all my webcam cache "finds" were done solo. They're easy to do solo on the road if you've got a smartphone and a data connection.

Duh... That's a much better option than posting to the forums and waiting to see whether the moderators remove the name of the app. Still, it isn't very convenient for checking casual references (for example, the way snopes.com is convenient for debunking casual references to urban legends). It's really only something I'm likely to bother with for less casual references, like content added to Cacheopedia.

Yeah, I understand the paradox. I was tempted to include something clever in my original post, but refrained. Sure, if you want to be sure it's authorized. But there are a lot of apps out there, and ultimately I don't care whether GS has gotten around to authorizing them yet. What I care about is whether the apps violate the GS TOS. A mobile app that I've been using for about a year still isn't on their public list of authorized apps. It doesn't violate the TOS, but it's hard for a layman to know that. (GS even sent a C&D letter because they thought the app was scraping the site, and the developers had to explain to GS how the app worked without scraping the site.) So when someone mentions a geocaching app that they just discovered, how can I tell whether it violates the GS TOS? I'd like to avoid using apps that violate the GS TOS, and I'd like to steer others away from them too. I'd like to keep references to such apps off Cacheopedia. But right now, it seems the most reliable way to figure out whether an app violates the GS TOS is to post here and wait for a moderator to remove the name of the app from my posting. That seems suboptimal to me.

Amen. When I'm asked for a hint, I always start by asking what the person has tried so far, if that information wasn't initially volunteered.

I've found one like that. And yet, eventually the decoy (complete with laminated "this is not the cache" note) acquired a "replacement" log, which was then signed by several people. And some of the on-site puzzles I've found have had "replacement" logs left in the puzzle equipment.

Is there a public list of unauthorized applications anywhere, or a way to check whether a given application is unauthorized? The apps themselves don't advertise that they violate Groundspeak's TOS, so it can be difficult to tell whether a newly discovered app is just too new for Groundspeak to have included it on its list of authorized applications, or whether it's one of the nameless unauthorized applications that no one is supposed to discuss.

FWIW, if I wanted to give away $1000 in a geocaching-related way, then I'd host an event or two, and spend anything left over on cache containers, camouflage, and maybe travelers (TBs & geocoins).

Another possibility is to contact the owner of the existing cache. I've seen several cases where an old cache was moved a couple hundred feet to allow a new cache that really needed a specific location.

I did something similar with an on-site puzzle about 300 miles from home. The first year's vacation, I finally gave up because my wife had finished the book she brought to read while I was geocaching. On vacation again a year later, I returned and solved it within seconds. Again, IMHO, it's all part of the game.

Really? Nearly every Find log I post includes a reference to me leaving "my trackable sig token" in the cache, or to me keeping "my trackable sig token" moving (e.g., for caches too small to hold my sig tokens). The word "trackable" is linked to the tracking site for my sig tokens. Is that spam? I don't think so, and no one has complained so far, but it is something with a link that I include in all my Find logs. Maybe I'm spamming for my sigitem.com site...