Multi-cache..when minutes add up over 60

[+ramcdaniel]

My friend wanted to start caching so I loaned her my spare GPSRcvr and off she went. In a multi cache near Nigara Falls, on about the fourth stage, when she added the new coords to the present coords, she ended up with 61.104 minutes. As much as she tried, she could not enter the number into the GPSRcvr. She did not know that there are only 60 minutes in one degree and she would have had to add one degree and enter 01.014 in the minutes.

I complained to Groundspeak that I thought this was a dirty trick and that no multicache should be allowed to do this since very few people know of the number of minutes in a degree. I believe that WE need to be more user friendly so to level the playing field for everyone including novices. Lets not complicate this game so only the experts can play their game.

[+Corp Of Discovery]

[+FamilyDNA]

minutes per degree = minutes per hour

 

I disagree that "very few people" know this.

 

I personally have never come across a multi that required carrying minutes into a degree, but see no reason it shouldn't be allowed.

[Ville Saari]

I wouldn't call this expert knowledge. Where I live very few people do not know that.

 

And it shouldn't be too hard to guess even if you don't know: They are called "minutes" after all and I believe that even in the

States most people do know how many minutes they have on the clock face of their watch.

[+hydnsek]

I wouldn't call this expert knowledge. Where I live very few people do not know that.

 

And it shouldn't be too hard to guess even if you don't know: They are called "minutes" after all and I believe that even in the

States most people do know how many minutes they have on the clock face of their watch.

Yup, we do.

 

I've encountered several multi/puzzle caches that required this knowledge. Granted, they were probably not for novices, but that's why we have a rating system. Some caches are for beginners, others require more knowledge.

[+geognerd]

If you don't know the number of minutes in a degree, you have no business using a GPS receiver or geocaching. Harsh, but seriously, you should have some skill and knowledge to play this game.

[+Phillips4]

If you don't know the number of minutes in a degree, you have no business using a GPS receiver or geocaching. Harsh, but seriously, you should have some skill and knowledge to play this game.

 

Nah, I disagree. BUT I'm all for bumping the difficulty level up a notch for having to know how to do something. And yes, we should be able to reasonably deduce the fact that anything over 60 minutes increases the degree/hour by 1, but it would depend on how the clue at the intermediate stage of the subject multi was presented. If it was stated as 'take your current location and add x.xxx' it would be more difficult for someone without prior GPS experience to recognize the dd mm ss (or dd mm.mmm) format.

 

I don't agree that this type of 'clue' shoud be outlawed; if nothing else it's a learning tool/challenge, and that's (to me) a large part of the fun of caching.

[+sbell111]

Can we do away with any cache that is too hard for me to find?

[+The Leprechauns]

The only dirty trick I see here is sending a newbie on a multicache with 4+ stages as her first hunt. I've seen plenty of multicaches with math requiring that you cross over to the next degree. That's because I am sitting a few hundred feet from the W080° longitude line. That didn't matter much on my early hunts, because I chose traditional, regular size caches with low difficulty and terrain ratings. I remember being askeered of my first multicache and my first micro, for fear I would DNF them. There are any number of threads in the "Getting Started" forum that wisely counsel against attempting the "evil hides" and complex puzzles until you've got a few easy finds under your belt.

[+welch]

I'll skip the 'who knows how many minutes are in a degree' thing... my question is, why should it be Groundspeak's job to police the multis/puzzles that use weird math? I mean I can understand, its annoying to do a cache that requires you don something odd without explaining it... (like this multi I did that told you to answer a bunch of questions and assigned them letters A, B, C, etc. Then gave you a formula to use, but to get the correct answer you DON'T follow the order of operations!) But this seems more like the fault of the cache owner not this site.

[BRTango]

I'll skip the 'who knows how many minutes are in a degree' thing... my question is, why should it be Groundspeak's job to police the multis/puzzles that use weird math? I mean I can understand, its annoying to do a cache that requires you don something odd without explaining it... (like this multi I did that told you to answer a bunch of questions and assigned them letters A, B, C, etc. Then gave you a formula to use, but to get the correct answer you DON'T follow the order of operations!) But this seems more like the fault of the cache owner not this site.

 

Did you mean to say 'do' something odd? Cause at first I thought you were going to say you did a multi that required you to 'don' a clown costume of something. Now that would be funny. Have a math-multi that when you figure it out you have to where a clown costume before getting the cache.