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Spoil YOUR OWN puzzles here


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There are several threads with general puzzle help. But recent threads about spoiling specific puzzles gave me an idea that I don't think I've seen: a thread where owners of puzzle caches lay out the answers to their puzzles -- presumably archived ones, but whatever. It will also give people in different regions ideas for puzzles.

 

I'm not sure whether puzzle owners will be open to this, but I guess it will sink and vanish if not.

 

For the love of Pete, please only use your own!

 

I'd open the thread, but neither of my two ? caches were really the solving type.

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Kewl thread! I'll start:

 

Save It...

The cache page is almost nothing but coordinates.

The hint is "Zoom Zoom"

If you copy/paste the coords into Google Earth, and zoom way in, you'll see a building shaped like a particular letter/number.

Do this for each set of coords and the letters/numbers spell out where the final is.

The picture at the top is an example of this.

 

Geocacher's Bill Of Rights

Most of the cache page is obfuscation, prattling on about the geocaching version of the Bill of Rights.

The key word on the page is "acronym".

Near the bottom of the page is a string of 5 letters, space, 5 letters, etc such as NPSBH

If you go to the real Bill of Rights, you'll see that these letter groups are acronyms of the first 5 words in each Amendment.

NPSBH = No Person Shall Be Held..., the first 5 words of the 5th Amendment. Ergo, NPSBH = 5.

TROTP = The Rights Of The People..., the first 5 letters of the 4th Amendment. TROTP = 4. Etc, etc.

 

Alchemy 201

Use the atomic numbers of the listed element mixes, and add/subtract them as directed.

The first "mix" is Scandium + Helium + Boron = ? Translated to atomic numbers, it's 21 + 2 + 5 = 28

 

Not a Typo

This involves the layout of a QWERTY keyboard, and what fingers are supposed to be used to type what letters.

With both hands poised over the keyboard, count them from left to right. Left pinky is 1, right pinky is 0 (for 10)

The first string is "WKRLJEI". Since the letter W is supposed to be typed with your left ring finger, W = 2.

 

The Star Gazer Cache

This one was viable up until TPTB decided Pluto wasn't a planet.

Counting all the major bodies in our Solar System outward, Sol was 0 and Pluto was 9

The cache page eventually tells you:

The cache can be found at:

N28* 24.6/16.1/153.3/10.7/5832.5

W-081* 4,879/1,390,000/51,118/12,756/142,984

The north coords are gleaned from each bodies period of rotation, in hours. Mars would be # 4, since it rotates every 24.6 hours.

The west coords are gleaned from each bodies circumfrance, in kilometers. Mercury would be 1, since it's circumfrance is 4.879 kilometers.

 

But It's A Dry Heat

A simple temperature conversion.

The cache page says:

82.4/111.2/1274/-113.8/41/53.6

82.4 degree Fahrenheit = 28 degree Celsius, so the first digits are 28.

 

The rest are night caches, and such, requiring work in the field.

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The Ash Street School ( http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...47-c3f6678e57cc )

 

The cache page said:

 

At the listed coordinates you will find an object that will help you decipher the puzzle. The cache is located at:

 

42 in.aca

71 aa.tcf

 

If you went to the historic school and looked around, you could see several signs that said "Caution Falling Ice." To decipher it, C=1, A=2, U=3 and so on. The signs were bright yellow and the hint was "yellow". Renovations removed the signs so I archived the cache.

 

80 Feet of Waterline Nicely Making Way ( http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...c5-0918b658f34e )

 

This started you off at an Alexander Calder sculpture. You did the traditional letters off a plaque bit. The hard part was that you had to find three plaques. It turns out on campus there was a smaller model of the sculpture. And further research would show that this sculpture had been MOVED and the original site still had the original plaque in the concrete. Googling the sculpture's history would eventually reveal that the model existed, and then a bit more work would find the model's history. Some finders even spoke with MIT curators about this! The hide was a water bottle in a bike locked to a bike rack. (This fooled many experienced finders even though the water bottle was labeled as a cache.) Construction seriously depleted the amount of bike parking and I felt it wasn't fair to take up the space. The cache was archived.

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Ceremonial

 

The coordinates are hidden in the poem using a mnemonic system sometimes known as "pseudonumerology." It is used by those Giant Memory guys and by magicians, too. Each digit is replaced by a consonant sound, and then you make words with the sounds in the right place and whatever vowels you want.

 

I think that is my only archived puzzle cache!

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...Blinded Me With...

 

Science folks. She blinded me with science! Us the periodic table to solve this one.

 

 

Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nada

 

To get the combination for the lock you need the answers to four questions. The answer to every one of them is...ZERO.

 

 

I placed these puzzles during a rash of increasingly difficult puzzles that were being published in this area. I was trying make them as easy as possible while still being legitimately puzzles. Blinded me with turned out to be more difficult than I thought. I've received more requests for hints than for any other cache, and I have a couple of trick multi cache legs out there. So when that turned out to be more work than I figured it would I came up with the idea for Zip. No one has asked for a hint on that one.

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Hey, I like this. And if someone ever needs a hint, tell them to do a forum search. Most geocachers don't look or participate in these forums.

 

Chac's Revenge is the Maya numbering system. I don't tell you that though, you have to figure it out by finding out that Chac was the Maya rain God. You could Google his name, or the Mayan pyramid background image is a hint. If you mouse over the puzzle, I have a pop-up "maya help you" tag. Encrypted hint is vigesimal, which means base 20 numbering system.

 

Micro or Regular? is morse code, with "micro" as dots, and "Regular" as dashes. No kudo's though, I copied the idea from someone, with their permission. They use something totally different as the dots and dashes though.

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Hotamétaneo'o

 

The coordinates are hidden in the story. You have to realize that the Cheyenne did not use month names like January, February etc.

 

Throughout the story I use terms like "frost on the inside of the teepee" which is the Cheyenne term for the month of January.

 

The months make up the cache coordinates.

 

When you get to the first stage, there is another twist. You find a box full of black rocks, six of which have numbers on them. There is a note saying the final is 381 meters away. You have to sequence the six stones in the correct order to get a lat/long that is 381 meters away.

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Thanks for starting this thread, it makes sense, I thought the puzzle masters were smoking pot when they came up with a picture and some coords for parking, I thought in their smoke filled brains they forgot to leave a clue.

Now I am seeing some logic to the puzzle caches, Thanks

Edited by aronnie
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Bushed

 

Pig Pen Cipher

 

Coyote Bait was a favorite of mine. My friend and fellow geocacher QHCoyote had a puzzle hiding contest, and he ribbed me really good because I couldn't figure out one of his new puzzles. I got him back with an elaborate scheme.

 

The cache page has a link to an image called "bait" . When the image is opened in Microsoft paint, the coords can be derived by using the paint dropper to see what the actuall colors of the font were. He used these colors to get coords, that lead him directly to the cache of his that stumped me. He actually went out in the field with his coords, and ended up at his cache. He was so confused that he checked his own cache, then gave me a call on his cell phone.

 

The actual puzzle is hidden in a white font.

 

The first half is the "Playfair" cipher, and the second half is the "resistor color code chart" disguised as RGB colors.

 

His log, "5:00 pm. DANG! Coyotes are supposed to be smart, but that rascal, Kit Fox, had me jumpin' through hoops like a dog in a circus ring! Now I have to arrange for some more headaches for HIM! He's gonna revisit this cache real soon, because I took the Seven Summit geocoin and left a BadAndy Krugerrandy geocoin. Signed log as

FIRST TO FIND!

QHCoyote "

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The Last Stand of Clan Riffster (CR-5)

Speaking of the pigpen cypher; Last Stand was the first puzzle cache I built. In its original form, you went to 4 traditional caches, (CR-1 thru 4), and collected a few bits of jigsaw puzzle at each one. Assembling the jigsaw puzzle would give you a pigpen cypher to solve, which would give you the coords to the final. At ground zero were two ammo cans. One was the cache and the other was for you to put the puzzle pieces you had collected, so I could return them to the field. It was a PITA from a maintenance perspective. The jigsaw puzzles were all made by hand, and after losing a few sets, I opted for another method.

 

I changed the story line a bit, and in each of the 4 traditionals, you find a piece of a shattered "tombstone". By doing a rubbing of the back of each one, you could "reassemble" the tombstone pieces and figure out the pigpen cycper I engraved on it.

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I often give an explanation to my puzzles when I archive the cache. Read my final log for the solution. Here are some examples:

Easter Eggs

 

Chinese Radicals

 

Enos, Idom

 

Some I don't explain on the page but I have explained at events. For this one:

WWI & WWII I explained that the title and text suggest a world war theme, but that's a red herring. The WW I and II actually referred to William Wright Sr. and Jr., a reference to Bill of Rights. Each sentence has a phrase or word that appears in only one of the amendments to the Constitution. I had to use one 2-digit amendment but the rest are part of the Bill of Rights.

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Here's another one I explained.

Tue Zane

The images are pictures of cribbage hands. You score the hands and the scores, when concatenated, form the coordinates. The title is a Caesar shift of His Nobs, a cribbage term that will lead you to cribbage scoring sites on the web if you search the phrase.

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Bayeux Cubano

Now archived, but enjoyable enough to toy with.

 

The images need to be printed and cut out. Some people made the mistake of cutting out the individual squares, but in actuality this is a 3d puzzle. The shapes need to be folded and taped into nine cubes (hence "cubano" as a hint in the cache name). The cubes are then tumbled around to make a 3x3 grid with a completed image on top. There are several different images that can be made, but one will reveal the needed North and West decimal minutes wrapping around the edge of the boxes.

 

Bat Country

This one is terribly easy. Too easy, in fact, so I'm not out anything revealing the secret here. Look at the pic and county the teeth in the mouths of the bats.

 

Have a few others that I'd love to discuss, but the gang in my area is still working on them, so I shan't tempt fate that one might wander in here and see what they are doing wrong.

Edited by earthcurrent
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<Nice. Are you the same guy that makes those anoying halloween emails (look realy hard at this picture to see proof of ghostes...BOO).>

 

Thanks for an Idea.....BOO !!! LOL

 

I have a complaint. I wasted my time solving that puzzle, only to find out it's a micro. :laughing:

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<I have a complaint. I wasted my time solving that puzzle, only to find out it's a micro.>

 

BUMMER.....That is 60 Seconds you will NEVER get back.

 

Maybe I should have just put the Coordinate picture First and you would not have to waste 60 seconds to see it is a Micro....LOL

 

You lost me at "READ CAREFULLY" I just didn't feel like putting in that kind of effort this early on a Sunday afternoon.

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The point of this thread is to include a spoiler, not just a link to the cache.
With that cache, an explanation would be redundant. :D
The first puzzle cache like this that I encountered was rather difficult for me to solve. I didn't figure it out until I viewed the properties of one of the images and saw "GIF image (animated, 2 frames)".

 

The solution won't be obvious to someone who has animated images disabled in their browser.

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<Are you still looking for a spoiler on that one? I'd tell you the deep, dark "secret", but the thread title suggests I only give spoilers for my own hides.>

 

Go ahead...be my guest....Don't hold back....Give him all the help he needs.

 

He needs patience :D (maybe about 60 seconds worth??)

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<I have a complaint. I wasted my time solving that puzzle, only to find out it's a micro.>

 

BUMMER.....That is 60 Seconds you will NEVER get back.

 

Maybe I should have just put the Coordinate picture First and you would not have to waste 60 seconds to see it is a Micro....LOL

 

Oh, I came in under a minute, so only like 58 seconds I'll never get back. Just messing with you anyways. This is nice, there are a couple of examples for the puzzle challenged showing the classic "mouse over" trick. :D

Edited by TheWhiteUrkel
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Ok... I'll spoil one of my active caches (one that never gets found...)

 

I have you Letterbox your way to a Bus Stop, once there, I make you look for a number that might remind you of the name 'Jean-Luc.' The number is 45 (A bus that happens to go down to the town where that particular cache's tributee lives).

 

Here's how you get 45 out of 'Jean-Luc' -

 

Jean-Luc -> Jean-Luc Picard -> Picard -> Alexandre Picard (He Plays Defence for the Sens) -> Alexandre Picard wears, you guessed it, #45

 

Of course, I don't tell you any of this, I just expect you to earn your Difficulty 4 Letterbox! :D

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Here is my Puzzle Cache that ANY GEOCACHER in the world can solve in under 60 seconds.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ba-966914bf53f1

The point of this thread is to include a spoiler, not just a link to the cache.

 

 

BTW, it looks likes many have copied Drooling Mongoloids puzzle idear..

Are You A Dummy? (A Puzzle For The Clueless)

 

Actually, TheTexasGringo and Drooling Mongoloid are one and the same. Name was changed for PC reasons. Right, TG?

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Zip, Zilch, Zero, Nada

 

To get the combination for the lock you need the answers to four questions. The answer to every one of them is...ZERO.

I made a cache for folks to use as a milestone find, and called it Puzzle Of The Century.

 

The thought process was that Century finds all ended in zeros, 100, 300, 1000, etc., so I should hide a cache where all the coordinates ended in zeros. And since I had a degree confluence very close to where I lived I would hide the cache there. Neat idea eh?

 

Unfortunately the confluence was in a neighborhood in someone's backyard which made that location impossible to hide a cache in. So instead I decided to create a bunch of puzzles where all the answers were zeros, and then have a multi cache start from the confluence and end up in a park. Each stage of the multi would be different types of hides (micro containing coordinates, coordinates hidden on something, fake rock, etc.) leading to the boring ammo can in the woods.

 

So the spoiler is that all the answers to the questions are either zero, or they get zero'd out to find the starting coordinates.

 

The amazing thing is, every once in a while I'd get an email asking me if the coordinates were correct, and they'd have all zeros except for one digit was a 2. I was surprised that they didn't catch on and double check the 2 their self and realize Moses didn't take any animals on the ark.

 

Eventually I moved away and decided to let someone adopt it.

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Here is my Puzzle Cache that ANY GEOCACHER in the world can solve in under 60 seconds.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ba-966914bf53f1

The point of this thread is to include a spoiler, not just a link to the cache.

For crying out loud...
As I explained earlier, the first puzzle cache like this that I encountered was rather difficult for me to solve. I didn't figure it out until I viewed the properties of one of the images and saw "GIF image (animated, 2 frames)".

 

The solution won't be obvious to someone who has animated images disabled in their browser.

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Here is my Puzzle Cache that ANY GEOCACHER in the world can solve in under 60 seconds.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ba-966914bf53f1

The point of this thread is to include a spoiler, not just a link to the cache.

For crying out loud...
As I explained earlier, the first puzzle cache like this that I encountered was rather difficult for me to solve. I didn't figure it out until I viewed the properties of one of the images and saw "GIF image (animated, 2 frames)".

 

The solution won't be obvious to someone who has animated images disabled in their browser.

 

This is probably a different thread. But if you have animated GIFs turned off perhaps you may be too paranoid and have cookies turned off too. IF that were the case, you can't get too far on geocaching.com. :laughing:

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<Actually, TheTexasGringo and Drooling Mongoloid are one and the same. Name was changed for PC reasons. Right, TG?>

 

Yes....I originally had this kind up in Madison, Wi....then when I moved back down here to Dallas....people didn't like my name...they said it was not Politically Correct and I got some bad emails expressing that....

 

So, I became the Texas Gringo.....Now all of the Gringo's in Texas are mad at me...for making fun of them....and so it goes.

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West New York Perch

 

One of my more dismal failures. (Ignore the extraneous pictures. Archived caches are a great place for hiding pictures...) Six finds, and muggled twice (including one of my geocoins!) Then the city spent two years rebuilding the park. And a problem with poison ivy. And my QC department hated this one. Oh, well.

Probably easier to solve, now that GC has changed the background color. I have seen this done elsewhere, so it is not original. The backgroud is not a background. It is a .jpg. "Save as" to your computer. Use Paint to change the background color, and you have the coordinates. Several red herrings thrown in, just to be evil. Hee hee hee.

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West New York Perch

 

One of my more dismal failures. (Ignore the extraneous pictures. Archived caches are a great place for hiding pictures...) Six finds, and muggled twice (including one of my geocoins!) Then the city spent two years rebuilding the park. And a problem with poison ivy. And my QC department hated this one. Oh, well.

Probably easier to solve, now that GC has changed the background color. I have seen this done elsewhere, so it is not original. The backgroud is not a background. It is a .jpg. "Save as" to your computer. Use Paint to change the background color, and you have the coordinates. Several red herrings thrown in, just to be evil. Hee hee hee.

 

I solved another puzzle cache (since archived) that used the same technique. I didn't use Paint to change the background color though. The threshold menu item in Photoshop would expose the coordinates on that one. The CO also put in the phrase "cache background" in the description as a clue.

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Engine No. 9 is a puzzle/multi.

 

The listed coords take you in front of the local telephone company. There is a dime payphone there.

 

Since we had to make this a puzzle cache we tried to have some fun with it. This puzzle can be solved at home or at Stage 1 where there is a clue. If you do solve at home maybe you could drive by Stage 1 for a nice idea of what Doylestown is like. Won't you come for a visit? A dime will go far in the small village of Doylestown!

 

Once in Doylestown, complete the stage 1 puzzle at coordinates provided for this mystery cache. You would find it faster if you'd buzz this latitude backwards. Have a pen ready!

 

Stage 1 puzzle coordinates: N31° 67.269 W081° 41.761

 

Dial the number on the telly and you get a recording which gives you the stage 2 coords.

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Wow...you guys are smart! My mind just won't bend that way and I guess I don't have enough experience under my belt to figure out most of these...but let me just say:

 

Halle-freaking-lujah! I did not know what the pigpen cipher was and now that I know I can solve and find a local puzzle cache that has had me scratching my head for a month!

 

I love the forums, especially when everyone is playing nice :lol:

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Great thread folks...

 

My addition is "Bottleneck: Sum Rhino Fun"

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...28-573bc317aa95

 

Spoiler:

"Bottleneck: Sum Rhino Fun" is an anagram. The maths problem shown is simply the method in which to re-arrange the order of the title.

 

It spells: Count the number of links...

 

At the published co-ords, theres a chain, separated with split rings. Count the links and presto... You get the final co-ords

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Here is my Puzzle Cache that ANY GEOCACHER in the world can solve in under 60 seconds.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ba-966914bf53f1

The point of this thread is to include a spoiler, not just a link to the cache.

 

this is hysterical!!!

Wow, actually a puzzle cache I can do!!

 

You guys are brilliant.

Some evil, but brillant.

No wonder i don't get so many of these.

I haven't a clue.

Edited by Sol seaker
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What a great thread! Looking through some of these solving methods can teach me how to go about thinking on some other puzzles, and also give me ideas to make some of my own. I'd share the method for mine but giving the method for one will ruin all the others, and also ruin those that belong to someone else that used my idea. They are the kind that you either get it instantly or you dont. I've had a few people tell me that they woke up in the middle of the night with an AhhHaa moment. I'm going to have fun working on some of these now that I have been told the method. Thank you all.

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