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Creating a puzzle cache


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I would be interested to know when creating a puzzle cache, do you make it so it can be found/solved or do you make impossible to solve for many people and enjoy the DNF'S,

and smile at the fact that people are spending hours bashing the keyboard to not find a solution.

I am trying to work out what the community thinks about puzzles found once or twice every couple of years and is it worth the effort or just place a normal cache for cachers to enjoy

 

 

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Variety is the spice of life.. and the good thing about geocaching is that it caters for everyone.

I have a few puzzles, some are easy.. some are quite tricky.  Most of those who have solved them have enjoyed the EUREKA moment and they all get good logs and favourite points, so I must be doing something right.

Not all caches are placed to be found by ALL cachers.   A D5 puzzle may be challenging for many that don't like a mental challenge.. but no more so than a T5 traditional that's 50ft up a tree.

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47 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Difficult puzzles are fine as long as the satisfaction of finally seeing it all click into place and the experience of finding the cache itself outweighs the effort that went into solving it.

And that "satisfaction" point is different for each one of us.  I enjoy a good, challenging puzzle and sometimes spend way too much time to get that "EUREKA" moment; I still have a couple of my son's puzzles I'm working on, and one really challenging one my daughter in law recently published that I am still waiting for that AHA moment.  Sometimes the cache find itself is anticlimactic when it turns out to be an LPC!!

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55 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Difficult puzzles are fine as long as the satisfaction of finally seeing it all click into place and the experience of finding the cache itself outweighs the effort that went into solving it.

On the flip-side of this, I find that the puzzles I enjoy least are those which involve pure mind reading. It's sometimes as if the setter doesn't really understand what a puzzle is and ends up producing something more akin to a guessing game with no real rhyme or reason to it.

I've also experienced puzzles which have clearly been purposely set up to be as obtuse / illogical as possible.

I've even experienced puzzles which have been deliberately set up to be unsolvable so that the CO could hand out the coordinates to friends and even one where I believe the cache was never at GZ at all - or was intentionally and silently removed by the FTF.

Puzzle caches are one are that seem to trigger disproportionate degrees of panty bunching - at least around here.

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14 minutes ago, arisoft said:

All my puzzles but one have been solved. The one unsolved was published yesterday. My idea is to make them possible to solve - not to guess. I am not waiting many players to solve them because most geocachers are not interested in such a game at all. There is small number of puzzle enthusiast who are more interested in solving and finding mystery caches than traditional ones. That is my target audience. If no one can solve the puzzle, it is not the time to smile, because more or less the problem is in the puzzle itself, if it can not be solved at all.

^^^ This.

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1 hour ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

I would be interested to know when creating a puzzle cache, do you make it so it can be found/solved or do you make impossible to solve for many people and enjoy the DNF'S,

and smile at the fact that people are spending hours bashing the keyboard to not find a solution.

I am trying to work out what the community thinks about puzzles found once or twice every couple of years and is it worth the effort or just place a normal cache for cachers to enjoy

All my puzzles but one have been solved. The one unsolved was published yesterday. My idea is to make them possible to solve - not to guess. I am not waiting many players to solve them because most geocachers are not interested in such a game at all. There is small number of puzzle enthusiast who are more interested in solving and finding mystery caches than traditional ones. That is my target audience. If no one can solve the puzzle, it is not the time to smile, because more or less the problem is in the puzzle itself, if it can not be solved at all.

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5 hours ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

I would be interested to know when creating a puzzle cache, do you make it so it can be found/solved or do you make impossible to solve for many people and enjoy the DNF'S,

and smile at the fact that people are spending hours bashing the keyboard to not find a solution.

I am trying to work out what the community thinks about puzzles found once or twice every couple of years and is it worth the effort or just place a normal cache for cachers to enjoy

Tough question.  Some of mine are/were easy.  Some were/are quite obtuse.  Some were/are quite difficult.  But they are solvable.  Some cachers complained about having to 'think like a dolphin."  (Then again, there are some local puzzle cachers, where I have no idea how to start on some of their puzzles!)  But 'impossible to solve'?  Never!  Most of my remaining puzzle caches do require some hiking.  So, they are seldom found.    

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8 hours ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

I would be interested to know when creating a puzzle cache, do you make it so it can be found/solved or do you make impossible to solve for many people and enjoy the DNF'S,

I tried to make my puzzle so it could be solved and found. FTF was within 24 hours of publication, and there were several more finds within the next few days, so I must have done okay. Now it gets found a few times a year.

There's a cache owner I know who developed a bit of a reputation for creating impossible puzzles. Even when he tried to create easy puzzles with lots of hints about how to solve them, they ended up being very difficult for anyone to solve.

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18 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:
13 hours ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

.. and enjoy the DNF'S.. and smile at the fact that people are spending hours bashing the keyboard to not find a solution

I realy feel sorry for you if this is the fun you have in your life.

Not sure the sort of person who does this deserves your sympathy.

 

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My puzzles are designed to be hard (sometimes really hard ;) ) but still solvable. I'm always happy when the "green" geochecker count jumps from 0 to 1, because then I know that the puzzle "worked" :) .

It's actually not easy at all to create a difficult but solvable puzzle. OTOH, it's almost trivial to create an "unsolvable" one: Just require some wild and far-fetched guesswork, and that's it. In theory, reviewers should verify with the CO that a puzzle is actually solvable, but at least in my area, the standards are apparently very low :( . There is a geochecker called "Certitude", where the CO can choose a keyword instead of coordinates as the solution. This allows puzzles, where you have to guess a certain word which is supposedly "hinted at" in the cache listing. You can imagine, that if the CO's "logic" is a bit twisted, the link between the cache listing and the solution word can be arbitrarily far-fetched. The result are caches which are unfound for months, and have geochecker stats like 0 green vs. 2000 red. I have no idea, why a CO would want that their cache is like that.

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16 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

My puzzles are designed to be hard (sometimes really hard ;) ) but still solvable. I'm always happy when the "green" geochecker count jumps from 0 to 1, because then I know that the puzzle "worked" :) .

It's actually not easy at all to create a difficult but solvable puzzle. OTOH, it's almost trivial to create an "unsolvable" one: Just require some wild and far-fetched guesswork, and that's it. In theory, reviewers should verify with the CO that a puzzle is actually solvable, but at least in my area, the standards are apparently very low :( . There is a geochecker called "Certitude", where the CO can choose a keyword instead of coordinates as the solution. This allows puzzles, where you have to guess a certain word which is supposedly "hinted at" in the cache listing. You can imagine, that if the CO's "logic" is a bit twisted, the link between the cache listing and the solution word can be arbitrarily far-fetched. The result are caches which are unfound for months, and have geochecker stats like 0 green vs. 2000 red. I have no idea, why a CO would want that their cache is like that.

^^^ This 100%.

 

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8 hours ago, niraD said:

There's a cache owner I know who developed a bit of a reputation for creating impossible puzzles. Even when he tried to create easy puzzles with lots of hints about how to solve them, they ended up being very difficult for anyone to solve.

There are two types of "problematic" ;) puzzle cache owners (your example looks like the first kind):

- Those, who are apparently completely unable to estimate the difficultly of their puzzles. I suspect this is mainly because they can't think from the perspective of someone, who does not know the solution. This sometimes leads to puzzles listed with comparably low D-ratings (e.g. D3), but which are still very hard to solve, because you have to guess something which the owner takes for granted. When the problem is pointed out, I more than once heard replies from the owners along the lines of "Why should I rate it higher? If you know what to do, it's actually very simple!". Yes, really. The fact, that almost all puzzles are "simple" once you know how to solve them, is apparently unknown to some :rolleyes:.

- Those, who have a very hard time not to screw up something in their puzzle. Mistakes happen, but there are certain candidates, where the chances for things like wrong formulas, ambiguous questions or other errors are much higher than normal ;) .

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Honestly, it can often be tough to really know how easy or difficult a puzzle can be when you are the one making it.  I've created several that I thought would be tough, but get solved quickly.  Others that I thought might be solved relatively quickly took people a long time to solve.  I have one puzzle that apparently drives the locals crazy, but was solved by one person relatively quickly (he never actually found the cache, though...so it's never been logged).  I've just decided that I'll never really know for sure how my puzzles will be received.  I'm terrible at solving puzzles, but I enjoy making them.  I don't create them anymore with any preconceptions...I just make them because I enjoy coming up with new ideas.  I almost always get positive feedback, though...so I guess I'll keep it up.

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2 hours ago, baer2006 said:

It's actually not easy at all to create a difficult but solvable puzzle. OTOH, it's almost trivial to create an "unsolvable" one: Just require some wild and far-fetched guesswork, and that's it. 

Well put.   

But, back to the OP, having a cache which is only solved once a year or so isn't necessarily an issue.     All of my puzzles are solvable, and in fact all were solved within a few days of being published.     And I believe they are all logical.   But yet I have 2 of them which haven't been found for a year.   Tom Brady, he's not Shady is very straightforward, I point to what formula to use.     There is some math and physics there that probably put some finders off, but no guesswork needed.    The other one Dept of U.S. Law requires some thinking about how to solve it. but it is not a "what am I thinking" puzzle".   This one I think it is the length of the cache page which puts cachers off; it is much easier to solve than it may initially look.

I'd like my puzzles to get more finds. 

I know there are some "impossible" "guess what is in my pocket" puzzles out there, though I don't think many.   Of course, as I haven't solved them, I can't know if they are "impossible" or not.  

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5 hours ago, redsox_mark said:

...And I believe they are all logical.

This is the key.

A puzzle should be logical. That is, you should be able to deduce how to solve it from the information provided, rather than having to guess out of thin air. It can be as vague as a single word in the title or the presence of a lone attribute, but there should be some way to get from A to B. Without that logic, you have an obtuse puzzle that is really just a game of luck. A new puzzle was published near me recently that turned out to be intentionally obtuse, and it didn't go over well with the locals (you solved the puzzle presented to you, but then had to enter a different form of the result into a checker to get the real coordinates, with no indication that any transformation is required).

As for impossible puzzles, that shouldn't be possible anymore. You're required to describe in a note to the reviewer how to solve your puzzle when you submit it, in order to help avoid impossible puzzles. I'd be curious to hear from a reviewer how many impossible puzzles still get submitted.

Here's the relevant section from the Help Center:

Quote

...All clues needed to solve the puzzle must be on the cache page. Before you submit the cache page, post a Reviewer Note with an explanation of how the puzzle is solved.

 

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As a creator and solver of a lot of puzzles, let me offer some advice.

Number one:  Always have your puzzles play-tested before publishing the cache page.  Always.

Having somebody test the puzzle (doing it without hints, as a solver) gives you a lot of good information.  It lets you know roughly how difficult the puzzle will be (at least to people like your testers), it checks for errors, and it helps you learn about the thought processes people will use to solve the puzzle so that any hints you provide will be more effective.

The truly bad puzzles I have encountered in geocaching have one thing in common:  they were never tested. Truly bad puzzles fall into a few categories:

  • Moon logic, or mind-reading games. Your puzzle may seem "obvious" to you but, of course, you have access to your own mind.
  • Unclear instructions. I recently tried to do a puzzle where the instructions quite literally made no sense.  A combination of bad grammar, bad spelling, and incomprehensible sentence construction made what might have been a fun puzzle into a frustrating exercise.
  • Errors.  A puzzle containing flat-out errors is just bad.

On the other hand, the puzzles I have enjoyed the most had the following in common:

  • Discoverability. Everything ties together logically, and the solver can tell that they are making progress as they proceed. When the puzzle is initially seen, there is some idea about what to do; the best puzzles don't require a huge leap to get started.
  • Originality.  I love finding a new puzzle type I have never done before.
  • Thematic. I love puzzles that have a common theme running through the stages, and best of all is an in-theme hide.
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I wish I were better at puzzles. But because I’m not, they are frustrating to me and therefore not fun. I see all the cacher’s who figure them out and then I try, don’t get it and feel stupid. :unsure: I mostly avoid them but I do peck at a couple hoping that one day lightning will strike and I will see the light...

I will say I was stoked to figure out one I had been working on for a while! Fist-pump moment! (And then the heartbreak—the cache was in someone’s yard!!! Noooooo!!!! I don’t do caches in people’s yards! Internal battle...and finally decided I figured out that dang puzzle and damned if I was not gonna get that smiley! So I had a miserable but successful hunt molesting someone’s shrubbery while an old lady across the street was yelling “M’am, did you lose a caaaaaaat??! M’am, did you lose a caaaaaaaaat??!” I signed the log and fled! Puzzle smiley earned!

I wish there were more beginner-intermediate level puzzle caches. Most I’ve seen are oriented to the puzzle masters.

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2 hours ago, PlantAKiss said:

I wish I were better at puzzles. But because I’m not, they are frustrating to me and therefore not fun. I see all the cacher’s who figure them out and then I try, don’t get it and feel stupid.

At first, many cachers just ask coordinates from a friend because they are collenting statistics, not experienses. The actual number of players who really figured them out is smaller than you may expect.

It is quite normal to feel stupid when you have no idea how to start with the puzzle. When you gain some experience this feeling should change to curiosity. In many cases the problem is something you do not know or remember. For example, if the puzzle is based on W3W you are supposed to know this without the slightest hint when the puzzle is "powdersoilsissues". This kind of puzzle seems to be impossible to solve until you know about such service for other reasons. There is nothing you can do to solve the puzzle immediatelly even though it seems very easy for others.

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15 hours ago, fizzymagic said:

On the other hand, the puzzles I have enjoyed the most had the following in common:

  • Discoverability. Everything ties together logically, and the solver can tell that they are making progress as they proceed. When the puzzle is initially seen, there is some idea about what to do; the best puzzles don't require a huge leap to get started.
  • Originality.  I love finding a new puzzle type I have never done before.
  • Thematic. I love puzzles that have a common theme running through the stages, and best of all is an in-theme hide.

Based on this criteria, the best puzzle I've done, by far, is "The Key to the Cryptonomicon".  It's based upon Neal Stephensons book "Key to Cryptonomicon" which includes geocaching in the plot.  The puzzle contains several plot elements from the book and has several red herrings that are not part of the solution but tie the puzzle together.  On the cache page I think there were four different fairly obvious puzzle that lead to other puzzles to be solved and in some cases there was more than one way to get a piece of information needed to progress.  It took me about three months to finish it and I know of others that spent far longer.

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11 hours ago, PlantAKiss said:

I wish there were more beginner-intermediate level puzzle caches. Most I’ve seen are oriented to the puzzle masters.

I am fortunate to live in an area where there are LOTS of puzzle caches with a wide range of difficulty.  Some are very simple to solve, and others are quite devious, and time consuming!  They use an almost limitless array of methods to solve using math, language, codebreaking, geeky techy stuff, common and not so common sense ... if I don't see something obvious or it doesn't click with a way to solve, I'll move to another one.

As I said, fortunately for me, there are hundreds of nearby puzzles with a multitude of strategies; I've solved several and have many more to go!  If there is a series near you, or some geoart, try those - once you get the strategy used on one in the series, the rest are typically similar (not always, but it's been the case in those I have seen).  A couple near me use wikipedia articles as the source of the numbers to find the coordinates, so it's just reading the articles till you find the #'s.  Not difficult, just takes time. (And can be frustrating when the info in the wiki changes!!)

Good luck!

Edited by CAVinoGal
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11 hours ago, PlantAKiss said:

I wish there were more beginner-intermediate level puzzle caches. Most I’ve seen are oriented to the puzzle masters.

I'm with you.    :) 

Dyslexic, math's out, but encrypted text I sorta "see" sometimes.  Luckily there's one here who places easy "do a google search" puzzles, meant mostly for the new kids who won't read a cache page to even know what a puzzle is.  Numerous DNFs on bonus hide coordinates (when it's not even at "those" coords...) supports that thinking for him ...and makes it easy on me.  ;)   Most 3 or up I ignore list now, just to clear 'em from searches. 

Ever think of "teaming up" with someone?  Years ago, we met a guy who could solve crazy puzzles but wasn't comfortable with anything over 2+T.  He'd give me a mail, saying there's a stage with something to my liking involved, and we'd head out to the final together, as a team. 

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10 hours ago, arisoft said:

At first, many cachers just ask coordinates from a friend because they are collenting statistics, not experienses. The actual number of players who really figured them out is smaller than you may expect.

It is quite normal to feel stupid when you have no idea how to start with the puzzle. When you gain some experience this feeling should change to curiosity. In many cases the problem is something you do not know or remember. For example, if the puzzle is based on W3W you are supposed to know this without the slightest hint when the puzzle is "powdersoilsissues". This kind of puzzle seems to be impossible to solve until you know about such service for other reasons. There is nothing you can do to solve the puzzle immediatelly even though it seems very easy for others.

For those that just ask for coordinates (the solution) for a puzzle, to me, they haven't really solved the puzzle.  Yes, they got the solution needed to find the cache, but they haven't really solved the puzzle.  There are also sites which provide a bunch of different cipher solvers, and to me, using them isn't really solving the puzzle either.  Cut-n-pasting some text into a form and have it spit out a solution isn't really solving the puzzle.  Some sites will even figure out what kind of cipher has been used, apply a tool which decodes that text and returns an answer.  The puzzle "solver" doesn't even have to know what kind of cipher it is.

In the case of a puzzle such as the W3W puzzle it's difficult for someone to provide a hint without basically giving the solution away.  I suspect pretty much everyone would recognize a soduku or cross word puzzle and know immediately what to do (and there are soduko solver sites as well).  However, if someone has never seen a pigpen cipher before they'd probably have no idea what to do (because they wouldn't know to search for pigpen to see how to solve them).  Once they've encountered just one puzzle cache which uses a pigpen cipher they're easy to recognize and easy to solve.  On some puzzle help sites I've seen you'll see "I don't want an answer, I just want a hint?" but if the hint is "it's a pigpen cipher" you might as well just get the answer.

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12 hours ago, PlantAKiss said:

I wish I were better at puzzles. But because I’m not, they are frustrating to me and therefore not fun. I see all the cacher’s who figure them out and then I try, don’t get it and feel stupid. :unsure: I mostly avoid them but I do peck at a couple hoping that one day lightning will strike and I will see the light...

I will say I was stoked to figure out one I had been working on for a while! Fist-pump moment! (And then the heartbreak—the cache was in someone’s yard!!! Noooooo!!!! I don’t do caches in people’s yards! Internal battle...and finally decided I figured out that dang puzzle and damned if I was not gonna get that smiley! So I had a miserable but successful hunt molesting someone’s shrubbery while an old lady across the street was yelling “M’am, did you lose a caaaaaaat??! M’am, did you lose a caaaaaaaaat??!” I signed the log and fled! Puzzle smiley earned!

I wish there were more beginner-intermediate level puzzle caches. Most I’ve seen are oriented to the puzzle masters.

I am rubbish at puzzles, hence why I had a really easy maths puzzle published. It's not about bamboozling the cacher but making it simple and fun for those who like me struggle with tough puzzles.

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15 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:
24 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

For what purpose?

I have never heard of this type of 'puzzle revenge setters' so as you seem to know about this, I was wondering if you could enlighten the Community about it ?

As well as being a pointless exercise I imagine responding to your request would be against the forum TOU so I'm going to politely reject your request.

 

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22 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

As well as being a pointless exercise I imagine responding to your request would be against the forum TOU so I'm going to politely reject your request.

 

so your comment - 'There's a third type - revenge setters who set puzzles out of frustration at their inability to solve those of others' is pointless and just made to create ill feeling among the community as no one has heard of this issue

Edited by CHEZRASCALS
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16 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

so your comment - 'There's a third type - revenge setters who set puzzles out of frustration at their inability to solve those of others' is pointless and just made to create ill feeling among the community as no one has heard of this issue

No, not at all.

It's made as a statement of fact based on my personal experience.

Creation of ill feeling among the community is the furthest thing from my mind :)

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16 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

 

It's made as a statement of fact based on my personal experience.

 

please could you share your personal experiences, so the community can understand you have proof of this unknown practice ?

you are creating an issue that does not happen and by making the first comment 'revenge setters' now people are wondering what it is and surprised.

by you saying this,  I think you want puzzle setters to consider the reason they are making and placing a new puzzle and could be put off if accused of 'revenge setting'

 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

please could you share your personal experiences, so the community can understand you have proof of this unknown practice ?

you are creating an issue that does not happen and by making the first comment 'revenge setters' now people are wondering what it is and surprised.

by you saying this,  I think you want puzzle setters to consider the reason they are making and placing a new puzzle and could be put off if accused of 'revenge setting'

 

 

 

At the risk of repeating myself but for the avoidance of doubt, I've no intention of going into detail.

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19 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

At the risk of repeating myself but for the avoidance of doubt, I've no intention of going into detail.

Do puzzle setters need to consider they will be questioned on the reason for their new puzzle?

I am worried now that puzzle setters will think twice about placing a new puzzle because they may be seen as 'revenge setters'

you have created an issue for new placements now and will put people off creating them

 

 

 

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16 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

Do puzzle setters need to consider they will be questioned on the reason for their new puzzle?

I am worried now that puzzle setters will think twice about placing a new puzzle because they may be seen as 'revenge setters'

you have created an issue for new placements now and will put people off creating them

 

 

 

I'm not worried and nor should you be. There's really nothing to be worried about.

 

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38 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

please could you share your personal experiences, so the community can understand you have proof of this unknown practice ?

you are creating an issue that does not happen and by making the first comment 'revenge setters' now people are wondering what it is and surprised.

by you saying this,  I think you want puzzle setters to consider the reason they are making and placing a new puzzle and could be put off if accused of 'revenge setting'

 

 

 

I have seen evidence of / heard of geocachers planning the kind of puzzle which could be considered a "revenge puzzle"..

This kind of thing, seen on social media,  for example..

5ab7ffb09a2a2_Screenshot2018-03-2520_59_34.png.a712755b21048b482d10f9c4377177e0.png

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42 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

you have created an issue for new placements now and will put people off creating them

In that same vein though, I found a cache recently which was a magnetic nano, fixed upside down on a piece of metal with a cross-section barely bigger than the nano itself.

Very often the magnets in these nano's are not the best in terms of quality and get considerably weaker over time, leading to the cache dropping off that which it's hidden on and getting lost.

In a friendly, helpful way I suggested in part of my log that because of this issue the CO might want to keep an eye on the cache.

Another cacher, not the CO, logged a note stating that my advice was 'cache policing' - but I won't let it put me off trying to be helpful where I can and I certainly won't be changing my logging style to acommodate this sort of baseless comment.

Correction - the term used was caching policing.

I can well imagine others seeing this term in the context it appears and concluding that offering helpful advice and information to the CO is considered bad form and unwelcome. This worries me :(

Edited by Team Microdot
Correction
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49 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

I'm not worried and nor should you be. There's really nothing to be worried about.

 

now you have created a worry - so if i place a puzzle cache, i will be have to consider if by your comments it is a 'revenge setters' cache

so do i submit it to you first and ask your approval, so i am not targeted by the this nonsense type?

 

i am worried now that puzzle placements will have to have your approval and you will be policing the reason for placement

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16 minutes ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

now you have created a worry - so if i place a puzzle cache, i will be have to consider if by your comments it is a 'revenge setters' cache

so do i submit it to you first and ask your approval, so i am not targeted by the this nonsense type?

 

i am worried now that puzzle placements will have to have your approval and you will be policing the reason for placement

I confess that I can't recite the official geocaching.com guidelines or Terms Of Use but I'm confident that there's nothing in there that even hints that any cache placement requires my approval.

Hopefully that puts your mind at rest :)

At least though we've seen evidence that the phenomena exists in reality.

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1 hour ago, CHEZRASCALS said:

so your comment - 'There's a third type - revenge setters who set puzzles out of frustration at their inability to solve those of others' is pointless and just made to create ill feeling among the community as no one has heard of this issue

Just to refute the "no one" in the last sentence: I know perfectly well, what a "revenge puzzle" is, and could name an example, but won't do so for the same reasons that Team Microdot has indicated.

Many years ago there was even some sort of "puzzle war" in a neighboring community, which escalated into ever more devious puzzles. But in end, puzzles placed just to annoy other cachers (for whatever reasons) are extremely rare, so if you have never seen or heard of such a case, don't worry ;) .

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21 minutes ago, The Magna Defender said:

I wouldn't go as far as classing my post as evidence. 

I tried to set evil revenge puzzles but they were solved and found within minutes, so in reality revenge puzzles don't exist. They're just bog standard unknown caches :ph34r: 

I wouldn't go so far as classing your post as evidence of anything either.

Putting to one side your confirmation that you've at least tried to set evil revenge puzzles in the past which proves that they have existed, you're not the only cacher in the world so I'm struggling to reconcile myself to the idea that your claim that your revenge puzzles were 'solved and found in minutes' means that they don't exist elsewhere on the planet.

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It would appear that a certain Cacher spits their dummy out, when he thinks there is a conspiracy towards that cacher. Armchair logging of NA logs is petty especially when they have not been to the cache himself. 

The weather has not been kind to caches so, I always have spare logs in my pockets and replaces after pinging the CO. All part of the community spirit. Why slap a NA when you can help your fellow cacher?

Certain puzzle are placed for pals, and they are usually the unsolvable ones. Just because you can't solve them and other do does not necessarily mean they have been given the coords.

People moaning about other people's caches on the ether are no more than Internet Trolls, so please return back under the bridge from which you sprang. Just because you can't solve all does not mean they are unsolvable. Just because you cannot find the cache does not mean it's not there.  

Be nice. It's nice to be nice. IT'S ONLY AS GAME

  • Upvote 4
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54 minutes ago, The Magna Defender said:

I wouldn't go as far as classing my post as evidence. 

I tried to set evil revenge puzzles but they were solved and found within minutes, so in reality revenge puzzles don't exist. They're just bog standard unknown caches :ph34r: 

Trust me when I tell you that if I set a revenge puzzle it would likely never be solved.  But what's the point of that?  I have, however, on occasion, after finally solving a particularly bad example of a moon logic puzzle, been tempted.

I focus now on trying to set better puzzles when I do set one.  For my definition of "better," see my post above.  in addition to trying to make the puzzles fun, I also try (when I can) to make them at least a little educational.

Sadly, the vast majority of new puzzles set in my area  are not (IMO) very good, yet they still seem to get favorite points.  So I don't set many any more.

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48 minutes ago, Quirky Diva said:

Certain puzzle are placed for pals, and they are usually the unsolvable ones. Just because you can't solve them and other do does not necessarily mean they have been given the coords.

I suppose you're right.

I have heard of cachers sharing login credentials which enables them to login and help themselves.

 

 

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16 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

I suppose you're right.

I have heard of cachers sharing login credentials which enables them to login and help themselves.

 

 

Heresay is not proof. I have heard the same too about other certain people. I ignore it. The only criteria  is to find the cache, sign it and put it back, how its solved is up to the finder

 

16 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

I suppose you're right.

I have heard of cachers sharing login credentials which enables them to login and help themselves.

 

 

 

16 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

I suppose you're right.

I have heard of cachers sharing login credentials which enables them to login and help themselves.

 

 

 

  • Upvote 3
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