I don't get it

[+micinvegas]

I am brand new and hate to ask questions that make eyes roll but here goes...

 

I am confused on Puzzle caches, specifically the ones with pictures.How am I suppose to convert pictures to numbers to get the coordinates? Obviously I know what the first numbers should be and that has to be the key to getting the other numbers. In the example below the N coordinates should be 36 and the W should be 115. I am not looking for you to solve it but rather just the thought process you use. Is there a typical universal method that is used?

 

I consider myself a pretty good puzzle person but not now - I just don't get it.

 

Edited June 25, 2018 by Keystone
Images removed by moderator

[RuideAlmeida]

5 minutes ago, micinvegas said:

I consider myself a pretty good puzzle person but not now - I just don't get it.

 

Usually the forums should not be used to solved specific puzzles... but we can provide a broader approach, maybe.

Considering that those pictures belong to movies, I would think of... the characters names, the movie name, the sequence of the movie name, etc. then a good idea may be to convert letters to numbers by instance...

[+Touchstone]

Link to still some of the best advice and links to additional tutorials on the subject:

 

 

[+micinvegas]

3 minutes ago, Touchstone said:

Link to still some of the best advice and links to additional tutorials on the subject:

========

Thank you!!

 

 

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, micinvegas said:

I am confused on Puzzle caches, specifically the ones with pictures.How am I suppose to convert pictures to numbers to get the coordinates? Obviously I know what the first numbers should be and that has to be the key to getting the other numbers. In the example below the N coordinates should be 36 and the W should be 115. I am not looking for you to solve it but rather just the thought process you use. Is there a typical universal method that is used?

Touchstone has already posted a link to the advice I often post, so I won't post it again. And I'm avoiding looking at the specific images you posted, because I don't want to post spoilers for that puzzle. According to section 2-D of the geocaching.com terms of use, "You agree not to: [...] xxiii. Publish on our websites the solutions, hints, spoilers, or any hidden coordinates for any geocache without consent from the geocache owner.”

 

But for me, the first step of such puzzles is to identify the images. There are online tools like TinEye that can help with that. And that's often the easy part.

 

Once you've identified the images, start trying to figure out how the images can be numbered. It could be something simple like the first letter of their last name. It could be the order they appeared in the credits for a movie that they all appeared in. It could be the color of their clothes, numbered according to the resistor color code. Or maybe the images have been photoshopped, and the number appears somewhere in the image itself, and the obvious subject of the image is irrelevant. Or the images themselves are a red herring, and the puzzle could be something else entirely.

 

Good luck!

[+micinvegas]

10 hours ago, niraD said:

 

But for me, the first step of such puzzles is to identify the images. There are online tools like TinEye that can help with that. And that's often the easy part.

 

Tineye was a huge help. I have most identified now. Thank you.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On 6/25/2018 at 10:38 AM, niraD said:

Once you've identified the images, start trying to figure out how the images can be numbered. It could be something simple like the first letter of their last name. It could be the order they appeared in the credits for a movie that they all appeared in. It could be the color of their clothes, numbered according to the resistor color code. Or maybe the images have been photoshopped, and the number appears somewhere in the image itself, and the obvious subject of the image is irrelevant. Or the images themselves are a red herring, and the puzzle could be something else entirely.

 

A few other possibilities for how images can be used, in general, for a puzzle cache.   Images contain some metadata associated with the image (called exif data) which can contain various bits of information, including the "geo tag" information (lat/long coordinates) and other pieces of information that can be used to hide clues.  Jeffrey's Exif Viewer is pretty much the go to tool for examining exif data.  There's even a chrome extension for it that allows one to check the exif data for an image open in the browser.  

 

Steganography is a mechanism for hiding a message or data within an image (or other file type) and there are several ways to do it.  There are some online and downloadable tools that can help.   One form is to create a "zip" file with the image contained in it and then rename the file with a .jpg extension.    Most computers will just display the image contained within the zip file but changing the filename to "something.zip" and then extracting it's contents will reveal other files in the zip file which may include the coordinates.   Another form may involve changing the pixel colors throughout an image.  It might not be noticeable to the naked eye but some image tools can filter the image such that only that specific pixel color is displayed.  Hiding all other pixels, and a message may be revealed.   

 

When encountering a puzzle cache that just seems to be an image (or several images) it's a good idea to look at the difficulty rating.  A high difficulty rating may indicated that a more complex method is being used to hide a message or that it's a multi stage puzzle and finding a clue in the message is just the first step in a long, complex puzzle.