Wonders of the World

2k · August 23, 2020

7 hours ago, fizzymagic said:

So I am a stats nerd, but too lazy to actually do the math. Thus, I Monte Carloed the Wonders of the World. Question: if you just keep caching normally, without paying any attention, how many finds will it take to get all 14 souvenirs? I assume Wonders are randomly assigned to caches.

Love it! We only need 3 more ancient wonders now, and have only found 17 so far this promotion. We haven't been using searched to dictate where we cache, so it appears we'll complete it in the next 10 or so caches.

I wonder if anyone managed the 1 in a million longshot of doing it in 14 finds??

5.3k · August 23, 2020

1 hour ago, MartyBartfast said:

Does that assume that Wonders are distributed evenly across all caches or does it take into account that some caches have no attributes - about %2.5 of UK caches have none.

Assumes uniform distribution over all caches.

Do you have some unique insight into how the Wonders are distributed? I have seen nothing to indicate that they have anything to do with attributes. As a result, I went with the obvious Bayesian prior.

Edited August 23, 2020 by fizzymagic

5.7k · August 23, 2020

@fizzy

The only fly in the ointment would be for cachers that regularly scoop up all of the newly placed ones in their area. Since the 'behind the scenes' distribution of 'wonders' was done previously, I think the most recent caches have no chance of having a 'wonder' associated with them. So those finders who are able to keep up with new placements may have to work a bit harder to find caches just old enough to have an associated wonder.

1.8k · August 23, 2020

9 minutes ago, ecanderson said:

Since the 'behind the scenes' distribution of 'wonders' was done previously, I think the most recent caches have no chance of having a 'wonder' associated with them.

This doesn't seem to be the case near me - there have been several hidden and published after the 8/12/2020 start date for the promo. All of them have one of the Modern Wonders; I haven't seen any of the newer caches with an Ancient Wonder though.

6.2k · August 23, 2020

5 hours ago, fizzymagic said:

have seen nothing to indicate that they have anything to do with attributes

Typo on my part I meant

Quote

does it take into account that some caches have no ~~attributes~~ Wonders

5.7k · August 23, 2020

@CAVinoGal

A little confused by your response. Are you saying that you've seen 'wonders' associated with caches published post 8/12, but just nothing 'recently'? It's 'recently' that I'm talking about.

However, a worldwide search shows that new caches ARE picking up 'wonders'. Some hidden as recently as 8/24 (tomorrow?!?!?!?) https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC8YTCF and https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC8YTCY

Edited August 23, 2020 by ecanderson

1.8k · August 23, 2020

3 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Are you saying that you've seen 'wonders' associated with caches published post 8/12, but just nothing 'recently'? It's 'recently' that I'm talking about.

Yes, I have seen caches published (and hidden) post 8/12, with Wonders associated. Due to the fires in our area, I have seen no caches published in the last 4 days.

11.6k · August 23, 2020

All geocaches published after the start of the promotion receive a modern Wonder.

5.7k · August 24, 2020

Helpful stuff. Thanks for that. Hadn't seen any of it.

2.7k · August 25, 2020

I guess I'm in the fortunate group of cachers. I found a series of 19 caches on the 14th. (I'll get them logged soon.) It seems that I will complete the entire promotion when I log cache number 16 of the series. I finished the series of 19 in about and hour and fifteen minutes. I wasn't even trying, and I'm done (once I get the logging finished).

7k · August 25, 2020

8 hours ago, K13 said:

I guess I'm in the fortunate group of cachers. I found a series of 19 caches on the 14th. (I'll get them logged soon.) It seems that I will complete the entire promotion when I log cache number 16 of the series. I finished the series of 19 in about and hour and fifteen minutes. I wasn't even trying, and I'm done (once I get the logging finished).

My caching day out today was up north to the Newcastle region again. Seven hours all up, about half driving and the rest hiking along forest service trails, with seven finds and one DNF that netted me 3 ancient wonders. I'd previously acquired all the modern wonders from 12 finds on a couple of trips north. The ancient wonder in the DNFed cache was a duplicate of one of the others so it didn't cost me anything as far as this promotion goes.

August 26, 2020

On 8/20/2020 at 8:57 AM, TmdAndGG said:

There are some around our area that have 2 modern wonders. I'll look them up.

Edit: Of course when I go looking for them I can't find them... I'll let you guys know if I run across any.

Found One!

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC8YTVR

It's a new one too. Maybe the bug wasn't fixed after all... The cache was created after Moun10Bike posted this.

Edited August 26, 2020 by TmdAndGG

2.1k · August 26, 2020

So, finally had time to find a few caches. Basically two. And got two wonders apparently. Also got a new country, which is a lot more exciting

10.1k · August 27, 2020

On 8/21/2020 at 5:59 AM, MartyBartfast said:

So it took me 19 finds during 5 caching trips over 8 days to get them all without looking for them.

Took me 52 finds in 14 days to find my all of the Wonders!

August 27, 2020

We're not having the best luck with collecting all the wonders without trying. We currently have found 24 caches since the challenge began, and we still need 2 modern wonders. I seems like all we ever find are Chichén Itzás...

2.1k · August 27, 2020

3 caches found so far, and three modern wonders accidentally bagged.

5.6k · August 27, 2020

18 caches found since the 12th, and I need only one more wonder to complete the series. We're planning on another paddle cache trip to a 'new' lake tomorrow, it seems one of them (I looked after planning the trip) has the last wonder I need. It'll be about the fourth cache we find (if we find it) making 22 caches to finish.

August 28, 2020

I completed all the souvenirs with 28 founds!

Yesterday I had 13/14 Wonders and I solved a mystery to get the last one

5.6k · August 28, 2020

On 8/27/2020 at 10:27 AM, The Jester said:

18 caches found since the 12th, and I need only one more wonder to complete the series. We're planning on another paddle cache trip to a 'new' lake tomorrow, it seems one of them (I looked after planning the trip) has the last wonder I need. It'll be about the fourth cache we find (if we find it) making 22 caches to finish.

Well, we missed one cache (I forgot to add the newly reabled cache to the GPSr) so it took only 21 caches to complete the Wonders.

7k · August 29, 2020

Today's 220km caching round trip through Wollombi netted me 7 cache finds, one being a bonus for an AL there, but only 3 of those 7 had ancient wonders and they were all ones I already had, so no further progress in this promotion. Thus far, the modern wonders took 12 finds to get and my 15 finds since then have only netted me 3 ancient wonders.

2.1k · August 29, 2020

Un-challenge update: found 7 caches today (ok, 6 and one event) and still have not gotten the missing modern wonder. So I'm at 17 caches now I think. I might win the un-challenge... um... you win if you need the biggest number of caches, right? :tongue:

1.8k · September 1, 2020

On 8/29/2020 at 11:14 AM, terratin said:

Un-challenge update: found 7 caches today (ok, 6 and one event) and still have not gotten the missing modern wonder. So I'm at 17 caches now I think. I might win the un-challenge... um... you win if you need the biggest number of caches, right?

I found 5 caches today with hubby - so we've now found 11 (or is it 12?) caches since the start of the promo, and we've netted 6 of the 7 Modern Wonders. Still need one more and I will NOT look at caches to find for that Wonder - we'll just find what we would find on our normal outings, wherever that takes us. Eventually I'm sure that Wonder will show up, and then we'll move on to the Ancient ones.

Meanwhile, today is August 31; the original deadline for publishing my Adventure Lab. It's not ready; thankfully I've now got till October 31. No chance for the opportunity to get a second one, but I think I'll be good with just this one. Covid-19, wildfires, and the birth of a granddaughter (8/21/20) have put geocaching on the back burner for a bit!!

1.3k · September 1, 2020

Completed on Sunday. I think my other half, IceColdToo might be in with a chance of an (unplanned) completion in the fewest caches, with all three souvenirs from 17 finds.

2.1k · September 4, 2020

I finished it yesterday as part of the UnChallenge. I needed 21 caches for the first and the second souvenirs each. Now both souvenirs are hidden, as usual :tongue:

September 4, 2020

31 minutes ago, terratin said:

Now both souvenirs are hidden, as usual

Your World Explorer Souvenir isn't. Just letting you know. You end up getting 3 souvenirs overall, one from all the modern wonders, one from all the ancient wonders, and one for completing the whole thing.

2.1k · September 4, 2020

2 hours ago, TmdAndGG said:

Your World Explorer Souvenir isn't. Just letting you know. You end up getting 3 souvenirs overall, one from all the modern wonders, one from all the ancient wonders, and one for completing the whole thing.

Yikes! Oddly I did search for it but couldn't find it. Maybe it was awarded a few minutes later. Time to hide it as well Thanks a lot.

2.1k · September 4, 2020

On the other hand it might be kind of appropriate. I think I'll leave it there for now. :laughing:

1.8k · September 4, 2020

On 8/29/2020 at 11:14 AM, terratin said:

I might win the un-challenge... um... you win if you need the biggest number of caches, right?

Or maybe, the "winner" is the one who takes the longest to get the souvenirs without making any effort? I still need one more Modern Wonder (the FTF we grabbed the other day contained one we already had, a Chichén Itzá). I've been watching the numbers on the Google sheet fill in all around me, but I have yet to get the first souvenir!

I don't know when we will next go caching, we kind of do it on the way to and from other places as we have time and the mood strikes us. A discussion in another thread asked if caching activity had slowed down or increased in 2020 and mine has slowed considerably; it simply has not been a priority! I'm still confident the souvenirs will eventually find their way into my stats. In time.

September 5, 2020

My un-Challenge is still in progress. First time in a few weeks I managed to get out caching yesterday. Visited five caches of which two were DNF's. Of the three finds, all three had Wonders I already had. So I'm still sitting on a total of three modern Wonders. Hooray for no progress! Oh wait ... :laughing:

11.6k · September 10, 2020

What wonders will be available in 2021?

2.1k · September 10, 2020

2 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

What wonders will be available in 2021?

One can only wonder.

1.9k · September 10, 2020

Looks like I found 25 caches since this promotion started, and that got me all of the souvenirs. I didn't really go out of my way to figure out how to find which souvenir, they just happened in the course of my caching.

1.8k · September 15, 2020

On 9/5/2020 at 3:48 PM, Unit473L said:

My un-Challenge is still in progress. First time in a few weeks I managed to get out caching yesterday. Visited five caches of which two were DNF's. Of the three finds, all three had Wonders I already had. So I'm still sitting on a total of three modern Wonders. Hooray for no progress! Oh wait ...

Unchallenge still in progress for me, too. Seven separate "outings" where we found a cache. Two of those were FTF opportunities we took advantage of; the most on ony one outing was 6 caches. Total of 16 caches found (in 30+ days, about our average this year!) since the promo started, and we have 6 of the Modern Wonders. 6 Petras, 5 , 2 Great Walls, 1 each of all the others except Christ the Redeemer, the one we still need. We've still got lots of time; waiting for the air to clear before doing any major hiking around here.

A CITO event just published for September 23 near here, at a park/open space with a few caches we haven't found yet; I don't know if any of them contain what we need - but that's the point of this un-challenge, isn't it? Just go get caches, log in order of finding (that's my usual habit anyway, date and time stamp each one) and see how long it's going to take to get all the Wonders and souvenirs. We haChichén Itzásven't even decided if we are going to do the CITO. We probably will end up doing so, it will be nice to see faces of our caching friends, even without the usual hugs!

UPDATE: Two days later - (9/17/2020)

We had an interesting geocaching day! Skies cleared, air quality was in the green zone (GOOD), so we got out and did some walking and caching. We found a few by someone who has been hiding quite a few during this pandemic, giving us new ones to find in our neighborhood! We had 3 finds, one DNF, and as I'm logging, I see the DNF (#2 of our 4 attempts today) contained the one Modern Wonder we still need! DANG! Another Chichén Itzá, a second Machu Picchu, and on our last cache of the day, finally, Christ the Redeemer for the souvenir! 36 days, 19 caches ... now we'll see how long it takes to get the next 7.

What made the day interesting, and has nothing to do with the Wonders souvenirs or un-challenge, so forgive me for going off-topic here, is that along the trail in the park we were walking is the final for a puzzle cache of my son - last found in 2018 with a few DNF's since, one fairly recently. While we were nearby, I thought I'd check on it (we'd found it in 2018). It was there! So I took a photo of the logsheet, and posted a Write note to let folks know all is well in spite of the DNF's.

I quickly got a message via the MC from the last DNF, who happened to be the CO on the cache WE had DNF'ed. He asked about the hide, I answered then asked him to check on his hide, which he promptly disabled as it was, in fact, missing (hanger in a tree, branch had been trimmed, cache is gone). I never did log the DNF as the cache was disabled by the time I sat down tonight to do my logs, and that's when I saw it was the one Modern Wonder we needed! Eventually though, the last cache find of the day yielded the final Modern Wonder. Un-challenge has been an interesting way to go about this souvenir promotion!

Edited September 18, 2020 by CAVinoGal
Added info/updated

7k · September 30, 2020

Today I finally picked up the last two Ancient Wonders I needed to complete this promotion. I didn't quite qualify for the un-challenge as I specifically went for the last three Modern Wonders on a loop drive through Gorokan and Toukley in mid August so as to unlock the Ancient Wonders. Those I've just collected randomly though when they've happened to have been in caches I've done. All up it's taken 39 finds to complete the set.

I see that there's going to be more Wonders to collect next year:

image.png.31324d31a3916b45937844a5ea14d7f1.png

Maybe I'll do the un-challenge properly for those.

Edited September 30, 2020 by barefootjeff

October 2, 2020

I haven't really done the un challenge properly per se, although I do still have a good selection of walking distance caches that afford me said selection. I DNFed my would-be last cache to finish this promotion, so I think I'll be taking another 5 or so caches until I get one requiring that last ancient wonder. (I searched nearly 40 minutes for that sucker last night....grr)

October 5, 2020

I didn't know about the unchallenge but ended up play it anyway. I read this thread and tallied mine up this morning, 19 caches. I'm a stats nerd too and and that's an insane low number.

I also thought about this quite a bit.

On 8/22/2020 at 9:19 PM, fizzymagic said:

So I am a stats nerd, but too lazy to actually do the math. Thus, I Monte Carloed the Wonders of the World.

The math is easy. This is the bag with marked balls where you select without replacement. Since the population size is so huge, 7M caches, and our sample size is so small, it's not unreasonableness to make this a bag with 7 marked balls with replacement.

Given:

n >= 7

We find the probability that there is 7 unique selections and (n - 7) duplicates is

(1/7) ^ 7 * (6/7) ^ (n - 7)

Since the first draw and the last draw must be unique, that means the 2nd and (n-1)th draws have (n - 2)! permutations of the order that unique and duplicates balls are drawn.

(1/7) ^ 7 * (6/7) ^ (n - 7) * (n - 2)!

I think!

I'll could put it in a spread sheet and see if I get the curve you have but stuff.

October 10, 2020

57 days of caching and 129 cache finds needed to complete the promotion.

1.8k · October 10, 2020

15 hours ago, msrubble said:

57 days of caching and 129 cache finds needed to complete the promotion.

Still working on this, well, still finding caches as usual and waiting for that last ancient wonder to crop up - wondering if I will reach my goal of 2000 (or maybe make it 2020) finds by the end of 2020 OR find the last ancient wonder, which will come first? I'm at 1990 finds right now, so we'll see. Hubby and I want to find #2000 together (he's at 1984 right now), and he's been playing catch up so we can reach 2000 together. He's already completed the wonders, I still have one more Ancient wonder to find.

October 10, 2020

We finally finished the challenge, after 62 finds. I wonder what wonders they have planned for next year, maybe the 7 Natural Wonders of the World?

1.8k · October 13, 2020

Challenge complete - it took me 53 finds to get all the Wonders, Modern and Ancient, and 61 days. It was my Find #1998 that nabbed the last Wonder; we also hit 2000 finds today! So a milestone day in more ways than one - unchallenge completed, souvenirs earned, and 2000 finds recorded. Time to relax with a glass of wine!!

November 9, 2020

I finished today with 48 finds over 88 days! I was starting to wonder if I was ever going to finish these wonders.

7k · February 4, 2021

I've just noticed that caches published after the start of February don't have any wonders:

image.png.d075413109d198badc5e9fd6febb93c7.png

Does that make it a bland cache? I'm curious as I haven't seen an end date announced for this promotion yet, but I guess that means it's probably nigh.

5.8k · February 4, 2021

4 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I've just noticed that caches published after the start of February don't have any wonders:

Does that make it a bland cache? I'm curious as I haven't seen an end date announced for this promotion yet, but I guess that means it's probably nigh.

Interesting. I finished this one a while ago, so I hadn't been paying attention. But you're right, January caches have a wonder and February caches do not.

4.5k · February 5, 2021

The wonders are in the surroundings, once again.

February 5, 2021

I vaguely recall reading somewhere (and it may just be my tired brain playing tricks on me) but had there been any official announcements about a Wonders 2 promotion during 2021?

5.8k · February 5, 2021

On 2/5/2021 at 3:46 AM, Unit473L said:

I vaguely recall reading somewhere (and it may just be my tired brain playing tricks on me) but had there been any official announcements about a Wonders 2 promotion during 2021?

I don't see anything like that in the blog. No end date for WotW, but no mention of a new campaign that I could find, and nothing about a new souvenir campaign in the 2021 souvenir moments blog post.

edit: I was wrong. @barefootjeff found it.

Edited February 7, 2021 by hzoi

7k · February 5, 2021

10 hours ago, Unit473L said:

I vaguely recall reading somewhere (and it may just be my tired brain playing tricks on me) but had there been any official announcements about a Wonders 2 promotion during 2021?

On the Wonders page linked from the Dashboard, there's a teaser hinting at more Wonders this year:

image.png.d443b4509402cf708b10d6b207f3006a.png

9.1k · February 7, 2021

On 2/5/2021 at 5:37 PM, on4bam said:

Will they take longer to collect than last year? (2 outings and done).

Well, have fun with it. If they're everywhere, and you find a cache that gave it to you, pretend it didn't, and instead target a cache you think is great for its souvenir theme. That's what I'm doing.

February 9, 2021

Sooooo, starting again on February 24, 2021 at noon UTC.

But, when will this phase end? Cannot find the info in the Blog post here:

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2021/02/14-new-reasons-to-go-geocaching-two-new-levels-added-to-wonders-of-the-world/

February 9, 2021

3 minutes ago, Dr.MORO said:

Sooooo, starting again on February 24, 2021 at noon UTC.

But, when will this phase end? Cannot find the info in the Blog post here:

https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2021/02/14-new-reasons-to-go-geocaching-two-new-levels-added-to-wonders-of-the-world/

From the FAQ below in that page

When does Wonders of the World end?
Wonders of the World will be on-going and at this time does not have an end date. Should this change, we will be sure to announce an end date with ample time so that all who are participating can complete the souvenir challenge.

Wonders of the World

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