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Is there a way to have the spoiler list on FaceBook known as the 'Geocache Puzzle Spoiler' removed or blocked or something? I mean he/she completely ruins 'puzzle caching' as we know it. Just giving answers to people who know of the list and take advantage of it seems stupid for geocachers who take the time to solve a puzzle the right way. He has placed many puzzles that I own and really like. I am happy to give hints to anyone who asks, however I don't want just anyone to be able to bypass the puzzle....

Does anyone have any background information I don't know about here? Or even who it is?

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7 hours ago, MindlessEngine said:

Is there a way to have the spoiler list on FaceBook known as the 'Geocache Puzzle Spoiler' removed or blocked or something?

I mean he/she completely ruins 'puzzle caching' as we know it. Just giving answers to people who know of the list and take advantage of it seems stupid for geocachers who take the time to solve a puzzle the right way.

He has placed many puzzles that I own and really like. I am happy to give hints to anyone who asks, however I don't want just anyone to be able to bypass the puzzle....

 

After numerous complaints, there's more than a few people ticked with social sites and what they deem "proper". 

 - But this hobby isn't too terribly important to them I guess.   :)

I asked once at an event... a group who started out with phone-a-friend "help", and now participate in this nonsense on faceboook, and they say it happened because few COs would offer any help.   So possible maybe you're in the minority.   

I can't solve a lot of puzzles, and simply ignore them. 

 - But  can see someone asking for some help  (not give the final, actual help),  the CO ignored them, so they say "heck with him" and bypass everything.

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6 hours ago, lee737 said:

Instead of clearing the geotag from photos on puzzle caches, I would sometimes just change them randomly..... 

 

I think that's a terrible idea.  :)

It might take me months to get close to figuring a puzzle out, and in the meantime it gets changed a few times ?

I'd think if someone did something like this to me,  that CO would be the opening subject of every event attended.    :D

 

Edited by cerberus1
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39 minutes ago, MindlessEngine said:

I thought about moving. Although what about the people who solved them the right way.. I also don't understand how they get the finals for multi-stage puzzles.. GC4T94A is a good example. He put it on the spoiler list yet its 7 stages after the puzzle....

Someone completes the multi-stage puzzle, and then posts the location of the final. How else would they do it?

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10 hours ago, MindlessEngine said:

Is there a way to have the spoiler list on FaceBook known as the 'Geocache Puzzle Spoiler' removed or blocked or something? I mean he/she completely ruins 'puzzle caching' as we know it. Just giving answers to people who know of the list and take advantage of it seems stupid for geocachers who take the time to solve a puzzle the right way. He has placed many puzzles that I own and really like. I am happy to give hints to anyone who asks, however I don't want just anyone to be able to bypass the puzzle....

 

Puzzle caching (the experience YOU, as a CO, intended) is "ruined" for those who "know of the list AND take advantage of it".  And I would dare to say it's not even "ruined" for those people - that's how they choose to "solve" the puzzle.  It's ruined for you, the CO, who spent the time to create a puzzle you hope folks will enjoy solving the way you intended.  I don't like that puzzle solutions are posted for all to just grab - and that's not how I solve puzzles either.  I like to work them out myself, and I'll call the CO or a previous solver if I see a familiar name on the list of finders and I'm really stumped.

 

Are most of the finds on your puzzles a result of this Spoiler page?  How do you kn ow?  Do they state in the log that they used FB to solve it?  My puzzles (a handful, not near the volume you have) are along walking/biking paths, not simple park n grabs, and I'm pretty sure most  that find them are working them out on their own or with the help of previous solvers.  Sometimes they will email me and I will give them a nudge.  But then they have a walk or bike ride along a trail to get to the final as well - mu puzzle hides don't get a LOT of finds and that's OK with me.  Those that have found them seem to enjoy the puzzle and the hunt.  Even if they've been handed the puzzle answer, they still have the hunt.  I'm OK with that.

 

Once your puzzle is out there, there will always be some people who will find a way to "bypass the puzzle".  Banning/blocking a Facebook page is not going to solve the issue of sharing puzzle solutions.  Facebook makes it easy, but people will find a way.  I think some folks even make it a challenge to themselves to "solve" as many puzzles as they can without ever solving them at all.

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12 hours ago, MindlessEngine said:

Is there a way to have the spoiler list on FaceBook known as the 'Geocache Puzzle Spoiler' removed or blocked or something? I mean he/she completely ruins 'puzzle caching' as we know it.

 

When I was a teenager (a LONG time ago) I took up magic. Got pretty good at it. But it didn't attract the chicks so I took up guitar. (RIP EVH)

Today anyone with the internet can find the secret to any magic trick ever performed if a person has the desire to. It may ruin the entertainment value of the trick for that person. But it doesn't completely ruin magic. Most people are still thoroughly entertained by it and never bother to find out the secrets. 

Unfortunately along with freedom of speech comes the freedom to act like an idiot and ruin things for others. If they will pay attention to you. I don't think that geocaching (or magic) is any where near important enough to contemplate infringing on that right. Although Facebook, not being a government entity, If free to infringe as much or as little as they choose.

Edited by RocTheCacheBox
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There are some cachers around who I know will use the spoiler as much as they can as they said so. For the most part, they are the people who have one goal in geocaching: Find everything possible, clear out everything in a 50 mile radius of their home.

Nothing wrong with that, but I would rather people put in the work to solve puzzles and enjoy the cache. They also just write generic logs since to them they just found a traditional with no particular standout aspect.

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9 hours ago, MindlessEngine said:

I also don't understand how they get the finals for multi-stage puzzles.

Sometimes people find the final cache accidentally, or check likely looking places. I have found several this way. At least three times I have been checking out a suitable hide to leave another cache in (not all for this site) and found it already occupied. I reached into a metal sculpture, and said to my friend, "This would make a nice hide" and felt a magnetic cache already there..."Just like this one," I said, pulling it out. The cache for a puzzle. We logged it. Another I was with a friend looking for a place to hide a cache and he picked up some rocks to show that would be a nice hide, and low and behold, there was already a cache there. It was the final for a series of caches, where each cache gives a clue to the final. Well, we logged the final first. I wrote in my log, that now I had found the final first, I would find the other caches, and did. Recently, I found the final to another cache that similarly to the previous cache, you find several caches that give clues to the final. I was a beginner when I found most of the pre caches and didn't know about collecting the clues, so hadn't. Also, this was an old series, and many of the original caches had gone missing and been archived, so when I accidentally found the final recently (still in good condition), while checking out hides to hide another cache in, I was thrilled. Finally I could log the final, of which I had found most of the previous caches, years ago.

Also, sometimes I have just checked suitable hides to see if a cache is hiding there, and found puzzle and multicaches that way.

A couple of times I was out walking and spotted caches accidentally. Walking across a field I found a cache lying out in the open. It turned out to be 200 metres from where it was supposed to be. That was a traditional, but I found a puzzle cache also out in the open, while walking through woodland on the way to another cache (which I didn't find). I signed the puzzle cache and re-hid it.

These examples explain some finds. Then of course, there are the internet sites, (which I have never used), and didn't know they existed until told here.

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15 hours ago, MindlessEngine said:

There are some cachers around who I know will use the spoiler as much as they can as they said so. For the most part, they are the people who have one goal in geocaching: Find everything possible, clear out everything in a 50 mile radius of their home.

Nothing wrong with that, but I would rather people put in the work to solve puzzles and enjoy the cache. They also just write generic logs since to them they just found a traditional with no particular standout aspect.

 

It's the same here - maybe your post belongs in the "irks" thread!  In fact, it's probably been brought up at least once in the endless pages of irks there!  There are geocachers on both ends of the extreme and many more somewhere in between.  Those who solve the puzzle entirely on their own, and even consider Googling and other websites (geocachingtoolbox, fia cheat to help solve it (though there are puzzles I've done that REQUIRE Google!!) and won't take help at all, to those who use the cheat sites and solve nothing on their own, with most of us falling in the middle.

 

Naturally, you want people to experience and solve the puzzle themselves, after you went through the work to create it, and you feel cheated somehow if they take a shortcut or have the solution handed to them.  But really, they are only cheating themselves out of the enjoyment of solving it.  But maybe they don't enjoy puzzles.  FIne, then leave puzzles alone and seek other cache types, you say.  But some folks "gotta find 'em all" you know ... and they find a way (and the solution, and the cache).

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6 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

Naturally, you want people to experience and solve the puzzle themselves, after you went through the work to create it, and you feel cheated somehow if they take a shortcut or have the solution handed to them.  But really, they are only cheating themselves out of the enjoyment of solving it.  But maybe they don't enjoy puzzles.  FIne, then leave puzzles alone and seek other cache types, you say.  But some folks "gotta find 'em all" you know ... and they find a way (and the solution, and the cache).

Agreed.

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I am aware of that Facebook site, and some of my puzzles have been posted on it.

 

For my puzzles, I think far more are found but with local sharing of coordinates.   

 

As a puzzle setter, I try not to let it bother me.   I know some people like solving them, so the puzzles are for them.  If others aren't interested in the puzzles but what to find the caches, and someone gives them the coords, that's OK with me, at least they are finding the caches.   I'd prefer they at least try to solve them, but I can't control that.  

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