Caught out by puzzles reverting to bogus coordinates after found

[+barefootjeff]

I'm usually very careful about checking for saturation encroachments when planning a new cache but this time I've been badly caught out by a puzzle I'd solved and found in 2015. Its listed coordinates are well over a kilometre away and I hadn't remembered it being in the same area as my new cache. Being found, it doesn't even show as a puzzle icon, just a smiley face way over there nowhere near my cache.

 

My new cache was to have been a multi themed around the name of the location, with physical waypoint objects and novelty container following that theme, but with the whole area blocked it's scuttled. I'm really left wondering how I could have avoided this, since none of the tools on the website show found puzzle caches where they actually are. All I can do now is archive the listing, go back out there to collect all my bits and pieces and hope that someday I might be able to reuse them in something else.

Edited October 7, 2022 by barefootjeff

[+lee737]

Yes. The website is useless to cache hiders.

Cache hiders don't care where the bogus coordinates are (does anyone?). We're lucky that our GPSr's and apps like Cachly preserve the solved coords of puzzles/multis, so we can squeeze in more caches (for HQ...)

Cachly even provides radii to indicate saturation zones.... 

 

[+Isonzo Karst]

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

, since none of the tools on the website show found puzzle caches where they actually are.

They don't show any of places where any staged caches actually are.

 

Hiding is tough, you need to maintain a database of  staged caches you've found.  Track whether the staged have been archived. And  you can't know if parts of active have shifted.

 

That said, I support the option of leaving caches on the "solved coords" as an option for users. It's been requested over and over and over.  Hiders would all prefer it.

[+MartyBartfast]

1 hour ago, Isonzo Karst said:

That said, I support the option of leaving caches on the "solved coords" as an option for users. It's been requested over and over and over.  Hiders would all prefer it.

Agree, it's particularly bad when someones placed a trail of dozens puzzles or letterboxes and we then can't see where they actually are on the map once we've found them.

[+baer2006]

4 hours ago, Isonzo Karst said:

That said, I support the option of leaving caches on the "solved coords" as an option for users. It's been requested over and over and over.  Hiders would all prefer it.

This!!!

 

And frankly I don't understand at all why this simple and incredibly useful option isn't implemented, especially since it has been requested again and again. I can't help thinking as a software developer here . The backend obviously has a switch to decide whether to serve the original listing coordinates or the corrected ones (or the backend returns both, and the front end decides - doesn't matter). It can't be so hard to modify that switch so that a user option like "always give me the corrected coords" is taken into account.

Edited October 7, 2022 by baer2006
Typo

[+barefootjeff]

4 hours ago, baer2006 said:

And frankly I don't understand at all why this simple and incredibly useful option isn't implemented, especially since it has been requested again and again. I can't help thinking as a software developer here . The backend obviously has a switch to decide whether to serve the original listing coordinates or the corrected ones (or the backend returns both, and the front end decides - doesn't matter). It can't be so hard to modify that switch so that a user option like "always give me the corrected coords" is taken into account.

 

As far as I know, the only justification ever given for moving mystery caches back to their bogus coordinates after they're found is so finders can see their completed geoart in all its glory. That's cold comfort here as there's no geoart at all in my region, all the mysteries are just plain old mystery caches.

 

In this particular instance, the area where I was planning to put my multi looks pretty devoid of caches on the map:

 

 

The cache marked A is a mystery I'd found and solved, and I knew its final location was well away from where I was going, so I just assumed I was in the clear and didn't give saturation clashes any further thought. It was the cache marked B, hiding away down in the bottom left corner, that caught me out.

 

Anyway, lesson learned, in future I'll pester the reviewer with coordinate checks even if there are no other caches within cooee.

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, BendSinister said:

I request a 'proximity check' every single time, long before creating multi tags or finalising a puzzle, etc, and reviewers consistently respond quickly and cheerfully.* Typically within hours, and quite possibly never more than a day-and-a-bit so far.** I'm yet to be told I do it too often. Curiously, such location checks have so far only ever confirmed my suspicions that the location is fine.

 

Often times, my coordinates aren't settled on until fairly late in the cache creation process. I'll typically scout out an area to see if it's interesting enough to bring people to and what sort of hiding places it offers, then develop the theme, create at least the skeleton of the cache page, decide on the container and then, once I have that ready, return to the site to test out placement and concealment. That was the case with my most recently published hide (Alum's Pinnacle GC9ZM7G in Bulahdelah) where I was going to hide it on one of two rock pinnacles some 50 metres apart but didn't decide which one until I went back up to place the cache. With that one, there are only three other caches in or anywhere near Bulahdelah, all of which I'd found on my previous visit in January, so I knew I wouldn't have a saturation conflict with those. Likewise for my hide before that (GC9TW3Y) which is near Patonga, as I own all the other caches in and around that town. I might be getting old, but I don't think I'm quite at the point of needing a coordinate check to avoid bumping up against my own hides.

 

For my problematic multi, while I knew the general area where I wanted to place it and had decided on its storyline, I couldn't determine the exact hiding place until I actually had the themed container (a plastic skull) in hand and I couldn't buy that until the beginning of October when the stores put out their Halloween stuff. By the time it would have been reasonable to ask for a coordinate check, most of the hard work had already been done. The silly thing is that a coordinate check shouldn't have been necessary because I've found (or at least solved) almost all the puzzles and multis in my local region (including the problem one) so their final locations are already known to me and recorded as corrected coordinates on those cache pages. Where it all falls apart is that the system provides no way for me to see where those known cache locations sit on the map.

 

The Help Centre says "Solve nearby geocaches, including Mystery and Multi-Caches, to discover hidden stages", and that's usually the advice given here when people raise the issue of saturation conflicts with mysteries and multis, but doing that is of no use when you can't display those solutions on the map. After almost a decade in the game, some of those earlier mysteries and multis I found are now just hazy memories, and in this case I never twigged to the fact that the puzzle cache I found in 2015 was in almost the same spot as my recent explorations, probably because I came at that cache from a different access route into the reserve.

 

Maybe I need to cover one wall of the house with a huge map of the Central Coast and push thumbtacks into it to mark all those finals of mysteries and multis I've found, then remember to remove them when those caches are achived.

[+Max and 99]

One thing I found helpful is to put the final coordinates of nearby solved puzzles as waypoints in one of my own geocaches nearby. Then when I navigate to that geocache it shows me all the final locations and possibly physical locations, of the nearby ones that I have solved. This of course is just my solution since the final coordinates aren't showing on the map after I found a cache. 

[+barefootjeff]

Okay, one cumbersome way of doing it that seems to work is to search for all caches I've added corrected coordinates to, put the results of that search in a list, download a GPX file from the list and upload that into Google maps, which then shows those caches in their corrected locations. I'll just have to remember to do that every time I start to contemplate a new cache somewhere. It's a pity "has corrected coordinates" isn't a parameter you can set in a PQ, as that would streamline things a bit.

[+barefootjeff]

With a break in the weather, I was able to get out today and retrieve the waypoint objects and cache:

 

 

The concept is now dead, as that was specific to the location, but perhaps I might be able to reuse some of the objects in future hides, or give them away to someone who can.

[+fuzziebear3]

On 10/8/2022 at 4:00 AM, barefootjeff said:

Okay, one cumbersome way of doing it that seems to work is to search for all caches I've added corrected coordinates to, put the results of that search in a list, download a GPX file from the list and upload that into Google maps, which then shows those caches in their corrected locations. I'll just have to remember to do that every time I start to contemplate a new cache somewhere. It's a pity "has corrected coordinates" isn't a parameter you can set in a PQ, as that would streamline things a bit.

 

GSAK does have a filter for has corrected coordinates, it might help you manage them.

 

There is geoart around me, but for the most part, I really don't care about geoart.  I would prefer the map to show the corrected coordinates.

 

[+lee737]

I always correct the coordinates of puzzles and multis etc on the website, then keep a current PQ in the GPS. At a new GZ, we can just check in the GPS for the closest cache, if >161m, all is good.... Of course multis can still be a problem, I do try and keep multi WPs in the GPS also, so can check for them too.... luckily multis with multiple physical WPs aren't common around us.....

More ideal would be this supported by the website showing the corrected coords of course....