Coolest Puzzles

[+The Puzzler]

Being a puzzle fan, and working on a couple of puzzle caches to keep people busy at their dinner table during the winter months, I was curious what some of your favorite puzzle caches have been and why.

 

One of the caches in my old stomping grounds that received a lot of acclaim was The Rosabelle Cipher which I enjoyed solving, but never managed to hunt before I moved south.

[+Kit Fox]

This one was fun for me to dechipher Tejon Mystery Multi Don't assume that you are only dechipering morse code.

 

Perk You Later!

 

On two of my caches I have used the pig pen cipher:

[+Cow Spots]

I've enjoyed the following:

 

MINIAC-1

 

Giggles

 

Le Chiffre Indechiffrable

 

Radio Call

 

51 Hours

 

The Tablet of Kaidoz

 

---

 

People have seemed to enjoy some of mine as well :

 

Channel Surfing

 

Matryoshka

 

50 Cent Words

 

Good Evening

[+The Leprechauns]

My favorite puzzle cache is Syzygy, because unlike other puzzles, you do not even find out what the puzzle *is* until you have hiked more than a mile along a scenic river bluff trail, finding three clue micros along the way. Finally, you reach stage four, an ammo box containing the puzzle. You have no choice but to sit in the woods and figure it out on-site. It can't be photocopied. It can't be written down. Attempts to photograph it have not succeeded. There's no sitting at home in your easy chair, surfing the internet from your wireless laptop for code solutions. Sit in the woods, slap a skeeter or two, turn a puzzle piece just the right way.... and .... VOILA! It is on to the final stage, which is yet another nice hike.

 

This is *the* puzzle cache for people like me who stink at puzzle caches involving math and computer skills. You can only solve it out in the field. For that reason, we are glad we chose Syzygy as our 1,000th geocache find. It took us two trips and a law enforcement encounter to log a smiley here.

[+globalgirl]

Then there's this:

Minimalism

The name says it all. Gotta be the purest, most elegant puzzle yet.

[+the hermit crabs]

We've enjoyed every puzzle cache we've ever done. Some of our favorites have been:

 

Starry, Starry Night -- this one can by done from your computer; there's no physical location to travel to. It's a fun mental exercise.

 

Hoping to Stump You! -- this one requires you to decipher the latitude from a text paragraph, and then use some arithmetic to determine the longitude, and then a trip out to a virtual cache.

 

Trivial Trail Pursuit ... NOT! -- this is a variable-stage multi: there are anywhere from four to nine stages, depending on whether you answer a trivia question at each stage correctly. (Multiple-choice answers are each associated with a set of coords; the correct answer leads you to the next stage, while an incorrect answer leads you to a "try-again" location.)

 

Can You Feel the Chemistry? -- just a fun puzzle -- for some people the answer leaps out at them immediately, others spend days going off in the wrong direction.

 

Cousin Pattys clue cache -- this was a great combination in that it was both a puzzle to determine the parking location, and then the route to the cache itself was a reflector-type night cache. (The puzzle was a series of very vague hints, doled out on the cache page a bit at a time over three days, that needed to be pieced together to narrow down the starting location).

 

Unusualoo -- a trip around town collecting bits and pieces of information, some arithmetic to determine the final coordinates, ending with a very cool and fun cache location.

 

Picture Puzzler -- not difficult, but very fun: the hider took a picture of a park, and then photoshopped out a certain object in the picture. The task is to stand in the exact spot that the photographer stood, and then look around to determine what object is missing, and then look for the cache there (a micro). What made it a bit challenging for us is that the picture was taken in winter, with snow on the ground and leaves missing from half the trees; we searched for it in October, with full foliage and no snow.

[+nfa]

Hi,

 

There is a puzzler in my area, Rupert's Cash Cache, that has a cool story, a fiendishly tough cryptogram, and a $100 FTF prize. It is currently being watched by 78 people, all of them hoping to be the first to find the cache.

 

nfa-jamie

[+G'n,G]

This one is pretty good.

[+dasein]

Contact

[+flask]

Hi,

 

There is a puzzler in my area, Rupert's Cash Cache, that has a cool story, a fiendishly tough cryptogram, and a $100 FTF prize. It is currently being watched by 78 people, all of them hoping to be the first to find the cache.

 

nfa-jamie

i'm not sure how obliquely i have to make this threat:

 

i can find you. it's your &%*% cache i can't find. do i have to keep tellig you to quit advertising it? i know some people who know some people. that's a nice family you have. it would be a shame if anything happened to them.

 

love, flask

[+nfa]

[+The Puzzler]

There is a puzzler in my area . . . and a $100 FTF prize.

I've been seeing this cache promoted for quite some time now. Maybe it's time to start adding $10 per week to the FTF prize until someone gets it.

[+Old Bet]

Check out Perfect Tommy's Case of the Dancing Men. We have not tackled it yet; we're working on the caches within 10 miles of our home coordinates and the men are dancing 11.1 miles away (fortunately). By the time we finish -- 32 more to go -- I might have the dancing men deciphered.

Edited October 28, 2004 by The Old Bet Brigade

[+The Puzzler]

Check out Perfect Tommy's Case of the Dancing Men.

Thanks for this link. The danceing men cipher is one of my favorites along with pigpen, both of which have been used for a number very fun cache puzzles, none of which are in my immediate area.

 

Hmmm.

[+BigWhiteTruck]

Hi,

 

There is a puzzler in my area, Rupert's Cash Cache, that has a cool story, a fiendishly tough cryptogram, and a $100 FTF prize.  It is currently being watched by 78 people, all of them hoping to be the first to find the cache.

 

nfa-jamie

 

"Fiendishly"?

 

Hardly covers it. . .

 

I have gotten to the point where I believe I can solve the cipher if I can just discover the code key, Which is supposed to be in the letter. . . although I can't find it.

Edited October 29, 2004 by BigWhiteTruck

[GEO DUDE 286]

SORRY, MY MISTAKE.

Edited October 29, 2004 by GEO DUDE 286

[+Maddawg351]

QUOTE (NFA @ Oct 27 2004, 08:31 AM)

Hi,

There is a puzzler in my area, Rupert's Cash Cache, that has a cool story, a fiendishly tough cryptogram, and a $100 FTF prize. It is currently being watched by 78 people, all of them hoping to be the first to find the cache.

nfa-jamie

 

QUOTE (BigWhiteTruck @ Oct 28 2004, 07:14 PM)

"Fiendishly"?

Hardly covers it. . .

I have gotten to the point where I believe I can solve the cipher if I can just discover the code key, Which is supposed to be in the letter. . . although I can't find it.

 

Well i think i know what the key is, but i cant figure out how to use it in the cipher!!! hmmm......wanna trade info? I cant get the cache anyway as i live in central ohio and to get to the area its about 6 hours one way. but i am still trying to crack the code. mabey i'll get lucky in the lotto and go on a big road trip.

[+Oneyedjack]

Heres a pretty cool one, I thought it to be unique!

 

Focus 1.0

[+Bear_Left]

Heres a pretty cool one, I thought it to be unique!

 

Focus 1.0

 

A good one, but hardly unique...

 

I had one of these on the back of a locked logbook, with the combination of the lock. Really annoyed one team who just can't see these SIRS!

At least with this one, if you can't do them, you don't need to get to the end of a multi before needing to!

[+Kfam]

Dead Languages is one of my favorite puzzle caches

[+clearpath]

This has been my favorite so far ... Einstien's Riddle. The riddle on the cache page is the hard part, after that, it turns into a multi that runs you around the town a bit. The riddle however, is very clever.