Point me in the right direction!
December 1, 2010 8:11 PM   Subscribe

Help me create a birthday puzzle for a geocacher.

My friend is into geocaching big time. He tells me about some of the puzzles that he has to solve in order to get coordinates to find the geocache. Some of them are very complex, like figuring out a distant point by taking into account the curvature of the earth - stuff that is beyond my knowledge level or understanding. He's also talked about following clues to find addresses and other numbers that can be strung together into the longitude and latitude for a particular place where you find the cache or another clue.

I'm trying to make a puzzle that will lead him to his birthday gift. I've guesstimated the long/lat of a point and it will be obvious to him once he's in the area so I'm not concerned about being too exact. Help me put together clues for numbers that will lead him to that point. Hopefully it won't be too easy but I also don't want to make it impossible ("Aunt Bessie's age" would be too out there, but something that could be found through Google or determined by working out an equation would be great). I'm not including the long/lat here but they could be single digit numbers or any of these numbers that could incorporated into the solution: 10, 12, 32, 36, 41, 45, 57, 59, 68, 76, 77, 79, 87, 88, 94, 106, 532, 590, 794, 908, 945.


Or if you have a better idea for a puzzle that I could use, I'd love to hear it! Thanks.
posted by nelvana to Sports, Hobbies, & Recreation (6 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Does your friend live in an area with numbered streets? Because you could give either the lat/long of places on (say) 32nd street, or perhaps the name of some business there.

Or you could do the lat/long of (say) #32 Mumble street, or orienteering-type directions to there.

If you want to put in the work, maybe you could do it in terms of slope ("go in a direction which raises your elevation by ten feet when you hit the next intersection"). This requires someone to go out and be a bit clever, since (a) elevation data available online, for most areas, is not that accurate and (b) consumer GPS receivers don't provide good elevation resolution.

If one of the locations is a place you own or control, you could put one of the larger numbers on a plaque or chalked or something at the location.
posted by novalis_dt at 8:18 PM on December 1, 2010


Best answer: One of my favorite multi caches might work for you. On this puzzle, I was first told to turn on the tracks function of my gps, that shows lines on the map where I've walked. Then, as I did the puzzle and went from cache to cache my tracks formed a giant arrow that (with the help of the last clue) pointed to the final spot without the need for a gps at all.

It might be fun to make a birthday cake out of points (four points for the cake and maybe 3 more for a candle) and have the final clue be something like "go blow out the candle" where they can go and find the final clue near the tip of the candle.

Lots of work, but it was really fun when someone else set it up for me.
posted by JimmyJames at 8:58 PM on December 1, 2010


Best answer: If you're of the maker-geek persuasion, I think this reverse geocaching box is completely awesome. There's also a reprogrammable version.
posted by polymath at 12:19 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]


Best answer: If you want to get a better idea what kinds of puzzles are used in geocaches, it's easy to go on geocaching.com (with or without signing up for a free membership) and browse through the caches near you (or near anywhere). I think the easy way to do this is plug in a postal code and then view the map; with the map you can zoom out or pan around to see lots of cache locations at once. Look for the icons with a blue question mark ("unknown caches") or two yellow-lidded boxes ("multi caches," which often involve puzzle-solving). You might get inspiration from an existing cache where you could modify the puzzle to make it more challenging or more personalized for your friend.

I think one of the first choices you need to make is: will your puzzle be something that can be completed in an armchair, with the solution leading directly to the cache coordinates; something that has to be solved on the ground, taking your friend to one or more intermediate locations before he reaches the final coordinates; or a hybrid?

As you note, one common type of "on the ground" cache puzzle has cachers visit specific locations to collect clues to the final coordinates—numbers that can be strung together, letters that can be converted to numbers, etc. You could do something similar with locations that are significant to you and your friend. You don't even need the coordinates for the intermediate locations; you could say something like "Go to our favorite breakfast place. Count the number of bar stools, multiply by the number of letters in the restaurant's name, and subtract seven."

Armchair puzzles can be just about any kind of puzzle—logic puzzle, crossword, word find, trivia, acrostic, sudoku, etc. For example, you could take a sudoku puzzle out of a book and write letters in some of the boxes such that when the puzzle is solved, the final coordinates for your friend's gift will be (North) AB CD.EFG (West) HIJ KL.MNO.

If you're creative, you could also include elements such as riddles or treasure maps.
posted by Orinda at 9:48 AM on December 2, 2010 [1 favorite]


(The more I think about it, the more I think that whatever puzzle you devise should involve clues that relate somehow to your friendship and your history together. That's what will make this puzzle really special, and not just another geocaching puzzle.)
posted by Orinda at 9:51 AM on December 2, 2010


Response by poster: Thanks for the great ideas! And you're right polymath, that reverse geocaching box IS awesome!
posted by nelvana at 9:38 AM on December 3, 2010


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