What's in a Name?
Most of Geocachers will get e-mail alerts notifying us of new caches being published in the area.
The cache name is often the first indication of what to expect.
A number can denote that the cache is part of a series, there could be a place name, or a warning!
BUT the title of a puzzle cache can be a clue as to how, or what you need to do to make the solution....
This often screams out of the e-mail/map at you. An indication straight away of what is required and usually leads to a straight forward solution. BEWARE of red herrings though, where unscrupulous CO's give you some bait to divert you away from the true solution!
I have a puzzle cache called -
GC3YC84
Sounds Like another Dodgy Puzzle
The cache name should lead the solver to look at the images and 'say what you see', albeit a couple may well need a slight bit of verbal manipulation! There is of course a little bit of a twist here (dodgy) in that the numbers are not in true GPS format. Nothing too unusual, but has put a few people off. The point of the exercise being to get solvers looking at the cache name as an indication as to what the puzzle is about.
GC12JKV
Binary Barn
Well it's as basic as you can get! Binary is a very popular method of hiding co-ordinates, whether it is as obvious as this archived cache, or a little more complex using symbols or other encryptions, but still giving rows of 0's and 1's.
There are also cache titles comprising of 0's and 1's.
BE AWARE though that some of these apparent binary sums could also be something called ASCII
Here's a useful link to a converter [LINK]
Here's an active puzzle in London where the clever cache name relates to something visual
GC43T79
2D or not 2D, that is the question
This indicated to me straight away that the page would relate to 'stereograms' or a magic eye image.
I cannot for the life of me see these, so I use online tools to help (The links to these are on the puzzle solving page. Just as an aside, I find that the process works better if you upload the image onto your hard drive/in photos rather than using the online image address).
http://www.hidden-3d.com/index.php?id=reveal
http://magiceye.ecksdee.co.uk
Other cache names can give you the subject name or matter to be researched.
I can think of a lot of mystery cache names that give the topic/theme to the solver -
'Blank' where there is a white image/nothing to see, often requires some image manipulation or searching the html
'Next' a process of answering a series of linked questions
Anything with 'chirp' in the title will require a chirp enabled GPS or smartphone
'QR' or similar is generally a straightforward online search of the code, whether it is barcode/ or Quick Response code
'Bonus' in the title suggests that this is the final cache of a series
'Challenge' generally means that the cache will be at the given location, but that there are certain geocaching criteria to be met
'chemical' or 'elements/elementary' let's have a look at the periodic table
I have a puzzle cache called -
GC3YC84
Sounds Like another Dodgy Puzzle
The cache name should lead the solver to look at the images and 'say what you see', albeit a couple may well need a slight bit of verbal manipulation! There is of course a little bit of a twist here (dodgy) in that the numbers are not in true GPS format. Nothing too unusual, but has put a few people off. The point of the exercise being to get solvers looking at the cache name as an indication as to what the puzzle is about.
GC12JKV
Binary Barn
Well it's as basic as you can get! Binary is a very popular method of hiding co-ordinates, whether it is as obvious as this archived cache, or a little more complex using symbols or other encryptions, but still giving rows of 0's and 1's.
There are also cache titles comprising of 0's and 1's.
BE AWARE though that some of these apparent binary sums could also be something called ASCII
Here's a useful link to a converter [LINK]
Here's an active puzzle in London where the clever cache name relates to something visual
GC43T79
2D or not 2D, that is the question
This indicated to me straight away that the page would relate to 'stereograms' or a magic eye image.
I cannot for the life of me see these, so I use online tools to help (The links to these are on the puzzle solving page. Just as an aside, I find that the process works better if you upload the image onto your hard drive/in photos rather than using the online image address).
http://www.hidden-3d.com/index.php?id=reveal
http://magiceye.ecksdee.co.uk
Other cache names can give you the subject name or matter to be researched.
I can think of a lot of mystery cache names that give the topic/theme to the solver -
'Blank' where there is a white image/nothing to see, often requires some image manipulation or searching the html
'Next' a process of answering a series of linked questions
Anything with 'chirp' in the title will require a chirp enabled GPS or smartphone
'QR' or similar is generally a straightforward online search of the code, whether it is barcode/ or Quick Response code
'Bonus' in the title suggests that this is the final cache of a series
'Challenge' generally means that the cache will be at the given location, but that there are certain geocaching criteria to be met
'chemical' or 'elements/elementary' let's have a look at the periodic table