1. Puzzles 101 February 16, 2011 FlagMan, Let’s Look Over Thayer,
RJBloom & Co, The Fat Cats, The Lost Clan

2. General Advice Don’t bang your head until it hurts.
If you don’t see an answer, set it aside.
Come back later.
The answer might be clearer in a couple of weeks (or months.)
Don’t be afraid to ask for hints.
Most cache owners want their caches to be found and will be more than willing to help.

3. Where to Start Begin with the End in Mind Take stock of what you know
You need a set of coordinates – usually 15 digits.
If you see fifteen things, there’s a good chance that each thing represents a digit.
Take stock of what you know
What does the cache page give you?
What seems “odd” about the page?
Does anything look like a clue?
Patterns
How might the things on the page be associated?
Try out some guesses
Try out some ideas and see if they go anywhere. (Does your guess for the first item give you a 3, 33, 1 , 11 or 117?)
If the first item doesn’t work, try the last item.

4. Tactics
Proximity – Puzzle caches should be within 2 miles of the listed coordinates.
Use this knowledge to further inform your guesses.
Answers can be concealed many places on the cache page. These are the things that the cache owner can modify:
Cache name
Cache owner’s name
Related web page
Background image
Short description
Long description
Hints
Log entries
Attributes
Additional coordinates

5. Tactics Google is your friend Look for oddities. Alternate forms
Look up anything that is unfamiliar
Try Googling combinations of things
A list of last names takes on greater significance if you find, for example, that they all appear on the same sports team.
Look for oddities.
“Select” the cache text – this will reveal white text on a white background.
Is that image clickable?
Alternate forms
Coordinates spelled out as words
UTM coordinates
Look at the “source” of the cache page
Use your browser’s “View Source” feature.
HTML comments
Hidden images

6. If You See: Colors Numbers plus the letters A thru F
Try the Resistor Color Code
Billiard Ball numbers
Numbers plus the letters A thru F
Hex to decimal conversion
Hex to ASCII conversion
Lists of things that can be ordered chronologically – Presidents, States, TV episodes, etc.
Use the order to get numbers- e.g. Washington = 1, Adams = 2, Jefferson = 3
Use the last digit (or last two digits) of the year (or month) that the event took place.

7. If You See: Pictures Strings of seemingly random characters Last Names
Look for slight differences in areas of uniform color
Information hidden in text data embedded in the picture file
Other attributes (length/width of picture)
Strings of seemingly random characters
Look at different kinds of ciphers
Caesar Cipher
Playfair Cipher
Vigenere Cipher
Look at your keyboard (columns) and telephone (numbers/letters)
Last Names
Try to see if they were all part of a team.

8. If You See: Places Lists of caches Combinations of Two Letters
Try things like Area Codes, Zip Codes, International Country Codes
Lists of caches
Look for numbers in the logs that the puzzle owner wrote for each those caches
Numbers include the month and day of the find.
Combinations of Two Letters
See if they correspond to Elements