Tag: Puzzles Page 1 of 2

Fifth in the series

Enter your solution in the page linked to the right for your clues to the eighth and final puzzle. Solve that one first for a free one-year premium subscription to LastPass!

I should have left the phone at home and gone on my vacation the
old fashioned way: off the grid!

They say not to mix business with pleasure — or is it leisure? 10 19 36 50 53 58
Well, Verizon is my cell carrier and I had to relearn that lesson 6 7 15 30
recently. I headed over to Canada wine country like six weeks ago 9 28 40 48 55
for some RnR. While there, I got a text from work saying there was 38
a problem. Not wanting to run up expensive voice minutes while out 35 44 48 57 58 61
of the country, I texted back that I was a temporary expat and very 21 55 64
likely it could wait…? Exiled or not, it couldn’t wait. Text after 2 8 16 27 61
text arrived, pleading for me to call in. I caved and they got me 3 10 20 39 41 45 64
on the phone with sixteen other people for about forty-five minutes. 21 37 58 62
Then, this past week, I got the bill: the voice was OK after all, 9 23 40 50
because my plan provides no family roaming in Canada, not just 12 17 34 43 47 52
domestic. But those ding-dang text messages were $3.20 each! 8 16 22 28 41 60

Note: no actual cellular budgets were harmed in the making of this message.

You know what to do.

In this puzzle, you’ll make some coordinates... and you’ll discard the shavings.

Here are two clues for you. Each of these clues allows you to make a set of coordinates to find part of the “raw material” you need to make the coords for the final.

Waypoint 1: 399957378029148
Waypoint 2: 166643881959745

When I originally posted this as a geocache, I had to warn people to stay north and east of the right-of-way for the power lines. Although it’s not thoroughly marked, parkland ends and private property begins at that otherwise inviting trail.  This turned out to be optimistic.  I got a report from a cacher that the final container was on private property (a big no-no in caching) and I rechecked Google Maps, which said that the park borders had my spot well over 100′ into the parkland.  So I called up the Monroe County cartography department and they informed me that Google Maps had the border of the park wrong.  Alas, I had to retire the cache at that point.

Post the solutions to the two intermediate points in the submission form and I will return the corresponding portion of the clue that is the raw material to make the final.

This is part of the occasional series of geocaching puzzle posts.  Solve the puzzles as I publish them here, and submit the correct GPS coordinates (somewhere in Monroe County, NY) on the page linked at the right.  Coordinates are in degrees and minutes to the third decimal place.  The first person to solve each puzzle correctly gets an honorable mention in the next post, and the first person to solve the final one wins a one-year PREMIUM subscription to LastPass!

OK, one more of the series of geocaching puzzles, adapted to armchair solving.  The first to solve the entire series will win a one-year premium subscription to LastPass.

This is a two-part puzzle. In its geocaching incarnation, the coords to Waypoint 1 (WP1) are before you, along with almost all the info you need to decode the final. The missing key was in WP1, of course.  Now for this version of the puzzle, the critical nugget of information you’d have found in WP1 is also included here.

Statue of Voltaire, Paris, France

Part 2 of the puzzle requires the information from part 1 and then you can easily solve this.

BDUTA JKATK XZNQS SSIAQ EBAYS
YNAFK GAFSB VMBWE HDPID LKFVT
TZOBA OHLHA OWJQD ANAFP JQSSX
MFPWZ CWTBQ UAZGS XKUUS XHWKM
QWFQG XQIEN GDGTM BUVYE ICPID
LDQHH LMQGG GYCHE FPWPS VKMQA
HMFIT LPBWZ HDMPQ JDMQZ UQDLK
NOZXL UVSBW TYWDB ZQAXG CFMKM
BSMPQ VXUBS MPQWF XMIAZ QMVUU
XMUQZ KQBCX XDQEQ TDKBT MVQQX
FIXXG DHXHV ASSKW VNMEA AFKPL
IRIAD PXMWR DWDPX TOQWO QZAAI
BXQOO RAQZO

If you want to geek out on this to the max, and you’re handy with cryptanalysis, solve Part 2 without using the info from Part 1.   No extra credit however.

When you have the answer (GPS coordinates somewhere in Monroe County, NY), submit it on the form linked to the right of this post.  Coordinates are in degrees and minutes to the third decimal place.

Earlier geocaching puzzles here and here.