Geocaching Australia

As yet another cacher logs a find on one of my puzzles with a log pretty much saying that someone else gave them the coords (or in this case the solution to the puzzle), it makes me even less likely to bother coming up with any more puzzles.
Tempting to create a puzzle called "Ask A Friend", where the puzzle just involves emailing someone else to ask for the answer.
Rant over.

Sort of the same when someone logs a high terrain cache saying "another cacher brought it down for them to sign".

On the other hand, when people come up to me at events and talk to me about the fun they had solving a puzzle of mine, or to talk me through what they have tried and where they are stuck, that's the good bit.
Like the rest of this game, everyone plays it differently, and I just ignore the people who are playing it 'wrong' in my book

Some (many?) are in it for the numbers for others (including me) it's the total experience. There's no fun in going out and logging a mystery, multi, letterbox.. without going all the way in solving everything as the CO intended.
Puzzle solving is a winter pastime for us and while doing that we occasionally learn new things.

Just think of the sense of accomplishment people who are given the solutions get when they can log such a mystery

No disrespect intended. I like to find geocaches. I dislike trying to work out "what was the CO thinking when they created this puzzle?" While I avoid all mystery caches from the Groundspeak site, if someone gave me the co-ordinates I may find the cache because that's what I want to get from geocaching. That is, finding a geocache. I would, however, indicate in my log I did not solve the puzzle. The game is about your name in the log book. How it got there is not enforceable under the current Groundspeak rules.

I am not a puzzle cache fan either, and feel rather similar. I have worked out a few and found them, but mostly I ignore them and concentrate on others. Someone in a group I often cache with is a puzzle cache fan though and loves to solve them, so often while out in an area he will say he has solved a local puzzle and let's go and find it.

Not a fan of the puzzle, mostly because my brain just doesn't work that way.

I love them and hate them. Haha. I find many are over my head but look forward to the day when i can solve them. I give then a crack and then just put them in the "maybe later" stack. The easier ones, or ones that my brain can recognise, I love! You know that feeling you get when you find a cool geocache or a really tricky one - it's heaps better when you solve a puzzle without help and then find a geocache at the end.

There will always be people who play games with 'cheat sheets'. But for those that love the challenge and the thrill of actually figuring it out - totally worth it! Keep doing them! Please.

This is why I like placing (and doing) field puzzles, rather than the head-scratching code-breaking nut-busting mental caches...

Sure, people can still pass on the final coords, but I think they tend to be more accessible - and the finders of them tend to appreciate the journey so much that they expect others to do the same. All I can say is that I don't find many "I got given the coords" logs on my field puzzles. Maybe they're just not saying, but the logs tend to indicate the correct journey.

Actually the same thing pretty much applies to other cache types too.
Puzzles - it is very easy to think up a puzzle based on some random little known code or something which very few people can solve.
Trads - Very easy to hide some nano in a rock pile that will be virtually impossible to find.

Trad up a tree - Easy for those with the equipment/skill to place a cache very few can access

I think the whole thing revolves around the hiders philosophy.
Do you hide from muggles, or hide from cachers?

I've always thought that with physical "challenges", there's only one way to meet the challenge, and that's to access the cache and sign the log. With puzzles however, you can solve them directly, with hints from the CO, or by negotiation with a "special tool" who has the solution, because it's a puzzle with no specified method of solution.
This is flaky logic I'll admit, but it has served me well.

My puzzles are an exercise in navigation, which is what I thought caching, and GPS use in general, was about (we all play the game according to our own rules). Very few people seem to get them.

Solving the puzzle is the thing - finding the cache is then just the icing on the cake. Sometimes I leave solved puzzles for ages before looking for them. If I hadn't solved the puzzle (or at least helped in a group to some extent) I wouldn't quite feel right finding the cache. I do have a seemingly impossible puzzle about 12km from home which is bugging me to death though. I know it can be done as it's been found about a dozen times but I think I need a degree in a special branch of science to solve it.

Yes I could 'ignore' it but I won't. Ignoring for me is just for caches in front yards or at back fences of private houses.

Yurt wrote:Solving the puzzle is the thing - finding the cache is then just the icing on the cake. Sometimes I leave solved puzzles for ages before looking for them. If I hadn't solved the puzzle (or at least helped in a group to some extent) I wouldn't quite feel right finding the cache. I do have a seemingly impossible puzzle about 12km from home which is bugging me to death though. I know it can be done as it's been found about a dozen times but I think I need a degree in a special branch of science to solve it.

Yes I could 'ignore' it but I won't. Ignoring for me is just for caches in front yards or at back fences of private houses.

Which one?

canary wrote:

Yurt wrote:Solving the puzzle is the thing - finding the cache is then just the icing on the cake. Sometimes I leave solved puzzles for ages before looking for them. If I hadn't solved the puzzle (or at least helped in a group to some extent) I wouldn't quite feel right finding the cache. I do have a seemingly impossible puzzle about 12km from home which is bugging me to death though. I know it can be done as it's been found about a dozen times but I think I need a degree in a special branch of science to solve it.

Yes I could 'ignore' it but I won't. Ignoring for me is just for caches in front yards or at back fences of private houses.

Which one?

You know... " You just can't..."

I just can't look at it...

Probably no point. It is not healthy to sit for hours trying to work out a puzzle. Better that you run into a couple of cachers who had just found that terribly difficult puzzle, ask for an explanation of what to do, watch as they realize you have no idea what they're talking about & take pity by giving you the co-ords. Then you hike towards GZ & as if by natural justice, you almost walk on an Eastern Brown.