What is this site?
This is a series of links to pages, which help you solve our (and other) puzzle caches. As a first tip, have a look at the solving puzzles section, which gives an overview of the whole thing. Also hover the cursor over the links on the left (3 lines if on 'phone) and you will find lots of other useful stuff.
There are also hints for all or our puzzles, and even worked solutions for some of them if you are really stuck. Last but not least there are maps showing where our caches are, so if you can't be bothered with puzzles but want to try your cacher's eye, you can try finding them that way.
Please visit the guestbook and let me know what you think of this whole thing - please keep it polite! There are also links for Facebook and Twitter above.
There are also hints for all or our puzzles, and even worked solutions for some of them if you are really stuck. Last but not least there are maps showing where our caches are, so if you can't be bothered with puzzles but want to try your cacher's eye, you can try finding them that way.
Please visit the guestbook and let me know what you think of this whole thing - please keep it polite! There are also links for Facebook and Twitter above.
Latest state of our caches
I have archived many of our caches due to a long bout of ill health, which meant we couldn't get out to maintain them, and a change in priorities (grandchildren!)
However, all the hints and tips remain and the links to the archived caches should all work, so you can still practice solving them.
However, all the hints and tips remain and the links to the archived caches should all work, so you can still practice solving them.
Puzzle caches - why bother?
When we first started geocaching, puzzle caches were a mystery to us. This was compounded by the fact that round where we live a few of the cachers had set some particularly fiendish puzzles (many of which we still haven't solved). Since then we have also come across some puzzles that are simply too obscure for any normal human being.
We slowly started working our way into some of the easier ones, and began to get the basic hang of them. We then set some puzzles of our own, some of which were designed to annoy the local gurus and prove that we could also set tricky puzzles!!
As we got more into geocaching though, we asked the fundamental questions, which are "why are we doing this, and why are we setting puzzles?" We decided that we do caching to get out in the countryside for nice walks to places we wouldn't have seen otherwise, so city ones and hanging off cliffs/trees are not for us. We also decided to set puzzles that could be solved relatively easily so that other people could enjoy the walks in the countryside that we had prepared.
We therefore started up this site to help people work their way through our (and other) puzzle caches and thus allow them to go and grab caches, which they would have otherwise ignored. We honestly can't see the point in setting puzzle caches that hardly anyone can solve, so we keep an active watch on our caches and update the hints for those that haven't been collected for a while. As I write this, 75% of our caches have been found in the last month, and 99% in the last 6 months.
We slowly started working our way into some of the easier ones, and began to get the basic hang of them. We then set some puzzles of our own, some of which were designed to annoy the local gurus and prove that we could also set tricky puzzles!!
As we got more into geocaching though, we asked the fundamental questions, which are "why are we doing this, and why are we setting puzzles?" We decided that we do caching to get out in the countryside for nice walks to places we wouldn't have seen otherwise, so city ones and hanging off cliffs/trees are not for us. We also decided to set puzzles that could be solved relatively easily so that other people could enjoy the walks in the countryside that we had prepared.
We therefore started up this site to help people work their way through our (and other) puzzle caches and thus allow them to go and grab caches, which they would have otherwise ignored. We honestly can't see the point in setting puzzle caches that hardly anyone can solve, so we keep an active watch on our caches and update the hints for those that haven't been collected for a while. As I write this, 75% of our caches have been found in the last month, and 99% in the last 6 months.