Saturday afternoon I went geocaching. I wanted to find five. The first one was a mystery cache named “That’s Just Rid(dle)iculous!!!” by M 5. A mystery cache is one where you have to figure out what the coordinates are. I have a few that I’ve put out myself. This one is a devilish little puzzle. The riddle is as follows (With apologies to M 5, I hope that you don’t sue me for copyright infringement.”
Joe and Bob are having a conversation. Joe asks Bob how old his kids are. Bob says “I have 3 kids and the product of their ages is 36.” Joe thinks about it a minute and says, “That is not enough information.” Bob then exclaims “The sum of their ages is the same number as the number of caches you and I found today.” “That is still not enough information” Joe replies. “My oldest is a muggle” Bob shamefully adds. Joe now knows the ages of all 3 of Bob’s kids. You will have to figure them out as well to complete this cache. Although you will have to use some math, this is more of a problem solving/reading comprehension puzzle.
Assumptions
All ages are rounded to the nearest year, no months, weeks, days, hours or minutes are used in this puzzle.
When you figure out the ages plug them into these coordsN 36 0A.BC1W 095 51.6C8Place them from youngest to oldest A then B then C
I’ll be honest with you, I could not make heads nor tales out of this, but I thought that I had it figured out due to the numerial requirements of the result. So off I went.
Where I parked was about a 1000 feet from where I thought the cache was. I took off, little did I know what I was in for. I doused myself with deet so I had no insect problems but I found lots of scrubby brush and cover. I got within 2 feet of where I thought the cache was but I couldn’t find it. I went under, through, and over the brush, around the trees and under the trees and and tramped around all over the place. I was handicapped because I misplaced my trusty Lowrance Ifinder Hunt GPSr and all I had was my Garmin Nuvi 500 crossover cache which is basically a highway GPSr and didn’t work too well in the heavy tree cover.
I spent almost two hours looking for the darn thing before I gave up. I wasn’t sure whether I had the right coordinates and I didn’t have faith in my GPSr either.
Believe it or not I did have fun though. For two hours I completely forgot the cares of the world and was totally focused on something. I didn’t get it this time but I’ll find it eventually. I’ll probably wait until after the first frost when the undergrowth will die back. In the meantime I’ll either find my regular GPSr or get another. I’ll email M5 and ask him to confirm the coordinates (I will never ask for the coordinates if I had them wrong). I’ll study the riddle some more and look again and I’ll find it.
In the meantime I have some souvenirs of my outing.
Anybody out there up for a cache run?
Whhoopppss…hope you’re just doing good and I know despite these abrasions you had a good time geocaching. Have a nice and safe geochaching there.
Ouch! But at least it was fun and fun time is never wasted.
that puzzle would have baffled me…don’t know if i could have been so determined to locate as you were.
did you find any others?
OMGosh Alan…OMGOSH!!! you have to warn us weak stomach gals that this is a blood crossing!!! LOL
Remind me to never go geocaching with you…I would have been in tears
you’ll get that geocach next time
@Pacey
@Denise I had fun. I didn’t know that I was as scratched up as I was until after I got back to my truck. It is kind of embarrassing actually.
@The Good Life in Virginia – I think I have an idea on the puzzle. I don’t know.
@Georgie – sorry.
Adventure and fun demands something and i think you have paid..Great post..Unseen Rajasthan
Looks like your cats got ahold of you.
@Unseen Rajasthan – Yeah I paid, but I didn’t get anything.
@Baloney – My secret is out. I didn’t go geocaching I was beer drinking and let the cats use my legs for scratching posts. That’s what it looks like anyway.
OMG this is terrible..hope your feet are doing better now..have a great day!
Ou, ou, ouch! What a time you had!
OUCH!
er…i’ll pass?
~Silver
Reflections/
Tantalizing Treats
Oh your poor legs look very painful. I hate math so I would never be able to figure out that puzzle.
Ouch is right! Been there, done that. You’re very patient to spend so much time on it. I might have given up.
Eww, ugly scratches.
I wouldn’t have gotten the coordinates. Might help if I was more up on my Harry Potter lore and knew how old a Muggle is.
@Euroangel, SandyCarlson, Jill, Kathy – My legs look pretty bad but they don’t hurt. I didn’t really know how bad it was until I got out of the scrub. I more embarrassed than anything else.
@Silver – you are smart.
@Janie – In geocaching muggles are non-geocachers. So that is no help. In Harry Potter, muggle born wizards are identified at 11 or 12. That is no help because to fit the puzzle I need single digits.
Somebody – I need help with the puzzle.
You might want to wear long pants next time. I haven’t seen legs like that since I went rabbit hunting in a briar patch.