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It seems that placing a Puzzle cache puts the kiss of death on it! Even the most simple Puzzle cache gets only a fraction of the finds of a similar traditional cache. Make it really difficult and you limit it to just a handful of puzzle faithfuls. This is my conclusion from having analysed the 16% of Puzzle caches placed on Dartmoor last year which only resulted in 3.4% of the finds. So far I have only placed field puzzles but again I get the same disappointing result – few are really interested! Muddypuddles tried to get things moving with his Alphabet Puzzle Challenge which has attracted a huge interest and certainly inspired me to solve some puzzles, but it has made little difference to overall numbers of Puzzle caches found.
I think I’ve only bothered with 1 or 2 and have them hidden in my gps. Although I’ve got a field puzzle of my own out there, solving them isn’t my cup of tea.
I did make an exception for Satan’s Pit as I really wanted to do that one, and because it’s a Puzzle it does restrict the visitors which has to be a good thing in that case, and it does make it more rewarding eventually. That took me three evenings of head scratching, and if the reward for that was just a 35mm pot under some branches I might’ve been disappointed.
I love puzzle caches – although I do give up if they are too hard!
Sometimes re-visiting them after a while helps to solve the difficult ones.
Well that’s a big question, DD! I know some (most?) cachers loathe this type of cache, but for me, they add an entirely new dimension to this great pastime of ours. I enjoy the hunt for the solution, and spending hours racking my brains, or trawling the interweb makes finding that solution all the more rewarding, and you learn fascinating new things in the process. The same is true when setting the blessed things too. But here’s a thought for you: a while back I had a negative comment about the location of the final in one of my caches, which was justified as it happens, it was pretty useless. I hadn’t given the location of my finals too much thought up to that point, as I thought most of the fun of this type of cache was in solving the puzzle. But that’s not entirely true, and therein lies a problem. If you should choose a good location for a final, which I have tried to do since that log, you then rule out the possibility of someone else placing a traditional cache in that location due to proximity rules. This deprives the non-puzzlers (the majority) in our community of a good find, and good locations are what draws most of us to this pastime in the first place. Catch-22 maybe. Nevertheless, I think a puzzle is always better if the final would stand as a good cache in its own right. Summary: more puzzles please!
I like puzzles . . . they give me something to do during slack periods at work. And yes, I’ve got one on the go at the moment.
Only trouble is, I never get round to going to look for them, and when I go somewhere for the weekend I generate a list of caches to look for but don’t (usually) have time to do the local puzzles, so I end up with a huge “solved puzzles” file and not many finds to show for it . . .
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