From this day forward, I, GizFinder, pledge to the subjects of the Kingdom of Sellzup, that I shall NOT find nor log a puzzle that I did not at least personally engage in a portion thereof, in the solving of such puzzle.

GizFinder

Signed this fourth day of March in the year 2008 in the Kingdom of Sellzup.

Boy, if that’s what happens what you cut and paste, I’d say hold off!

I’ve opened a can of worms I suspect. I have personal feelings about cache “touring” that put me in a biased position on the subject. So, I will attempt to keep those personal feeling from coming out here and do my best to keep the statements about individual cachers to a minimum.

I think this is a good discussion to have, but let’s all try to keep it civil and non-personal when and where we can. That’s a tall order given the nature of this thread.

For the time being I will just be waiting in the wings…

OK, I will stick my head into the mix here.

I love caching with others. Doesn’t matter to me how many people! That is part of the fun of this hobby for me is making friends and having a good time!

That is The single most important thing.

I myself consider a tour to be a group of people going caching. When the NEWPG’rs go out for a “Caching Tour” it is just that, going to a new area to find caches. Doesn’t matter to me if they are Traditionals, Multis, Earthcaches, virtuals, puzzles. I am a equal oppurtunity cache Finder!

Yes, I have gone out and found caches that I did not do the entire puzzle by myself, as I am sure that many others did as well.

Some people don’t have the time to dedicate to putting puzzles toghether, or the time/patience/knowledge to research/solve/find puzzles.

I do sometimes find it fun to print out a few puzzles, and work on them, and you feel real good about yourself when the “Ah Ha” Moment hits!

I do however work, spend time with friends, Help out friends, and family, and don’t have the amount of time available to me that some cachers do when it comes time to solving puzzles, and finding them.

I do appreciate the Geochecker function, and that has gotten me to solve many other puzzles. It makes it easier to put in the coords and get a yay, or a Nay answer rather than sending a PM, or email to the cache owner. I also feel much better about going out for a puzzle, if I know I have the right coords, and not something way off in right/left field! I will be more apt to going out for a cache having correct coords.

I do want to thank Marc, Seldom|Seen, Peach107, Cachelovskys, Gibonacci, Lostby7, Jthorson, and Numerous other Puzzle cache placers for placing the ones that I did find, and to the cache hiders that place the ones I find into the future. I have not put out any puzzle Caches. Yet… But I do know that much work goes into them from the Ideas stage to implementation.

Justin

From this day forward, I, Hemi, pledge to the subjects of the Kingdom of Sellzup, that I shall continue caching the way I always have. I cache for me, myself and family time. If the way I cache bothers you then ignore it. There are many more important things out there than how I log a cache.

Signed this 4th day of March, An Expatriated Sellzupian

Keeping in mind this is just a game, cache the way you want to, yada yada yada…

s|s’s original point is that it is frustrating to spend a ton of time putting together a cache only to have someone short-cut it, so why encourage that behavior? (A “tour” being substantially different from a collaboration.) And in the context of the game, it shortchanges the players who made an honest find, as defined by the way the cache-owner intended the puzzle to be solved or cache to be found.

Then the subsequent point being, if this happens enough, will placers become frustrated with putting out challenging and rewarding hides, because what’s the point if a bunch of drive-by cachers descend on it and deposit a bunch of TFTC logs? Think of what has made this game more popular than other alternatives like letterboxing. In large part it is because of the feedback mechanism between placers and seekers. And being told “There it is!” by your tour leader just doesn’t make for the same feedback in the log, grounded in a worthwhile experience, that solving the puzzle yourself does.

As far as I’m concerned, wandering along on a tour and the variety of other shortcuts I’ve seen done/logged on caches just to move on to the next one means you didn’t “find” the cache in the context of the game any more than a muggle stumbling into it would. Yep, you held the container, signed the log…whoop de friggin’ doo. What did you accomplish?

But that’s just my opinion. It’s worth about as much as any of our “find” stats are in the scheme of things.

thanks for that summary gotta-run and without all the soft returns, you can actually read it.

Yes, Marc did suggest other caches were fair game and yes, the criteria is that you have to come with 10 solves in hand. But it is being billed primarily as a puzzle cache tour and the potential is there, indeed the Carrot, to come away with a whole lotta other puzzles logged that you may never take the time to do yourself. Or am I mis-reading the intent of the tour?

I will be the first to admit the there are benefits to caching in small groups the most significant of which is coming away with great stories and memorable moments that we will recall years into the future. This is certainly one of the great attractions to the sport.

At the root level, though, the highest level of satisfaction is attained when the scenario is 1 cacher to 1 cache armed with 1 GPS. We all know the feeling of getting a tough find, hunting solo. When the equation changes to 2 cachers to 1 cache with 2 GPS’s the level of satisfaction starts to decrease. Increase that to 6 caches, 1 cache, 6 GPS’s and the personal satifaction of getting the find is next to nil. You might as well get all those people together and go bar hopping as you’d have more stories to share and more enjoyment altogether.

I am also trying to draw a distinction here between traditionals and puzzles and I know it’s not always a clear one. But there’s a world of difference between a film can under a park slide with known coordinates and a hollow book on a library shelf that can only be found after many hours doing other caches, after which you still have to do some puzzling to get the find. While the cache owner probably wouldn’t care about the film can being pointed out as part of a tour, doing the same to the book that took many hours to create and get permission to place, they surely would.

The biggest question I have on all of this is why go after puzzles in this manner at all? Isn’t this counter-productive to your attempts at promoting puzzle caching? You are enticing cachers to short-cut their way through what could be some very creative and challenging puzzles. Why not go after 60 traditionals in Milwaukee instead? At least that way everyone has an equal shot and it’s just a question of who finds it first.

Perhaps I am still to new to this and having only 600 finds makes me a bit myopic. I suppose when you get to 6000, the only thing that shows up are puzzles. And then, I’m not a numbers guy nor do little blue ?’s near my home bother me in the least (not mine of course).

Dang, I was only going to jot down a couple thoughts and look at this… this dark matter sucking away my cache creation time….