Challenge cache musings

[Team Deejay]

In case anyone doesn’t know, marking a cache as ignore will cause it to not show up on searches. This helps a lot if seeing it on your nearest cache search bothers you. If you do a pocket query, be sure to check the “Not on my ignore list” box, or they will still show up there.

If you ever change your mind, just go to your bookmark listings and look for the “Ignore List”, where you can manually delete anything you want back in your searches. It works just like a regular bookmark list. I know some people don’t use the ignore feature for fear that it is “permanent”, so hopefully this will help them.

[sandlanders]

Refresh my memory on the Challenge cache guidelines…

If you require specific caches to be found (like in “How Hungry”), then it can’t be done.

If you require certain types of finds or find combinations to be completed, but cachers are allowed choice/leeway as to which caches they find to meet the requirements, this is OK.

Is this it or no?

[CodeJunkie]

@sandlanders wrote:

Refresh my memory on the Challenge cache guidelines…

If you require specific caches to be found (like in “How Hungry”), then it can’t be done.

If you require certain types of finds or find combinations to be completed, but cachers are allowed choice/leeway as to which caches they find to meet the requirements, this is OK.

Is this it or no?

If this is true, than is a puzzle which requires you to complete others to get key values is still OK. Is this a technicality in the difference between a “challenge” and “plain puzzle”?

[sandlanders]

Sounds like that might be a final in a series, and therefore a plain puzzle… You need to get information from other caches to get the coordinates for the final.

A challenge cache to me is “complete these XX caches, then you have permission to find and log the challenge cache.”

[gotta run]

@CodeJunkie wrote:

If this is true, than is a puzzle which requires you to complete others to get key values is still OK. Is this a technicality in the difference between a “challenge” and “plain puzzle”?

A challenge cache can require you to find underlying caches (provided that the challenge itself meets the guidelines, which are intentionally narrow). Typically, but not always, the coordiantes of the final cache are posted. However, if you don’t find the caches you’re supposed to, you have taken a shortcut and you may not pass Go to collect your smilely.

A puzzle cache that involves finding underlying caches to obtain the final coordinates (through collecting numbers, information, etc.) is different because the puzzle cache cannot require that the puzzle not be shortcut. In other words, there may be other ways to obtain these coordinates–figuring out the coordinates after only finding a few of the other caches, accidentally finding the final cache, having someone else give you the coordinates, etc., the same as might happen for a “regular” puzzle that does not involve finding multiple caches to solve it.

So the big difference is that challenge caches can enforce the requirement to complete the cache as it was designed by the owner, by having the right to delete the log.

On the Left Side of the Road...

[CodeJunkie]

Reading the explanations from SL and GR definately make sense now that I think about it. Thanks for clarifying.

[Author]

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