Letters To Santa

[JimandLinda]

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is a rearview mirror, so I can see seldom/seen sneaking up behind me (please make sure the mirror has night vision capabilities).

Your favorite cacher,

Jim

P.S. I have been nice half the time. The rest of the time, I was having fun! 😉

[seldom|seen]

Dear Satagasu,

St. Nick here, just wanted to let you know that I took care of a certain little Girl with Curly hair leaving a sizable present in her stocking the other night when I was out stuffing them. So you don’t have to bother putting one under her tree this year. And just to be nice, I left a couple “presents” under your “tree” as well. 😈

[Team Black-Cat]

More for the reunion! Woo Hoo!

[LDove]

Dear Santa –

Can you please bring a dog park to West Bend? That way my geodog Cookie will have fun and we will also have more places to hide caches around here! 😆 Please give a nice gift to Mr. G and his wife Sunshine for always setting out such nice winter caches for us to find also! 😀 Last, I take back my request for a lump of coal for PharmGirl when she made a very scary cache that came flying out and hit my dog in the head and had her running for the car. She is actually quite nice and I will forgive her, but only if she comes up with something more devious for next year!

[thepharmgirl]

WOOO HOOOO! Merry Christmas to ME! I figured out the coordinates. Geochecker confirmed. 😀 😀 😀 And I’ll be invading the Kingdom of Selzzup very soon. 😀

P.S. I’ve been sworn to uphold the sanctity of 5/5 cache coordinate secrecy by the cache owner, so all my puzzle groupies shouldn’t start asking me for hints unless they’ve spent at least as much time as I did on this puzzle (which was close to 30 hours!–Yes, I was obsessed!).

[thepharmgirl]

@LDove wrote:

I take back my request for a lump of coal for PharmGirl when she made a very scary cache that came flying out and hit my dog in the head and had her running for the car. She is actually quite nice and I will forgive her, but only if she comes up with something more devious for next year!

Don’t worry… I have a few ideas up my sleeve… 😈 😀 😈 😀

[Jeremy]

Hallelujah, it’s solved. This was a frustrating but still somewhat fun puzzle. Sadly, I was so very close with the third set of coordinates I put into Geochecker many days ago. I then went off on many tangents and spent hours trying things (probably 10+ hours) that just didn’t pan out, as evidenced by my list of 27 failed coordinates.

Now, do I torture myself with the “other” SSSS puzzle? ❓ 😀

[seldom|seen]

@Jeremy wrote:

Now, do I torture myself with the “other” SSSS puzzle? ❓ 😀

Santa’s Little Helper here. Not to get off topic, but I’ll reiterate what I’ve said in a number of places and on a number of occasions. With very few exceptions, S|S puzzles shouldn’t take you more than hour to complete. It is not my intent to drive cachers crazy with puzzles that have no clear strategy outlined from the start on how to solve them.

I do understand that about 10-20% of them can be more challenging and require more time. But, I never want you to get so frustrated with a puzzle of mine that you turn yourselves off from the opportunity to discover what my other puzzles have to offer. If you get to a 2-4 hour mark and still have no idea where you are going with a puzzle, PLEASE send me a note and I will help.

Also, for this Christmas and every one thereafter, I am offering a present to every cacher who responds to this post via e-mail. One “Get Me Out This Puzzle” card. A direct clue or insight or first step in solving one of my tough ones.

The more challenging puzzles are the Camelback Cinema series, ZoeBroCoup series, audible caches including the We Interrupt This Broadcast series and any others that you just can’t wrap your heads around.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

[Trekkin and Birdin]

Hey PharmGirl, looks like this S4 is starting to be ruled by the ladies! Go get ‘er! I look forward to reading your log when it comes through.

[thepharmgirl]

@seldom|seen wrote:

The more challenging puzzles are the Camelback Cinema series, ZoeBroCoup series, etc…”

Funny, I had no problem solving the ZoeBroCoup series…

But I really think there is a learning curve with Puzzle Caches, just like regular caches. The longer you cache and the more you attempt and experience, the easier they become as you get familiarized with how people’s minds work and the methods they use.

I have no issue working for hours on a puzzle because I enjoy trying to figure them out. It’s actually usually therapeutic for me. I rarely ask for help… only when I get way past the point of frustration and it’s no longer any fun. And usually, it’s because I’m making things WAY harder than it needs to be…. like I did for the Sinister puzzle. If the actual solve method would have been some of the things I tried… it would have been a 10-star difficulty puzzle.

At the start of my caching, I could not figure out Madison’s “All You Need Is Before You” cache GC16HNE . It drove me insane. I printed out the cache page and would stare at those stupid hot air balloons every day, trying to derive coordinates a million different ways. Jeremy would just laugh at me. I refused to accept a hint though. Finally, many months later, I was struck with inspiration, and tried out my theory which was correct. If I saw another puzzle like that now, it would take mere seconds to solve.

That’s my little interjection about puzzle caches which wasn’t the original intention of this thread, really, but I felt like posting it. 😆

[marc_54140]

[/quote]
Also, for this Christmas and every one thereafter, I am offering a present to every cacher who responds to this post via e-mail. One “Get Me Out This Puzzle” card. A direct clue or insight or first step in solving one of my tough ones.

[/quote]

I have already done something similar, with Marc’s Treasure Box. The way to solve any of my puzzles, if you visit the cache and take a picture! Problem is, no one is checking it out.

[Lostby7]

All I want for Christmas is good health so that I can continue to make finds….

[Team Hemisphere Dancer]

Beyond good health for all, I decided this morning when my snow blower took a crap is that I want a new snowblower.

[Trekkin and Birdin]

I have already done something similar, with Marc’s Treasure Box. The way to solve any of my puzzles, if you visit the cache and take a picture! Problem is, no one is checking it out.

Ahem, Didn’t we get that one with Timberline Echoes last summer? I think that was the one, and marc is saying we’re “no one.”

Harumph! A lump of coal for your stocking! LOL

[lone_gunman]

You’d think that with as many puzzles that Marc has out there (and how much grumbling you here about them), more people would welcome the chance to get inside his head for just one of them. Then again, most of the grumbling comes from people who automatically ignore puzzles.

[Author]

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