Friday, January 29, 2016

Resource Friday: DNA Decoder

Today's Resource Friday has an admittedly limited usefulness, but if you happen to have one these puzzles in your area it will be immediately obvious.

DNA and RNA code for protein sequences using just four "characters," adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine which are written as A, C, G and T. The proteins have their own abbreviations, and can be written using the letters A, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, K, L, M, N, P, Q, R, S, T, V, W, and Y. So with some creativity you can write most numbers and words needed for cache coords. The word NORTH for instance can be written a NQRTH, which when translated to DNA nucleotides is AATCAACGTACTCAT.

So, if you have a puzzle that includes a code with only repetitions of A, C, G and T try running it through the translator at this website: ExPASy Translate.

Monday, January 25, 2016

Mystery Monday: The Spot, FCPDC5H

For this week's Mystery Monday puzzle I offer a puzzle based on idea by Alberta, Canada cacher Matt Caddel, aka Bullmoose_rocks. 



The checksum for this puzzle is 43, and, as always, you should find a thematically appropriate item at the coordinates of the answer. 

Please don't spoil the answer in the comments! Hints published tomorrow, and the answer on Wednesday. 

Happy Puzzling!

Friday, January 22, 2016

Resource Friday

No new resource this week. Instead I thought I'd take today to do a retrospective of all the resources that I've posted on the FB page over the past year, so that they are all in one place!


A
  • ASCII to Hex Simultaneously shows ASCII converted to several other languages. 
  • All Music One stop resource for information on albums and recorded music. 
B


C
  • Calculator City Large group of specialty calculators. 
  • Convert Me Conversion tool to change miles to other units, both ancient and modern. 
  • Convert XY Converts number bases from binary to Base 64. 
  • Cryptii Simultaneous translation of text from one form to twenty others including hexadecimal, Roman numerals, Navajo code speak, MD5 and others.
D
  • Dial ABC Phone tools, numbers to text, sounds of touchtones and other tools. 
  • Database Sports Giant sports database that includes basic info and stats for players, teams and leagues. 
E
  • EZ Gif Splits gifs into individual frames. 
F
G
H
I
K
M
  • My Geocaching Profile Shows progress on various types of challenge caches, as well as providing some cipher tools. 
  • Mechanical Puzzle Solver Gives solve methods for physical puzzles. 
  • More Words Search engine for partial words and anagrams for use in crosswords and Scrabble like games. 
N
O
P
R
  • Red Luth Riddle Tools Lots of informational sources for puzzles and riddles. 
  • Remorse Tool for decoding Morse when you don't have the letter breaks. 
  • ROT-47 A tool for ROT-47, using the complete ASCII character set. 
  • ROT-All Tool Shows all variations of the Caesar Cipher at once. 
S
  • Sudoku Wiki Solving hints and instructions for sudoku and sudoku variants. 
T
U
V
W

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

FCA118R: Blind Alleys ANSWER

Ready for the answer to this week's Mystery Monday puzzle? Check after the jump!

Monday, January 18, 2016

Mystery Monday: FCA118R Blind Alleys

This week's Mystery Monday presents a maze of options to help this London Mum get home. Can you help, and maybe find the location of the cache as well?


The checksum for this puzzle is 25, and the final destination is best viewed in Streetview.

Check back tomorrow if you need a hint, and Wednesday for the answer! Please, don't spoil the answer in the comments.


Friday, January 15, 2016

Resource Friday: All Music

For today's puzzle solving resource I would like to direct you to All Music. Many puzzle caches use information from music like album track number, song lengths, number of songs on an album, etc. as a way to encode information. All Music is a great one stop shop for looking up that information, and hopefully getting the puzzle solved!


Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Monday, January 11, 2016

Mystery Monday FCP45TA: Puzzling Pasta

This week's Mystery Monday puzzle was created by friend of the blog Jennifer Kidder who edits the "Geocaching Puzzle Of The Day Blog," which features real geocaching puzzles from around that world. Jennifer offers you "Puzzling Pasta."

As usual there will be a hint posted tomorrow, and the answer will be posted on Wednesday. Please don't spoil it for others in comments!


Just in case you have trouble reading the text, here it is:

The other night I had a call from my friend Ron.  Our conversation went like this:

“Hey!  We’re thinking about cooking up some pasta and knocking off a bottle of wine … care to join us?”

“Sounds great!  What kind of pasta is on the menu?”

“Well, the cupboard is pretty well stocked.  Maybe some ditalini?”

“I’m not familiar with that one.”

“We’ve got all kinds, from acini di pepe to ziti.  Actually I think we have a recipe that combines both of those.”

“Interesting.”

“Or we’ve got another one that uses gemelli and spinach fettuccine.”

“Really?”

“And another one for tri-color rotini and vermicelli …”

“I think I’ve at least heard of those.”

“Or there’s the one for cavatappi and small shells.  That’s one of my mother’s favorites.”

“How is Mrs. Zoni?  I remember I always loved her tri-color rotini and spaghetti.”

“She’s fine, I’ll tell her you asked.  She always said you can never go wrong with plain old spaghetti.  Let’s just have that.”

“Suits me!  All this talk has made me hungry.”

On my way out the door, not only was I looking forward to dinner, but I knew just where I was going to put my next cache.

Friday, January 8, 2016

Resource Friday

I will also be adding the Resource Friday posts to this blog. I think the format here is easier to search and the record of them will be better.

For this week I chose unitconversion.org. This website provides simultaneous conversion for numerical bases from binary (base 2) to base 36!

Keep in mind when using this that even though geocaching.com uses base 31 for it's GC numbers it is a modified version of base 31, and so will not match the conversion given here.

Wednesday, January 6, 2016

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

FCJ3SS2: Good Neighbors HINT

How are you doing on the FCJ3SS2: Good Neighbors? If you need a hint click through and there will be a little nudge on the next page.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Mystery Monday: FCJ3SS2: Good Neighbors

Presenting the first of the new generation Mystery Monday puzzles. The final locations of these puzzles should provide a view of an interesting object, visible in either satellite view or street-view.


The checksum for this puzzle is 32. If you are having trouble with the puzzle, check back tomorrow for a hint! As always, please don't spoil the answer in the comments!