The Leprechaun

20/06/2012 By Kabutroid
This cache man. This cache was going to break me. I saw it in that leprechaun’s eyes... it was willing me to break down. And it almost had me. Almost.

Ever since this cache was placed, it’s been plaguing my mind. This cache has been the closest to home ever since its inception. Off and on, I’ve gone back to the puzzle, pondered it for a bit, kicked it around a little, and came up empty. It was quite a bizarre puzzle at first, with me being unable to possibly come up with a way of making sense of it.

So we come to today. I’ve been feeling generally a bit depressed lately, so my wife suggested I head out for a geocache, since that generally cheers me up. Not really wanting to do anything, I half-heartedly looked at the nearest caches, and went to this puzzle cache, where I expected said half-hearted interest to languish until I went back to doing nothing. However, much like any puzzle, my mind started working on it, and kept chewing through a dozen different methods of contemplating how to solve the puzzle. At which point, I was at said aforementioned breaking point. I was LITERALLY about 3/4 through typing up an email to 1purplemonkeydishwasher1 asking for a hint or something to the puzzle, when I just stopped typing mid-sentence.

It hit me.

I slowly looked from the sheet of paper in front of me with the puzzle written down, to my hands waiting to continue to type the request for help, to the screen. Indeed, it had hit me.

Instantly closing down the message window, I immediately sprung into a flurry of motion. Within seconds, I had converted the puzzle into something that looked not only plausible, but downright impossible to have been completely off-base. I had found the key.

My enthusiasm and mood immediately shot skyward, as I quickly did the last bit of pondering over the puzzle. There were a few hiccups here and there, with the end result being a possible cache location a half-hour drive away, a 10 minute drive away, or one significantly more plausible location. Didn’t take me long to quickly jam the coordinates into my GPS and hop into the car. With the light slowly disappearing (was about 9:00pm when I got on the road), I booked it for the likely location.

Upon arriving in the area and parking nearby, I began walking hurriedly to the potential ground zero. Every step closer I got, the more and more plausible it looked. When I actually arrived at the discovered coordinates, it took only a scant few seconds to locate the cache container BigSmile . I was so thrilled at having finally cracked this nut, that the cache got a special giant mobius ball signature item from me. After quickly jotting down the date and my name, I replaced it as found and bounded back to the car (not much of an exaggeration... I was literally on the verge of bounding as I walked) a changed, happy man BigSmile .

Thanks for the awesome puzzle, and I’m especially glad I ended up solving it without help. I’ve been in a bit of a (ok, a lot of a) funk for the past month or so, so I’m glad that I was able to be snapped out of it here. Hopefully this mood will continue on, and I’ll go out caching and to events more often Smile .

So thanks again man. If one puzzle cache can turn around the mood of someone that fast, you KNOW this hobby’s gotta be worth its weight in gold BigSmile .

Still... love the puzzle. I would never have seen it coming, until WHAM, it hits you in the face when you get that sudden moment of realization.

Took: Nothing
Left: Logbook entry and giant micro chainmail ball

EDIT: Wow... had to edit the log there. One sentence I wrote... it literally hurt my head to have read it. So of course, I've gotta let you know what I changed to share the pain. Enjoy ToungeOut :

The posted coordinates have ever since being placed, been the closest cache to home.

It looks like english... it sounds like english if spoken... but brother, I don't think it's english .