Below you’ll find information that will dramatically improve your chances at completing this puzzlehunt successfully. Carefully review everything here before you start solving, and refer to it as you progress – odds are that it has the answers to the questions you’ll be asking.

If you want to skip all of the directions and get started right away, click here. But don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Topics

Difficulty and Format
Page Passwords
Benchmarks and Designations
Finding Benchmarks Online
Local Challenge Clues
Remote Challenge Clues
Hints
Web Site Errors
Finish Line
Starting Line

Difficulty and Format

The puzzles you’ll find on this site are intended to be challenging but not ridiculous. Their difficulty and required effort are (for the most part) about as difficult as 1-star or 2-star puzzles you might find in the “Pencilwise” section of Games Magazine.

Most of them are designed be solved with pencil and paper, but some do take advantage of the web as a publication medium. The puzzle pages are printer-friendly and have links to PDF versions in case your web browser doesn’t cooperate.

Page Passwords

Some of the pages on this site are protected by passwords. These passwords may consist of common words or phrases, proper names, or seemingly-random sequences of letters and numbers.

All page passwords consist only of lower-case letters (a-z) and numerical digits (0-9); no spaces or symbols are used. For any potential password you discover here, remove all spaces and symbols, and convert all upper-case letters to lower-case.

For example, if you believe the password for a page is:

The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear

then the actual password you should try is:

thenakedgun2thesmelloffear

Benchmarks and Designations

All of the challenges on this site require you to obtain information about benchmarks. All of the benchmarks referenced in these challenges are located in Broward County, Florida.

A benchmark is a point on the surface of the earth whose position (both location and elevation) is known with a high degree of accuracy. That point is marked in some way, often with a durable metal disk made specifically for that purpose. Each benchmark has a name called its designation, which is usually stamped on the disk. Sometimes the year the benchmark was created or replaced is also stamped on the disk.

For example, the photo below is of the benchmark disk whose designation is “B 311” and which was placed in 1970:

benchmark-b311 — Benchmark B 311, Hollywood, Florida

Some benchmarks have designations that include both letters and numbers. In general, benchmark designations have a single space between words and between words and numbers. In the example shown above, the benchmark’s designation is is “B 311,” not “B311.”

In the solutions to some of these puzzles, numbers in the designation of a benchmark may be represented as words. For example:

If the puzzle solution is:	then the actual designation is:
X TWO THREE EIGHT	X 238
TWENTY FIVE DOT EIGHT FIVE ZERO FLDT	25.850 FLDT
ANT NINETEEN SEVENTY	ANT 1970

Some of the puzzle solutions may refer to other types of marks, such as reference marks or azimuth marks. Sometimes these marks have their own entries in the database, while other times their descriptions are included in the description for the primary mark.

The designations for these other types of marks typically use the abbreviations “RM” for “reference mark” and “AZ MK” for “azimuth mark.” For example:

If the puzzle solution is:	then the actual designation is:
SNAKE	SNAKE
SNAKE REFERENCE MARK THREE	SNAKE RM 3
SNAKE AZIMUTH MARK	SNAKE AZ MK

(Note for the pedantic: I have no idea why it’s not “RM” and “AM” or “REF MK” and “AZ MK” in the abbreviations. Learning to cope with such inconsistencies seems to be an inherent part of benchmark hunting.)

Finding Benchmarks Online

All of the challenges on this site require you to obtain details about benchmarks from the site geocaching.com. You can search that site for benchmarks by designation using this link:

www.geocaching.com/mark/nearest.aspx

For example, here’s the details page for benchmark B 311 (shown in the photo above). On that page, the description of the benchmark comes first, then the log entries, and finally the NGS history.

The log entries are where individual geocachers can record discoveries (“Found It”), failures to discover (“Did Not Find”), or other notes. For example, here’s my “Found It” log entry for B 311.

If you are convinced that you’ve got the correct solution for a puzzle but are unable to find the corresponding benchmark on geocaching.com, please send me the puzzle number and your solution via the contact form on this site. I can confirm your solution and get you back on track.

You do not need to create an account on geocaching.com to complete any of the challenges here. However, you will need one if you want to record a “Discovered It” log entry for any of the challenge travel bugs (registration and logging is free).

More information about benchmarks is available from geocaching.com and the National Geoditic Survey.

Local Challenge Clues

The first seven puzzles in the Local Challenge will lead you to discover seven Local Challenge Clues. Each Local Challenge Clue is a real-world, physical object hidden near a benchmark listed on geocaching.com that is located in Broward County, Florida, near the city of Fort Lauderdale.

On the details page for each benchmark is a note logged on National Puzzle Day (January 29), 2012. Here’s an example of what such a note looks like. To confirm you’ve found the right log entry, the user who posted that log entry has a reference to the Geodyssey puzzlehunt in his or her profile.

In that note is a set of coordinates (latitude and longitude) of the exact location of the benchmark. (That note also contains the information you need to complete the Remote Challenge.) Go to the benchmark, then follow the directions in the puzzle solution to find the Local Challenge Clue.

Do not go to the coordinates at the top of the details page! They may take you to a location that is several hundred feet or more away from the actual benchmark, perhaps leading you to the wrong side of a canal or, worse, into the middle of a canal. The reason they can be so far off is that the coordinates on the details page are scaled (estimated by hand using a map and a ruler, which is prone to large errors) while the coordinates in the note are adjusted (measured precisely using a GPS receiver, which is highly accurate).

Each Local Challenge Clue is clearly marked with the word “GEODYSSEY” and contains both a link and a keyword. The link will take you to the next puzzle in the challenge, and the keyword will become useful at the end of the challenge. (The keywords for the Local Challenge are different from the keywords for the Remote Challenge, but the links are the same.)

The clues are magnetic and designed to be resistant to the elements. They have been hidden in such a way that should prevent accidental dislocation by people that aren’t participating in this puzzlehunt. All of the clues are hidden on public property, and most are accessible 24/7.

When you find a Local Challenge Clue, please leave it exactly where you found it for the next solver to discover. Do not take it with you!

All of the clues have similar size, shape, and form – they only differ in the information they contain. Once you’ve found one, you will know exactly what the rest look like.

It is unlikely but possible that a clue may disappear from its hiding spot. If you are certain that your solution to a puzzle is correct, you are certain that you have identified the correct benchmark, and you are certain that you’ve searched in every possible location where the clue might be, please use the contact form on this site to let me know. Please include:

the puzzle number,
the designation of the benchmark,
a specific list of places you searched, and
whether or not you’ve found any of the other clues.

If you’ve looked in the right spot and I can verify that it has gone missing, I’ll save you a return visit by sending you the information you need to continue.

Remote Challenge Clues

The first seven puzzles in the Remote Challenge will lead you to discover seven Remote Challenge Clues. Each clue is found in the log entries for a benchmark listed on geocaching.com that is located in Broward County, Florida, near the city of Fort Lauderdale.

The clue contains both a link and a keyword: the link will take you to the next puzzle in the challenge, and the keyword will become useful at the end of the challenge. (The keywords for the Remote Challenge are different from the keywords for the Local Challenge, but the links are the same.)

Hints

If you need a hint, feel free to ask. Send email to info@puzzlehead.org (preferred) or use the Contact form here.

Web Site Issues

Sometimes when you try to open a page here, you may get a strange error (often with error codes 418 or 500). It usually happens when the load on the web or database server becomes to great (since this site is running on the same server as a lot of other customers of the hosting company I use).

If you see one of those errors, wait a minute or so and try again. You may have to do this a few times before it starts working again.

If you find a link that you absolutely cannot ever seem to open that you believe should work, please send me a note using the Contact form on this site (if it’s up) or to info@puzzlehead.org (if it isn’t).

Finish Line

The final page of each challenge has the title “[Local, Remote, or Hidden] Challenge Final Page.” That page contains a congratulatory message from me, the tracking code for the challenge travel bug, and more. It is an unconditionally unambiguous message that lets you know you’re done.

If you have not found the link to that page and unlocked it using the proper password, then you are not finished with the challenge.

Everything you need to get to and unlock that page is available online. It is a totally automated system, and you do not need to interact with me directly in any way to finish any of the three challenges.

Starting Line

Below are links and passwords for the first seven puzzles. Click on any of the numbered squares to get started solving, and use the password beneath the square to unlock the page. Good luck!