Puzzle Caches

I've been working on and off, on a couple of Puzzle Caches this last month, just the odd five minutes here and there.

These two particular caches were, to me, incredibly hard. Having a logical brain I can quickly get to the root of mathematical problems or problems involving shifting the alphabet round, substituting letters or codes, or finding patterns and hidden messages but I quickly run out of ideas as soon as it becomes apparent it's not 'logical'.

For both of these puzzles I eventually asked a friend to give me the tiniest hint possible, which he did carefully, and then I solved them both in 5 minutes flat to zero fanfare.

I felt as though I'd cheated.

And I'm doubly annoyed with myself.

The hardest puzzle had been dissected 5 different ways by me and each way was bringing up something that could conceivably, with a bit of fiddling, become a coordinate - and it's these that make the puzzles so hard. The easiest solution was the one I'd started with but I'd come to a dead-end. I'd also followed the official hint and come to another dead-end but I'm annoyed because I didn't join both dead-ends together properly - I missed something and I didn't exactly give up but I was competely stumped.

The second I was sure was a simple 'Caesar code' (I didn't know it was called that until my friend gave it a name for me) where you simply rotate the letters x number of places left or right. For example A might become D, B becomes E, C becomes F etc. The first thing I'd tried on this puzzle was roman numerals, but the second was a Caesar code because the clue hinted at the number 10. I moved the letters 10 and got what I thought was nonsense. I even wrote a computer program that moved the letters every combination from 1-26 so I could see all possible Caesar results. Nothing. I used Google, crossword solvers, you name it on the Internet and all to no avail. But again, I missed the last step. It WAS a shift of 10 but the words produced weren't 'obvious' English. If I'd looked carefully I would have seen this and had the answer straightaway - so I'm annoyed with myself again.

In a pique of frustration I downloaded all the Puzzle Caches within 10 miles yesterday and in a couple of hours solved 5 of the 6. By myself.

I'm still not happy.