Another Geocaching FTF

Spurred on by our success with an FTF on the Gamma puzzle cache, I started work on deciphering another puzzle cache in the series. This time it was the Omega cache which had the following clues.

This is hard, and of course not at the published coords, this puzzle stood uncracked between 1918 and 2010, and the way to encode/decode was released in a donation to a museum having stood uncracked for nearly 100 years. The creator boasted that it was uncrackable and even professors in cryptography failed to claim a cash reward for decoding it.

Omega Cache Clues

Omega Cache Clues

The creator also quite rightly pointed out that the mechanism is unbelievably simple and you could back in 1918 put all the parts into a ‘encoder’ the size of cigar box. Even so it is surprisingly hard to forcibly decode, or ‘brute force’ it, I would recommend not trying that way instead do your research!

Finding the way to decipher the code wasn’t too difficult, and neither was the code itself, but I couldn’t find an automatic way of decoding it so had to go through each letter one at a time and decode them individually. Never mind, I was ill and didn’t have much energy so couldn’t do much else and although decoding this was a little tedious, it was better than working.

I soon had the co-ordinates and then the next day in the snow Morgan and I went out to find it. I had a pretty good idea as to its whereabouts and my hunch was spot on. Another FTF for us.

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Alan Cole

Alan is a Freelance Website Designer, Sports & Exercise Science Lab Technician and full time Dad & husband with far too many hobbies: Triathlete, Swimming, Cycling, Running, MTBing, Surfing, Windsurfing, SUPing, Gardening, Photography.... The list goes on.

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