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I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least).

Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded.

 

So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

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I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least).

Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded.

 

So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

I agree! Maybe they could buy an existing one, kind of like they did with mygeocachingprofile.com

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Its a good question. It would be nice to have a Groundspeak owned puzzle solver tool but as long as they allow outside ones, it seems to be working. I like geocheck.org, but there is also geochecker.com (but that one seems to be down a lot) and then there is evince. Am not a fan of evince. Probably are others out there. Have never had a problem with Geocheck.org.

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I prefer GeoCheck for puzzles that solve for coords, but Certitude is pretty useful for trivia puzzles. If only we could get rid of Evinence...

 

Having a built-in checker would be very convenient, but I think Groundspeak may be of the opinion that since 3rd party sites are meeting the demand (except for occasional server downtime) there is no reason for them to provide the same service.

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Eh. I'm happy with the checkers being 3rd party. I'm not terribly concerned with downtime since, worst case, I'd have to go look for the cache using an unconfirmed solution: no big deal. Furthermore, if GS provided a checker, it would kill all the others. If GS's wasn't as good as the one I like best, that would be bad.

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As I see it, Groundspeak could provide their own checker (using expertise from one of the existing providers) and of course it would be optional. The big benefit is that they could (almost) guarantee availability and forward compatibility, and the other benefit is that it could be integrated into the cache description building page. Should a third party checker have a feature that you want to use, you could still include that in your code.

 

Third party solutions do work so some extent, but there's always the possibility that a provider suddenly loses interest, or goes out of business, or has health problems, or fails to renew their domain. And even though adding the required lines of HTML to the description isn't much of a problem to many of us, we should recognise that a lot of people can't and won't fiddle with any computer code.

 

In some cases it wouldn't matter too much if the checker is no longer available, but a lot of caches with difficult puzzles are quite far away and you can't simply go and have a look to see if you solved it. Even if it's close by, you might be doubtful about your solution and have a less determined search if the cache isn't immediately obvious. Although you were correct, you'd then ignore that solution and waste a lot of time on further attempts.

 

An example of the problem is with yesterday's downtime on Certitude. The puzzle I was looking at is very difficult and the cache is about thirty miles away. There are many ways of making coordinates out of the puzzle, so my "solution" is doubtful. Although the checker is available again now, it's too late for me to set out. And if I'd gone to look anyway...my answer was wrong so I'd have wasted $20 of fuel.

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I'm a big fan of Certitude and have changed all my puzzle caches from geochecker. There are a number of advantages as far as I can see.

 

1/ You can leave messages for solvers, for example one of mine needs 'fuzzy coordinates' and I give the exact ones to solvers.

2/ As was mentioned earlier, solutions don't have to be coordinates which give you many different puzzle options (the solver can be rewarded with the coordinates as per above)

3/ Solvers (who choose to) are listed so the cache owner can see who's successful.

 

I certainly wouldn't be remotely concerned about servers going down as all servers do occasionally include Groundspeak's.

 

Third party apps such as GSAK and project-gc to name but two are generally far superior to Groundspeak's equivalent.

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I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least).

Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded.

 

So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

 

I'd be more inclined to use one that was built into the site, but I would never want to see these things become mandatory for mystery caches.

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Eh. I'm happy with the checkers being 3rd party. I'm not terribly concerned with downtime since, worst case, I'd have to go look for the cache using an unconfirmed solution: no big deal. Furthermore, if GS provided a checker, it would kill all the others. If GS's wasn't as good as the one I like best, that would be bad.

Maybe not. GS putting statistics onto thier webpage didn't kill the other stats generators. Infact, I think the Third party pages are better than they were before.

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If you're interested in various coordinates/solution checker options, I'd recommend you to watch this recent GeoGearHeads

.

 

My favorite is Certitude. Not because of the FTS (First-to-Solve) thing, any more, at least. It's just because I can see the list of puzzles that employ Certitude here, and I also enjoy seeing a little green check signs for puzzles I solved, even if they are 5,000 miles away and I probably never find them. One box for both latitude and longitude. No Captcha. Bonus info (hide hint, usually) set up only for puzzle solvers. The Hint for specific wrong answer. Blah, blah, blah...

Edited by kanchan
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I'm a big fan of Certitude and have changed all my puzzle caches from geochecker. There are a number of advantages as far as I can see.

 

1/ You can leave messages for solvers, for example one of mine needs 'fuzzy coordinates' and I give the exact ones to solvers.

2/ As was mentioned earlier, solutions don't have to be coordinates which give you many different puzzle options (the solver can be rewarded with the coordinates as per above)

3/ Solvers (who choose to) are listed so the cache owner can see who's successful.

 

I certainly wouldn't be remotely concerned about servers going down as all servers do occasionally include Groundspeak's.

 

Third party apps such as GSAK and project-gc to name but two are generally far superior to Groundspeak's equivalent.

I also like how you can choose multi stage, coords, keywords and fuzzy coords. And instead typing in the coords you can cut and paste all at once. Makes it faster for series caches.

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I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least).

Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded.

 

So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

 

I'd be more inclined to use one that was built into the site, but I would never want to see these things become mandatory for mystery caches.

They could make it optional like other things since some mystery caches don't need checkers to confirm them.

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I have a few Mystery Caches that have a geochecker facility provided, and for the latest one I used Certitude, which seems to be the most fashionable at the moment (in this part of the world, at least).

Right now http://www.certitudes.org/ doesn't seem to function, and caches which pretty much rely on the seeker being able to check their answer are degraded.

 

So I was wondering why Groundspeak have never included such a facility? Third party checkers are well and good but as we can see, are potentially prone to error or reliability problems. Mystery caches have been around for a long time and an answer checking facility is an obvious requirement.

 

I'd be more inclined to use one that was built into the site, but I would never want to see these things become mandatory for mystery caches.

They could make it optional like other things since some mystery caches don't need checkers to confirm them.

 

A mystery cache never *needs* a checker. It is, and should remain, purely optional, regardless of the nature of the cache.

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A mystery cache never *needs* a checker. It is, and should remain, purely optional, regardless of the nature of the cache.

Sometimes the checker is part of the puzzle.

 

I think narcissa was saying that it should remain optional for the owner whether they add one or not.

 

I agree there are puzzles where the checker is part of the puzzle - and to solve it (in the normal way) you need to use the checker. I have one like that. If Certitude is down, you can't* solve it. But it also requires you to listen to something on a 3rd party site, and if that is down you can't* solve it either.

 

*of course you may be able to guess at the coordinates or get them from a friend etc...

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I think narcissa was saying that it should remain optional for the owner whether they add one or not.

 

I agree there are puzzles where the checker is part of the puzzle - and to solve it (in the normal way) you need to use the checker. I have one like that. If Certitude is down, you can't* solve it. But it also requires you to listen to something on a 3rd party site, and if that is down you can't* solve it either.

 

*of course you may be able to guess at the coordinates or get them from a friend etc...

No, she makes an absolute statement that a puzzle never needs a checker. I don't think anyone disputes that checkers should always be optional.

 

There's a puzzle that uses Certitude - it has multiple puzzle stages, and you need to use Certitude to get from one stage to another. If you're interested, take a look at http://coord.info/GC2D56J . There's a few where the checker is an integral part of the puzzle - without the checker, there is no puzzle. I can't give examples, that would give away the puzzle solution :)

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I think narcissa was saying that it should remain optional for the owner whether they add one or not.

 

I agree there are puzzles where the checker is part of the puzzle - and to solve it (in the normal way) you need to use the checker. I have one like that. If Certitude is down, you can't* solve it. But it also requires you to listen to something on a 3rd party site, and if that is down you can't* solve it either.

 

*of course you may be able to guess at the coordinates or get them from a friend etc...

No, she makes an absolute statement that a puzzle never needs a checker. I don't think anyone disputes that checkers should always be optional.

 

There's a puzzle that uses Certitude - it has multiple puzzle stages, and you need to use Certitude to get from one stage to another. If you're interested, take a look at http://coord.info/GC2D56J . There's a few where the checker is an integral part of the puzzle - without the checker, there is no puzzle. I can't give examples, that would give away the puzzle solution :)

 

Sorry, my bad. I should have said the way I interpreted narcissa's comment is that no owner should be forced to add a checker. I can't speak for her and what she meant. Her comment came immediately after a post saying "They could make it optional like other things since some mystery caches don't need checkers to confirm them.".

 

Yes, I have a puzzle which uses Certitude in a way that it is integral to the puzzle (and I've found others like that).

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More commonly, mystery caches don't actually NEED a checker, i.e. they can be solved and found without using one, but would be highly inconvenient and impractical without a checker.

As far as I know no-one has proposed making one compulsory; the CO can still have the cache published without the facility.

 

All I was asking is why Groundspeak haven't added such an obvious feature to the site. An integrated (optional) checker would seem like a simple enhancement. Has the company ever said why this has never been proposed?

 

There are loads of other obvious useful things which they haven't added, which baffles me. So perhaps it's just that they can't be bothered as there's no competition to worry about and they don't need to forge ahead.

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Yes, they need serious competition. Someone would have to introduce robust international site with similar features and with all the things we call for and Groundspeak refuses to implement/fix. We would be surprised how quickly GS would find resources. :D

 

And as to checkers: I use the good old Evince on my new cache. I admit being a little bit sadistic but I just like it - the nerves you've got waiting for the server response just to get "Sorry!" and the "Whoa pardner! Not so fast" message when trying more than once in ten minutes. :)

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More commonly, mystery caches don't actually NEED a checker, i.e. they can be solved and found without using one, but would be highly inconvenient and impractical without a checker.

 

How did we ever survive before these third party websites? Sheesh.

If you know there's no checker, when you design the puzzle you bear this in mind and make sure the answer is going to be unambiguous. This can be difficult to guarantee as you might not realise all the different ways that people try to solve your puzzle. It leads to resentment when people "solve" the puzzle and invest time and money in trying to locate a container that was never where you thought it was. The worst thing being that you still don't know whether you were looking in the right place and couldn't see it, or whether it was the wrong place anyway.

 

I've solved many puzzles and thought I had a rock-solid answer that's beyond reasonable doubt, only to discover that the checker says "no". Pre-geocheck days you'd have to rely on sending an e-mail to the CO and asking for confirmation, but that's a slow and clumsy system and relies on a cache owner being ready and willing to send out e-mails (and on the cache seeker's patience).

 

Some puzzles are so well-designed that you KNOW that you have the correct answer. Some are designed by someone who thinks that there's only one answer but hasn't considered the many different interpretations of the puzzle which all lead to valid coordinates.

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Some puzzles are so well-designed that you KNOW that you have the correct answer.

I appreciate a checker even with the best of designed puzzles, not because there's any question I solved the puzzle, but just to confirm that I didn't make a mechanical gaff in deriving the actual digits.

 

I've solved some puzzles where, once solved, I got a JPG showing the coordinates. Although I've never actually had a problem, I'm nervous every time that I'm going to copy the coordinates down wrong...

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If you know there's no checker, when you design the puzzle you bear this in mind and make sure the answer is going to be unambiguous.
Or you embrace the ambiguity and incorporate it into your puzzle design. I've found puzzles without checkers, with ambiguous solutions, where sorting out the ambiguity is part of the puzzle. They may not be for everyone, but they've been some of my Favorites.
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That's fine, and part of the great creative world unlocked by puzzle caches.

 

But really, what I meant was where the solution was unintentionally ambiguous. For difficult puzzles this can be a trap for the naïve or inexperienced cache setter, who isn't familiar with the devious ways in which coordinates can be hidden in a description and who inadvertently creates alternative solutions.

 

In any case, my point wasn't whether we actually need geocheckers - clearly we do as they are thriving - but why Groundspeak don't add one as an option to the standard cache page. There seems to be no answer to that.

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