Puzzle Solving 101 - Dancing Men Mystery Cache
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Puzzle Solving 101 - Dancing Men
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The Puzzle Solving Series was created by a group of local cachers to spread their love of the unknown/mystery cache. Released around the first and the fifteenth of each month, each cache will demonstrate or explain a puzzle technique. Use these techniques to then solve the accompanying puzzle.
Substitution ciphers are one of the most common types of puzzles. They work by replacing each letter of the plaintext (and sometimes punctuation marks and spaces) with another letter or symbol. If you ever played with a decoder ring, you've used a substitution cipher.
As you search the internet using the keyword "cipher", you will learn to recognize some of the most common examples like Freemason, Rot-13 (Caesar), Vigenere, Futurama, Atbash, and Pigpen. When trying to crack a simple cipher, I will often search the word "cipher" and scour the gallery for similar symbols or letter groupings. Take screenshots or bookmark sites of interesting alphabets (like the Runic Alphabet or the Klingon Alphabet) to reference later.
There are several very popular sites for substitution ciphers:
Many of the geocaching apps for the smartphone now contain puzzle/cipher tools, too. You will see several popular ciphers featured in this series.
One of the oldest and easily recognizable ciphers is the Sherlock Holmes' Dancing Men, featured in the short story "The Adventure of the Dancing Men" by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1898)
Each stick figure represents a letter. Replace each figure with the corresponding letter. Characters holding a flag denote the last letter in a word.
The cache is not at the posted coordinates. You must solve the puzzle.
Dr. Watson has received a coded message from Sherlock Holmes, delivered by the Baker Street Irregulars. You must help Watson locate the missing container but watch out for Moriarty's men!
Try creating your own Dancing Men Cipher!
You can check your answers for this puzzle on GeoChecker.com. Thank you for playing!
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Qba'g yrg gur chmmyr fghzc lbh!