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Geocache mystery story with a coordinate as the answer

Puzzling Asked by Fredrick on September 4, 2021

I’m trying to do my first geocache and I’m having some trouble. I would appreciate if someone could provide some more hints for me (please put the answer in spoilers). The geocache is a puzzle that is based on the following story taken from the geocache page: (edit*: hints posted at bottom of story)

The title of the geocache is The Penguin Breathed. The coordinates will be found after careful reading, interpretation
and translation of certain elements of the following story. Pints of
Guinness are well known as good bribes for hints.

I was wandering along my favourite forest trail the other day looking
for a good place to hide a cache when I heard the shuffling of feet
through the dry leaves. I looked behind me and couldn’t believe my
eyes. There, waddling down the trail, was a penguin – not just any
penguin, but THE penguin. What an opportunity! Having had my last
story (River Runner Confronted by Police during Geocaching Adventure)
rejected by the National Enquirer, I saw this as my chance to finally
gain that ever elusive notoriety.

I stood on the trail and watched him shuffling toward me. “Excuse me,”
I said as he came closer. He startled and came to a sudden halt amidst
a flurry of colourful leaves. “Pardon me for frightening you, but I’m
a bit surprised to see a penguin of your renown wandering these paths.
May I ask what brings you here?”

“Autumn landscape,” he replied as he patted his ruffled feathers back
into place. “Brings me back year after year. Don’t you just love the
sound of crispy leaves under your toes?”

“Um yes, I suppose I do. Now, I don’t want to impose but I have a huge
favour to ask. I’m an amateur writer trying to make it big and a story
about you might be just what I need to launch my career.”

He looked at me quizzically. “Impromptu,” he muttered “interviews. I
don’t usually do those, but I suppose I can make an exception just
this once.”

What luck, I thought to myself. “Thank you so much. I promise not to
take too much of your time. First question then – I haven’t seen much
of you in the media lately. What have you been up to?”

“Aladdin. The Treasure of the Lost Lamp. I’m sure you’ve heard of
that.”

“Isn’t that an old Arabian story?”

“Scottish! It’s an ancient legend, boy. It says that the lamp is
hidden somewhere in the moors and if you find it, it will lead you to
a treasure beyond your wildest dreams. I’ve been searching for it for
years but so far no luck, only dead ends in peat bogs.”

“Wow, that sounds a lot like some Beagle-1 and Mystery Mole caches
I’ve done lately. Ever consider that you may have been misdirected?”

“Be eagle one and mystery mole cash? What ARE you talking about?”

“I’m talking about Geocaching.” I waved my GPSr under his beak. “You
go out and search for tupperware in the woods, among other places.”

“Tupperware in the woods?” He looked at me like I was out of my mind.

I began to worry about the direction this interview was heading. “I
suppose it does sound a bit odd.”

“Cuckoo! Not odd. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! CUCKOO!” He ran circles around me,
flapping his flippers in a frenzied but failed attempt to gain
altitude. “I think you need some help, young man. Looking for
tupperware in the woods…why I never!” He abandoned his attempt at
flight and looked at me hopefully. “Does the tupperware have sardines
in it by chance?”

“Well no, but it’s fun anyway and you don’t have to tromp through the
moors. Hmmm, maybe that’s not totally true. There was this one time I
was looking for a cache in a swamp and neglected to take my
flashlight. The only light I had was the light of the moon.”

“Moonlight? No flashlight? Doesn’t seem like a very bright idea.
Bright idea! Get it?” He started laughing hysterically.

“Okay, maybe I deserved that. I know it’s getting late and I have a
few other questions for you. Everyone is interested in celebrity
romance. How’s your love life?”

“Six romances,” he grinned at me, “in six weeks! Best six weeks of my
life if you know what I mean!” He poked me in the ribs. “ I’m not too
sure any of the six would be happy to read about the other five so
let’s keep that tender morsel to ourselves.”

“That seems very out of character for you. I always thought of you as
a quiet, gentle and somewhat naive sort.”

“All just a role I was playing. What you’re seeing is the real me.”

“Okay, just one more question for you. What projects have you got
planned for the future?”

He puffed out his chest, looked down his beak at me, and pronounced in
THE most horrid Shakespearean accent “Othello. My good man, I plan to
put Patrick Stewart to shame,” his voice cracked, “although I’m still
trying to convince Lord Attenborough to cast me in the lead role.” The
penguin breathed deeply and let out a huge sigh. “He thinks I’d be
much more convincing as Desdemona.”

With that, he smiled, tipped his Tilley, turned on his heel and
waddled off down the trail, mightily crunching the leaves with each
gleeful step.

I turned to go home and write up my story and there, right in front of
me, was the perfect spot to hide a cache.

The original coordinates given were N 43° 53.529 W 079° 26.825 and hints provided:

"Puzzle – Little hint: The key is in the title – Titles are key
Bigger hint: Heed well the penguin’s words for they should sound as music to your ears"

Source: The original cache page can be found at geocaching.com (Geocache ID: GC1J0AH).

2 Answers

Got it! You made an excellent breakthrough in your answer. I shall follow on from your progress to show you how this puzzle is solved and provide you with all the components for the final answer, although in the spirit of geocaching I shall not post the full coordinates explicitly here on the Internet, just give you the pieces to put together...

First, you were entirely correct to connect:

You were then also correct to start looking for:

You even found a few of the correct ones you need to find the coordinates - although not necessarily those you emphasised in bold! In fact, the way to hunt all of them out is to:

The full list of answers you need is (in numerical order):

Re-order these in the order they appear in the text and insert them into the X's in "NXX XX.XXX W0XX XX.XXX" - these are your final coordinates. Before setting out to find the physical geocache yourself, you can enter the coordinates into the cache's GeoChecker to make sure you definitely have them correct and will be looking in the right area. If it comes back with 'Success!' then you're ready to go!

Good luck!

PS One hint for puzzles of this type...

Answered by Stiv on September 4, 2021

Here's what I have so far:

The Penguin Breathed refers to a penguin named Opus from a comic by Breathed. Opus as in musical compositions that have that name. The first word of each penguin sentence is the name of an Opus. Here's what I got so far:

Autumn: 37

Impromptu 90 or 66

Aladin 34

Scottish 56

Be Eagle: 157 maybe

"in the woods" maybe 109

Moonlight 27

Six Romances 38

The bold ones I'm confident are correct. I still haven't gotten a coordinate out of them. I'm 100% sure the answer to the puzzle involves Opus numbers because Aladdin and Scottish and Six Romances are too obviously implying that. Help would be appreciated!

Answered by Fredrick on September 4, 2021

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