Getting better at solving puzzles

The Game Room
1

I’m an avid geocacher (see here if you don’t know what it is, although it’s not entirely relevant to my question), but most of what I find are pretty standard caches. I’ve been wanting to get into puzzle caches (caches where the cache hider has given you a puzzle you have to decrypt instead of the coordinates) to up the challenge, but the problem is… I suck at puzzles!

I’ve been fighting withthis guy for weeks now, and I’ve got nothing. I feel guilty messaging the owner for a hint because I feel like I should have SOMETHING before I message him. So far, I’ve figured it’s probably not a substitution, since I’ve tried a number of possible substitutions. After substitutions, I just don’t know where to go on puzzles.I’ve been trying to work on another dozen or so as well, figuring that, maybe if I can get one, the other ones will come easier, but I haven’t been able to get any of them.

So, really, my question for the Doper community isn’t really this particular puzzle, so much as how to learn how to solve puzzles in general. Are there good resources out there that you guys know of? Or should I break down and start messaging the owners to get hints?

2

Fixed coding and moved thread from MPSIMS to the Game Room.

3

My advice would be to try your hand at riddles. Lots and lots of riddles.

Solving a good riddle requires one to be able to step back and look at the problem from different angles, as the obvious, straight-forward approach is almost always not the correct one… and training your brain to do that is extremely helpful in solving all manner of puzzles.

4

Thanks twickster!

Soulmurk, that’s something I’ll have to look into, thanks.

5

This is a good place to start.

6

Instead of emailing the creator, perhaps you should try asking for hints from those who have successfully found the geocache.

7

In my part of the country, the etiquette is to ask the creator first.