Challenge Talk Podcast - Show 75.0 - Unchallenges with x7Kevin

1:00to take a moment to remember our friend and challenge talk family member Tim Green, Merlin 1392. Tim loves geocaching. But he understood that this game was never really about the numbers. It was about the places we go, the things we see, and more importantly the people we meet. Tim made those people, those adventures, and this show more special simply because he was part of it. We'll miss his knowledge, his humor, his friendship, and that unmistakable smile. Tonight and always we remember Tim with love. Challenge complete my friend. Another item I wanted to mention was that if you don't ever feel that you're ever alone and we are here for you if you need someone to talk to, our whole team is available.

2:04So reach out to us if you need to. Do not hesitate. Our whole team is here for you. Let me bring in Emily. If I can. There we go. Hi everyone. We're both talking. Yeah. Tonight is a sad night and also we're going to keep on caching, right? What Tim would have done. We mourn the loss of our friend. We celebrate his life. Tim was loved. You guys, that's the thing I have seen. Ironically on Facebook. Tim did not spend time. Tim did not love Facebook. But since his passing was announced, wow, everyone just spread the love.

3:05Tim was loved in many ways by many different people. So many of you got to know Tim even better than me. We were time zones apart. He got to go to many mega events that I didn't get to go to. I think the number one that I knew his favorite Midwest Geobash. Everyone has a Midwest Geobash story to share about how Tim is so helpful. Tim is so encouraging. Tim is so fun. Tim is entertaining. Tim is, let's go. Let's do something. Let's do geocaching together. You know, so many stories. And he was very visionary. Always planning something. It is no joke when I say how much Tim gave to this podcast. The ideas that he had. Always wanting to try something new. Maybe I was like tampering him down a little bit sometimes. But he had the ideas. He was a visionary. Tim was on our show since show 31, January of 2024.

4:09That's when he came on to take the place of Jeff after Jeff stepped down the previous few months before that. And yeah, it was a lot, a lot of fun to do this with Tim. He would say he tried to weasel his way in. But after I met him, I just knew he was a passionate person about geocaching and about challenges. And so I don't think he did too much weaseling when we brought him on to the show. And I wanted to share, oh, sorry, Gary, did I catch off? Oh, one other quick thing on Don reminded me of this. Why we have a production manager. I tell you. Very helpful. She wanted me to mention, I'll put it in the chat room. There's a hotline. If for people that are having a special issues with with grief or loss. There's a number you can call. This is a really good one.

5:10Very well. Recommended. 866-903-3787. I think that's, I think you asked, I'm not sure. But it's a good grief line to call 866-903-3787. And highly recommended for those that need that. And so again, I'll put it in the notes here. But my last thing, and I'm going to let you do some more discussions about Tim. But also, I wanted to also mention why I had a moment is to talk about that Brian Roth lost his dad. So, you know, our heart goes out to Brian as well. We sent him a note from the Geocache Talk Network. So, if you want to reach out to Brian, he would love your encouragement and thoughts for him.

6:23But back to you. All right. Thanks, Gary. I wanted to share some of those comments that I saw. I couldn't bring them all in by any means. But, you know, we're going to have a show for that. Just thought we might just consider that at first not to be a special date. That's our very kind of top topic. It was some time I attended a talk to the original whose lunch wasn't a normal date. Not just that time or so. You know, I was very, very sad when I remember myHola-na-na-na-na and boys there were usually Read. Crew of events. The podcast so she could talk about and explain what those missions were, so she said Rest and Peace Tim. Jim, RKY, said he always reached out to others and had a time for good talk, especially about geocaching, but often just about life in general. Miggas won't be quite the same without him. We've lost a fine ambassador in human being. Sandy of Podcashor said, Tim was a huge supporter of Podcashor and we enjoyed our interactions

7:25with him, including having him as a guest several times. He had such a love of geocaching, our hearts go out to his family. Captain Mass said, I can still remember like it was yesterday when you introduced your new partner on the Geocache Talk Network Challenge talk show. At the time I didn't know him, but since then, Joy and I have had multiple chances to get to know him as a friend, meeting up with him for various stuff and being, and also love being a part of the My Go event he oversaw last year. I did a lot of his challenges this past summer and we hope to target some of the challenges nearby for the opportunity to leave a tribute message inside. And I would like to share this that yes, they found this or they posted these pictures. It says challenge fine number 1392. Tim's name was Merlin 1392. How amazing is that finding those caches in his honor? Yeah. Ryan Ross said Tim once told me and Gary like you said, my fondest saying about this game

8:27is the places we go, the things we see and the people we meet. And a lot of ways he really made the people we meet extra special for so many of us. Railroad said Tim will be missed by so many. He walked up behind me in Michigan when I couldn't figure out a book cipher and we finished the five stages together. We also teamed up in Texas at the Leap Year mega fun fun times. J&LA said such a bummer. I was hoping to get to see him again. He was a fun person to cash with. Cheeky Brit said Tim has had such an incredible impact on the geocaching world and we lost a great person with him passing. Cheeky Brit already hid a challenge cash in Tim's honor. B-C-C-6-1 Tim Memorial Challenge DT found a 1-31 times 1392. And so he honors Tim in this cash page.

9:30And what's pretty amazing is he said, let me find it here, as if by magic, Merlin 1392 has 2,139 points and anagram of his alias number. So pretty, pretty neat. And let's see here. We wanted to make sure everyone knew that when you go to geocachetalk.com, there's a tribute page for Tim. You can see it up at the top here and you can read more about Tim, see some photos that we have of Tim geocaching with a lot of you. And so you can see the pictures start there. And at the bottom we have some links to some of his YouTube episodes, excuse me, there. When Tim was a guest, prior to being a host on challenge talk, when he talked about scuba caching on GCPC and then also a link to his profile and you can check that out.

10:32Tim's last day, he got to attend a geocaching event. How incredibly perfect, right? And so yeah, we want to hear so much more from you guys. That's just a fraction of what can be said. So please send us your stories, send us your photos. This isn't the only tribute cash I've heard of. I know some of you have plans. Maybe they're hidden already. Maybe you're working on it. Send us what you're hiding in Tim's honor. It might be that you want to share with us. You can send it to geocache talk or yeah, geocache talk at gmail.com or challenge talk at challenge talk podcast at gmail.com. Sorry, I get this to make stuff when I'm not reading it. But yeah, we would we would love to hear more so we can put that together and celebrate Tim fully. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Wow. Thanks. For everything, Emily, I'll let you get on with your with the show. And again, thank you for everything you're doing right now.

11:35And thank you for your help this past weekend as we had to get around and talk to everybody and let everybody know that we could. Yeah. Well, have a good show. And we'll talk to you. Thank you very much. Talk to you later. All right, bye. All right, bye. All right, so yes, again, we'd love to hear from you. So many nice things in the comments already. So send those in for us. And definitely our condolences to Tim's friends and family. Just imagine the amount of things that we're saying just in a game. So we know that Tim lived a very, very full life outside of geocaching. If this is the life he lived in in his hobbies. So our condolences and our sincere thoughts are with you in this time. Well, Tim would want to share to go on. We were confident of that.

12:36So here we go. And I would like to say that also tonight we have a guest with us who's going to help us talk about an interesting concept. And let's bring him in. This is ex-7 Kevin. Hi, Kevin. Welcome to the show. Yeah, thank you for having me. Of course, and Kevin's going to join us to talk about the unchallenged challenge. I've already seen in the chat. I've never heard of that. So yes, let's get to it. Let's talk about that tonight. Also, we're going to play our games. We have prizes to give away each show to our listeners. Get your email ready because we are going to play the Wheel of Challenges. Our live game will ask you a question. The first correct answer will get to go up against the wheel and you can have a chance to win. Also, we'll highlight challenge caches you guys have found in the past month. So just a few news items as we get started. Let's see here. Bingo. Kevin, are you doing bingo, the treasure challenges?

13:36I'm trying to. I think I'm at like halfway there. So we'll see if I make up a whole way. All right. Well, good luck. And the reason I bring it up is because you have through Sunday, September 13th. I got to go to you, Caching. I thought I had a lot of time. The first day I went out to do it. And I was like, I'm just going to see what I get. And then I got hooked. And I was like, I have to finish this today. So I did it almost all in one day. But yes, you have until September 13th. And have you found the bonus trackable? So yeah, watch for that. And then the bonus before anything else. All right. So you knew at least I have that. Yeah. So if you guys in the chat don't know about that, talk to each other. Talk to us. Well, yeah, make sure you know about that bonus trackable too. It's fun when they hide things like that. All right. Some news this weekend. Again, in Oregon, Oregon is so fun putting on coin challenges. And so there's a coin challenge coming up this weekend, the 12th. I have that linked in the show notes in Southernland, Oregon. And then also I just finished the Albany Geo coin challenge.

14:38And they have about 50 coins left. So if you head out to Albany, Oregon, you could still get that. And so we have both of those linked in the show notes. So you know how to get all the information where to go. Get your coins, all of that. We also had some picking up on people's experiences that are getting chatted about out there in the Geo caching world closures on some of the old caches. So people will make destination trips to get old caches. I know I have a story about George's oldest that I still haven't found. It's actually a multi-year story of many DNFs for not even being able to try. So make sure as you're doing your planning, even making your trips that you stay aware, the two caches to be aware of currently, GCD in Washington. And so this one is currently closed. There is a lot of fire activity. I should say currently, as that's been expected,

15:39I didn't do my homework that on that today. But it's a very terrible fire season. A lot of things are closed. And we have links to where you can check current statuses. But as of now, it's expected to stay closed through October. And then we get into winter and snow. So it might not be findable this year. Another one that was on the closeless, but now is back open, potter's pawn, GC3B in Utah. There was some fire closures there. I even saw someone saying something about a flooding issue. So I'm not sure about water. But make sure you do your research. Yes, it's a huge bummer if you don't get to go. But it's also even worse if you try to do something that's currently not allowed. You don't want fines. You don't want problems. And we don't want these old caches to be in jeopardy if you do something to try to get them and be the one that makes something bad happen. So just a fair warning to do your research.

16:41All right. So Tim always did our statistics. I always just let him. I thankfully got help from Cheeky Britt. He's a member of our research team. He sent me some stats. I tried to combine what he gave me and what Tim used to do. And so what those stats are, as of September 1st, is 55,399 active challenge caches worldwide. And that's up 641. So that's awesome. And we still have USA leading the way followed by Germany and Canada. Kevin, you're in Canada, right? Yeah. What a challenge is up here. Challenge-riched area in the Ontario area, right? So you are very lucky. We were talking about that before the show. I have to do traveling to get near challenges. So but Canada is trailing. And in third place, Kevin, you could have something to do with that. Make that shoot that up.

17:42No pressure, no pressure. And then also we've got our state leaders, Texas, California, Michigan, Florida, and Minnesota. And we have all of those statistics in the show notes. So thanks Cheeky Britt for sending us a minfo. All right, Kevin, let's get to our topic. Unchallenges. So this isn't actually not the first time we've talked about this on challenge talk. Episode 11, Jeff brought this to my attention. I was telling Kevin back then, I was like, what are you talking about until he got into it and talking about the topic. And it's a lot of what we're going to talk about tonight. But Kevin, you have so much extra info because you're actively hiding unchallenges. You've got tips and tricks for us. And so I'm excited to get into that. So just to get started, unchallenges are putting forth a challenge for somebody to think about, but not making it an official challenge cash, which means it's not required to meet the challenge.

18:42You're just putting the personal challenge forth. Is that right? Yeah, I think a lot more people are probably familiar with additional logging requirements. Or like the LR, I think, yeah. So it's like, you probably have seen cashes where it's like, maybe like post a photo and you find this cash. I had one a few months ago where it was in this garden and there was a sculpture that was always changing. So I just encourage people to post a photo if the sculpture has changed. But obviously that's optional. So the unchallenges kind of the same idea that instead of just a random logging requirement that's optional, it's a challenge that's optional. All right. Yeah. And I guess another idea that maybe a lot of us heard of is the liar's cashes where they want you to, in your log, tell the most outlandish story of your adventure when it was like an LPC. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so that's another thing to maybe equate it to.

19:44And I was also telling Kevin before the show, this, I think this is a lot of fun. When I was a new casher, I ran into cashes that gave me ideas and opened my eyes to be like, wait, what? That's a statistic. Wait, what? Even there's such a thing as a challenge casher. Remember the first challenge cash I encountered. And so I think this is a really fun idea to open people's imaginations up to, oh, that's something I could do. The whole premise of this show, where we're trying to inspire people to think of something new, do something to give our cashing purpose. And so these unchallenges can really play a part in that. So yeah, let's get into it tonight. So Kevin, I already started your from Ontario. When did you get started cashing? So I'm pretty new. I'm actually around COVID, like a COVID casher. Uh-huh. So probably 2020, so about six years. And also I'm kind of more into the hiding than the finding.

20:46Okay. So I think I have like over a hundred hides. And I'm only at around like 1500 finds. So I'm going to find a bit for like five or six years, but I'm definitely more into the hiding and just kind of like seeing different things. Yeah. Great, great. Let's see what else. So yeah, let's pop into the unchallenge challenge. And so let's see here. Where would you like to take us to get started? See the idea. Yeah, I guess basically I was just looking through the guidelines on like geocaching HQ. And just looking through the different types of cashers that they list. Because they have like NFC beacon cashes, UV light cashes. And then I saw optional challenges as one of the like articles in the guidelines. And I'd never heard of it before. So, you know, I was trying to just find something new to hide,

21:47something I never hid before. And it sounded really interesting. And also it was kind of around that time when there was more rules coming towards the challenge cashers. So I felt like the unchallenge cashers were kind of a way to still hide certain types even with all the new rules and kind of restrictions that were coming in. To regular challenge cashers. Right. A lot of people miss what's been taken away. And it's logical why it's been taken away. But, you know, we still enjoyed it. When we encounter some of those little challenges, it's still fun to do. So, okay, very good. So, you made a chart. Is this a good time to show that chart? I think so. Yeah. This was kind of just a way to help me understand the differences. Because HQ has this all written just in like a paragraph. So I kind of wanted just to make it more visual, help people understand what it was. So I guess, yeah, I can just go through it a little bit. Yeah. So, number one is the title.

22:48So, a normal challenge cash will always have the word challenge in the title. That's a requirement. And so a lot of these are just the exact opposite. So with an optional challenge, you can't have the English word challenge. And I was kind of surprised that unchallenged was actually allowed. Because, you know, it's pretty close to the word challenge. You have the word challenge even capitalized. But at least in my area, it is allowed to write it like that. That's great because I don't think there's an opposite word for challenge that isn't like the application of lazy, maybe. And that's another reason why they're just so hard to find if you're searching for them specifically. Right. Because you can't have the word challenge in them. But luckily, you can have the word unchallenged in them. So technically, they are called optional challenges, according to HQ. So a normal challenge, it has to be a mystery cash. But an optional challenge, it can be any other type.

23:51So not a mystery. They are adamant about not confusing. You are not allowed to make it a mystery. But the optional. All right. And I would say like 99% of the ones I've seen are traditional. So almost everyone just hides a traditional. But you can hide any other type. And that's kind of what I experimented a bit with in my first ones. Good. The challenge checker, a normal challenge, you can have the, you have to have the checker in the challenge. With the unchallenged, you are not allowed to have a checker. So again, no confusion. Yeah. I mean, I feel like it would be nice if you could have a checker and all the other rules still applied. I don't think people would be that confused. But that's the rule. But there was a little loophole that I found that we'll probably talk about when we show my example. Yes. I like the loophole. We will get to that. And then the criteria, another obvious one.

24:53For the optional challenge, the criteria is not something that could be a challenge. So basically, anything that is not allowed in a challenge could be an optional challenge, except for a few, like, one thing that I found that we'll probably also talk about. Yes, we will, because that's important. All right. So unfortunately, there is no attribute for an unchallenged. So you don't have an attribute. You can't use the challenge cache attribute. And you do have to say clearly that the challenge is optional. So just kind of have a disclaimer somewhere in the description. And then this isn't really a rule, but this is kind of just what people do. So in a normal challenge cache, you write the note when you find it, and then you log it when the challenge is met. With the unchallenged, what I've seen most people do is what you have to log it and it's found immediately.

25:56But then you can return later and then write the note once you meet the criteria. So on those backwards, yeah. Just flipping everything, basically. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, the flipping. All right, well, those are very good. That chart is very helpful. Excuse me. I'm clicking around a lot of different buttons on my own tonight. Sorry for images in front of our faces. All right. So you mentioned that you looked at a lot of other, or you tried to do a lot of research with other cache cache. Yeah, I tried to find as many as I could different examples. But like I said, it is pretty tricky because the only way to search for them really is if they have unchallenged in the title. But there are so many that don't do that. And then there's really no way to find them unless you live in that area or you've seen them yourself. Sure. Sure. So we, you mentioned a cache hider.

27:02It looks like maybe a group. OK, let me do my best to share a screen here efficiently. Yeah, I think it's like a Kern County challenges. They had a lot of examples that were really helpful. All right. So this is just one. I'll link this cache page by Kern County challenges in the show notes so that you can read this one and go to all their other hides. But Kevin, we're going to absolutely link to your hides because you did a lot of work. And we're going to see what you did here. So is this a good one of yours to link to? Yeah, yeah. Start to look at for what you've done. And so before you get to this, that's fine. Because yeah, oh, you've got some notes here about your experiments of what didn't work. But I think you added those all to the chart, right? Of what wasn't working.

28:03And so to try. Yeah, I wrote a lot of it down. So hopefully help other people. But yeah, this was a set of three that I started with. Just trying to experiment and see like, because I'd never seen any of these in my area. I'd never found an unchallenged before. I hadn't even heard of it before. So this was kind of just testing it out, seeing how it would work. And I was really curious to how many people would actually do the challenge part. Because I thought originally, maybe, like most people are just going to ignore it. They're just going to treat it as a normal cache. So I kind of wanted to do certain things to make it more likely that they would actually do the challenge part of it. OK, so what were your ideas? So yeah, so for this one, and I should also mention the Kern County challenges that you just showed. That is what actually inspired me with the little kind of loophole on Project GC. So if you go to Project GC, you don't have to show this.

29:05But there's a tab on the top with statistics. And they have all different statistic tools. In a way, they're kind of like checkers, but they're checkers that Project GC has made themselves to check certain statistics. So you can link those because they're not technically a checker, but they are checking certain things. So for example, like the log image uploads on Project GC, there's actually a statistic tool that will tell you your exact number and show you your ranking of how many images you've uploaded to your logs. All right, so this on that's permanent in the cache description, that looks like what you did. You took a picture of that, a screenshot of that, and added it as of the data publication. And people can even click where it's blue, this Project GC statistic tool. And I'll take them right to the checker to just like, click their own name, their location, and everything.

30:08So this is different. If you haven't used one of the tools, it's a little different than a checker profile name. You can click on this icon and throw your own name in there real quickly. But you might have to fill in some additional criteria to run the tool, unlike a challenge checker, which is just your name in the front. Automatically. Yeah. And yeah, I think I did those for Ontario, right? So it's just searching in Ontario. How many, what's your ranking in Ontario? OK. But yeah, for any location, you could change it to either your city or your state or even a country. And usually when I'm doing that, you can click on the country. And then by clicking in the country, it gives you more breakdowns of areas. I'm not sure that this is, there we go. Like I just clicked to YA there once. Once I had United State to give me a list of the 50 states to choose from.

31:08Yeah. So I thought that would kind of be like another way to encourage the challenge aspect if there's still a tool there that people can run. But one of the other main things I wanted to do is make it a letterbox. It's almost every other unchallenged I've found is a traditional. And I feel like with traditional, a lot of people are just going to not even read the description. Absolutely. I don't always read the description for traditional. But with the letterbox, it might not be at the poster coordinates. So you kind of do have to at least look at it a little bit. And the icon is also blue. So it's a little similar to a mystery. That was kind of my thought process. Yeah. That's a good thought process. I like that a little bit of psychology. Yeah. I'm going to be there. And actually, another thing I did was I actually um, hid these first three right beside a challenge part. So there's like 50 challenge castes. And these are right on the edge.

32:08So I thought, you know, everyone's doing some challenges. Maybe they'll just look over here and want to do the unchallenged. But yeah. So I did find like with these ones, around 50% of people probably were doing the challenge part, letting me know what their number was. But later, I did do a spoiler alert. I did do just a traditional challenge. And the percentage was a little bit higher. So these things might not necessarily help. But it is interesting to like, you're a little different. Now, when you first got started with this and submitting them for review, what kind of experience did you have? Yeah. So originally, I wasn't going to do the challenges about the like log images and all of those other things. I actually wanted to do challenges about hiding. Because I'm a big hider. I probably like hiding a lot more than finding.

33:10And I thought the unchallenged would be a cool way to have like hiding related challenges. So like, you know, who's hidden the most, or things like that. But unfortunately, there is kind of a general rule for all caches that you can't promote hiding in any way. So that rule like supersedes the unchallenged rule. So no cash like in any category on anything can encourage hiding. So having an unchallenged on hiding is not allowed, at least in my area. But I'd imagine most people would not be allowed to do that. OK. That makes sense. And speaking of your area, there's in geocaching in so many ways, there's no precedent. So you're doing this. You've worked through this with your reviewers. You've had a stride doing it. But it really may vary.

34:10My reviewer, I think they even left like a public note on all of these unchallenged. There's warning everyone else. Like, there's no precedent for this in Ontario. So just because this was published doesn't mean that more like it will be published. And I think also these three were really pushing the boundaries just with not being traditional, linking to the statistic tool. They were doing a lot of things even beyond a normal unchallenged. But with the newer unchallenged that I published, there was no issue at all. All right. So that is this one, this icon run unchallenged that you published as a traditional, right? Yeah, this was just last month. And this is more just like a park and grab. So just very simple. And I actually love the idea of this leaderboard. So another thing that I love about unchallenged is you don't have to qualify for the challenge.

35:14So there's so many challenges. There's so many questions in the chat. Yeah. There's so many challenges that I don't qualify for. Just because I'm newer, I've only been caching for around five or six years. And I like hiding more than finding. So I found it's a really good way to motivate myself because you can see I'm at the bottom of the leaderboard. On this couch. Yeah, on my own challenge. So that's kind of motivating to like, now I want to get a higher number, right, for an icon run. Very good. Yeah, it's just a cool way also to see who's in your community and what their numbers are and just kind of like a little like friendly competition kind of. Right. And you know what? A good thing to remember, if you're going to throw a leaderboard on your cash page, keep it updated. Yeah, I just had to do that today. Yeah, it's a little discouraging to see a leaderboard. And you're like, well, I'm never going to end up on there. They have an update of this page in years.

36:15I think that that would probably continue to give people that competitive feeling if the leaderboard is updated. I think we are giving people a lot of ideas. Berk and Stock reports, as I'm going to have to send my reviewer up fruit, ask it after this episode. I love that. Very good. Oh, what's this? Tom says Berk and Stock, my reviewer, is a pilot. I have to send a lot of money for $100. Embrick. Oh goodness. That's great. That's great. We also had a note about the Kern County cashers. Hiking Seal says she was scrambling to find one of El Rojo 14s on challenges. And finally realized he's the guy behind that account. And he's been doing on challenges almost since the moratorium. So that account was so helpful a lot of years. That's great. That's good to know. As a resource. Let me see. Was there anything else I wanted to make sure I asked you?

37:20I really liked the idea that you hid these around another concentrated area of challenges. That's really smart, I think. Well, I think, yeah, that's what the other account, the Kern County challenges. I think they were making a lot of challenge, like, art, or just groups of challenges, and all the challenges that weren't qualifying. They just put them there in the same group as the unchallenges. So if you're ever making a lot of challenges, and there's a few that don't work as a challenge, this is also an option. Awesome. I was saying to Kevin before the show, I found in the forums, someone mentioned the example of a good quad jasmer cash, because you are never going to find a quad jasmer challenge. It's just not a attainable, excuse me, attainable by the average cashier. So that's just not something that's going to get published these days.

38:23But this is a way for us jasmer obsessed. Maybe I should only speak for myself, but to another topic. Maybe one the bug does. Maybe a few decades. And just another topic where, if it's something you're totally obsessed with, you can do it in this manner. And I am seeing a lot of that in the comments, things that people have great ideas for, and just haven't had a way to do it. Just finding our way says, I incorporated an unchallenge as a note at the end of the latest published challenge that he had. That's a good idea. Yeah. All right. Let's see. So you also gave us a number of other ideas besides, or are all these in the show notes from the Kern County account? No, most of them are from different people, I think. Some are even like different countries.

39:25But yeah, there's a lot of people are so creative. The freeway borders one, I thought, was really clever. Because you can actually make it an unchallenge where you just define an area. So I think that person, they just did it between different highways. And the unchallenge was to find every active cache in that area. Oh, wow. So it's basically making a list of specific cache as that you need to find. Yeah. So I thought that was really fun. That is fun. And yes, absolutely not allowable as a current challenge, as well as those defined geographic areas. That can be really limiting as well. So this is a fun way to do geographic areas. Yeah, a lot of these examples. Let's see here. What else did you have in those examples? The professional bingo I like to. OK, professional bingo. This says, fill as many squares as you can. I'm going to open that cache page.

40:26And let's see what that one says. OK, so this is just a lot of ideas. Multiple things you could achieve in your geocaching and try to get a bingo with them. That's very fun. Very fun. I let's see here. One caught my eye. Oh, FTF consolation unchallenge. Like 10 caches where you don't get the first to find, but find them the same day as first to find. That is a lot of fun, especially with first to find not being an officially recognized statistic at all. So that's a lot of fun for people who enjoy first to find. Very cool. Very cool. Yeah, it's almost besides like the rule about not encouraging hiding, you can pretty much do anything you can imagine with unchallenges. So it's so creative. That is good. So you had through throwing some ideas in here for unchallenges.

41:27Recreate some of your favorite challenge caches that are no longer allowed under current guidelines. Some will work better than others without a checker. That's so true. I think it's still a bookmarking challenge than you know. I don't know if a lot of people will put that in, put that work in if it's an unchallenge, but it's possible. Oh, a geo art or an entire series of unchallenges. Yeah, I don't know if anyone's ever done that, but you could be the first. Why not? Why not? And then like you said, experimenting with types, anything but a mystery. Yeah. Yeah, like you say here in your notes, anything is possible. Get creative. And we're seeing that and everyone's ideas already. Yeah, and like you said, you don't have to qualify for it. So challenge yourself. I know. That's a fun idea to challenge yourself. Here's this thing I'm working on. I'm putting it out there. And then you never know who's going to come along

42:28and like get you up. Like, oh, I've done this. Like five times over and you're like, why? Why haven't I done this yet? But yeah, if you can handle the pressure of having that out there. This is a lot of fun, Kevin. I love this idea. Like I said, I love the idea that it will inspire someone for something they haven't thought about. It might inspire them if they are the type of person who is skipping the unknown challenge type. That icon is a big fat no for them. Then they might not even have tried challenges yet. But this could get their attention on what a challenge is. It could get their attention on Project GC. There's still so many people who don't use Project GC. But your statistics are still, you know, manipulatable in there. Even if you don't use it, don't have a premium membership. You can look at your stats and run these tools with them. So this really opens up a lot of potentially new information

43:29for people. Very good. Yeah. Very good. Anything else that we skipped over? I don't want to, this is all such good information. I don't want to skip anything. Yeah, I don't think so. I just say to everyone, go read the official article on geocaching guidelines. That'll show you all the rules. And yeah, just there's no precedent. So make sure you don't get mad at your reviewer if something's not allowed. Because every area might have different ideas about unchallenges. And yeah, I was even really surprised that they're allowed to be called unchallenges with the rule that you can't have challenges in the title because unchallenge with the challenge capitalized is pretty close. Have you ever tried, like, when you search unchallenges, does it bring up partial words where challenges are also coming up in your search results?

44:31Not really. Like, because you can just search unchallenge is one word. And then it just sticks to unchallenge. Yeah. And that's how I found most of the examples. OK, good. So you're filtering out a large number of challenge caches with that in the title. But I think a lot of people don't even call them unchallenges. That's more just like a slaying word that people came up with. They all have to get to know. Technically, they are optional challenges. Not everyone might have even known about the word unchallenge, even if you're hiding optional challenges. Yeah. I'm scrolling through the chat here to see if anyone has said anything about what they've seen in their area or call it in their area. So if you guys know of something, yeah, let us know. Here's a question from Kitty Cash. How do you handle the difficulty rating? Can you up the difficulty to match the unchallenge? What do you think? Yeah, I think I don't know, because difficulties not really reviewed that much, right?

45:32I don't think. That's true. They don't know. No one's ever slapped my hand. Yeah. I think you can do whatever difficulty. So I think with mine, I kind of did match it a little bit with the first set. But the first ones I hid were just difficult to get to and find on their own, even without the challenge. But yeah, I don't think you would be stopped, because I think you can put the difficulty whatever you want. All right, very cool. Sebeck Tribe says she found one that was a mystery. So probably things get through. I'm curious how it looked like. Or yeah, maybe I don't know if the rule was maybe changed later. Sure. Because our challenge rules have changed. Post-mortarian new rules came out, and they have been changed several times over. So yeah, I'm sure they've been up later. Yeah, they changed attribute rules. So yeah, very, very good. And Kitty is from Australia and says, I haven't remembered seeing any in Australia.

46:33So. Well, yeah, I never saw any in Ontario before. It could be the first time. So. Yeah. Let's see here. Tom's got some ideas for us. Let's see here. Challenge, unaccepted, challenge uncompleted, unchallenged, accepted, unchallenged, completed, very fun, very fun. All right, wow, Kevin, this is very inspiring. Thank you so much for sharing. Kevin reached out to us with this neat, interesting concept. So thank you so much for sharing your ideas and what you're achieving with us. Because we love to talk about something new. Oh, yeah, pizza ninja. Pizza ninja. I'm going to have to do a pizza unchallenged. We wouldn't expect anything less. Very good. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. And you want to stick around for some games? Yeah, absolutely. All right. All right. So we are now going to do the Wheel of Challenges.

47:34Sorry, I don't have the big bells and whistles right now to throw up. But one live view, or each month, we'll be selected to face off against the wheel to have a chance to win the grand prize, which is a one-year membership on Project GC. We do ask that you limit yourself to three lifetime wins. So get your email app open now. And email challengetalkpodcast at gmail.com with the subject SpinMe and your geocaching user name in brackets with your answer to this question. An unchallenged, much clearly state that the challenge is. Now, I get that this may or may not have one correct answer based on how everybody thinks differently. But I'm going to look for the general correct answer in the email. So I've got the email pulled up. I'm going to be watching for correct people who answer. And then we'll face you off against the wheel. And I noticed our wheel is getting frequented on some

48:40of the challenge that are on the wheel. So I'll be looking at updating our wheel and making sure that's nice and fresh for us. Some of those challenges that are kicking our butts over and over. Maybe we should say audio's to those ones and bring some new challenges onto the wheel. So let me check my email here. And we have our first correct answer from B&JBISH. And the answer is optional. An unchallenged, much clearly state that the challenge is optional. So let us bring up the wheel. Guys, I never do this. I'm usually the one with the frozen screen. So let's cross our fingers and go to the wheel. And we're going to spin that wheel. And see what it lands on. We are landing on difficulty four and a half. GC38GBN, ABC123, an Alphanumeric Challenge.

49:42And so this one is hidden in Maryland. And it is a challenge cash to successfully log and find a cash that begins with each of the 36 Alphanumeric characters, A through Z, and 0 through 9. So I'm not seeing a challenge checker here. Let's see if I've got one on the side with that plug-in. I don't. Sometimes I have trouble with the plug-in. So let me bring up the checker out of my show notes. Give me a second to find that. And now let me share this checker screen. Checker script is disabled. Oh no. Guys, we haven't. We haven't had a chance to encounter something like this. All right, I am going to do something unprecedented for me. Chiki Brit, help, research department. Can you find me a checker? And we're going to move on to monthly challenges

50:43that you've submitted. And we'll see if we can't get a checker. We're going to leave everyone in suspense if B&J bitch has met this challenge or not. Chiki Brit says on it, thank you so much. All right, let's see here. Another reason we need to get this wheel updated. So until we get that, let me bring up some of the challenges that you guys have submitted as completing in the past month. Because every month we give a congratulatory shout out to listeners who email us proof of qualifying and logging a challenge cash since the last show. So again, send those in to challengetalkpodcast at gmail.com with the information. And you could win our podcast. So the first one is from Chiki Brit. And I got to get, I need to find my correct, my correct tab. Thank you for your patience. All right, so this is the attribute matrix challenge. This one is special.

51:44This is hidden by Tim. And Chiki Brit says that he was able to sign the log about two years ago when he met up with Tim. And then he finally qualified and was able to log that. This is GCAPA0E. Like I said, the attribute matrix challenge. And this is, did I say? OK, I thought that I said that wrong. So you can see here, it looks like a DT grid, a fizzy grid, but out of different attributes. This is what Tim's grid looks like. Yours might look a little different. Based on, have you found different attributes for all 81 different combinations with the attribute being used only once? So congrats, Chiki Brit and what a special one to be able to find. The next one we have is submitted from Berkensstock Report. And this is the Aurora Challenge Trail honoring Army, GCBDKTZ.

52:51And this challenge is to find 49 caches with the significant hike attribute. And she says, I got this one perhaps by cheesing it. I visited the, excuse me, I don't want to, I know I'll botched this up. At Gluntna, Lakeside Trail on Sunday, where an ATVs are allowed and had someone drop her off several miles up the trail so she could hike back instead of doing a full out and back. You know, that might be cheesing it or it just might be smart. Well done. She said it was part of a CTO event organized to retire 120 cash power trail due to changing Alaska state parks permitting. Since many of those are five to eight miles out and back, they have the significant hike attribute. It was a sad but wonderful day along the lake with over 30 members of Geocache Alaska and some friends visiting from outside. So that's good, helping change her, or clean up her changing game board

53:52and achieving this challenge at the same time. Well done. The next one comes from just finding our way. And this is GCBEF1G, Mr. Zips Challenge by JT Coffee. And this is to find one Geocache in every zip code region. And he says, I took a day trip to Seattle last week for a challenge oriented day, placing two regionally oriented county based challenges, which I've linked in the notes. And then finishing up the time with 15 qualified challenges and one signed but not qualified. And the most interesting challenge was this one, the last one of his day. And JT Coffee has this and a similar one in Gilby. And this is to find at least one Geocache in every zip code region. Did I see, there we go. Yep, so there's a visual on the cache page of the different zip code regions, meaning starting with one to even zero up to nine

54:54throughout the United States. So not quite a whole 50 states challenge, but quite the well-traveled challenge. And he said, I love the concept in the output of the checker since it brought back lots of memories of my travels. I think I love that kind of stuff too. This is especially one of the parts, and one of the things I love about looking at a map and seeing where I've been and having those great memories. And then the last one to share for tonight. This is submitted by Rody Guy. This is GCBGX1T. We love 12 months of challenge for May. And so Rody Guy says, I just returned from vacation. And he sent me this yesterday. One week in England and then an 11 day cruise from Southampton to Barcelona. And he found 21 challenge caches well in England. And so he sent me a list of those 21s and a lot of them were from series. And so January through December.

55:57And then I think there were, I forget exactly what I looked at last month, but lots of interesting series. And this one particular for May, I thought this was interesting because May celebrates Blue Switch Day and the birth of geocaching. And it was in May 2000 to open up GPS to everyone. And so this cache is asking you to find five caches placed in the years 2000 and or 2001. So very good. And our challenge winner for the month is, Rody Guy, congratulations. I'll be in touch for your prize. All right, let's see here. I see some stuff happening in the chat. I'm checking to see what I got going on, how I can find it, so we can spin that wheel. Have you guys already talked in the chat? Excuse me as I look through.

56:58As I'm looking through, I do see that Cheeky Brit found an example of an optional challenge for an unchallenged for Webcams GC99CKX. So on Webcam, that's a question. I'm actually adding a Webcam. Very good for those of us who love it and want to celebrate it. Yeah. All right, let's see here. Matt, were you able to find us a challenge checker? I'm looking through the things. I feel like if it doesn't work, they should automatically when I use all of them. You know, I'm curious. Do you guys know this about yourself, B&J Bish? Do you know what your statistics are? There is a way to look for checkers. And I could put myself on the spot here. So let's see here.

58:02I'm not sure if I'm going to do this well. OK, so project.gc.com slash challenges, slash. You can actually search. Now, when I've searched, it's not. Well, first, you got to spell it right. So let's see here. It doesn't always give you everything you want. Oh, someone said check one that Mathseeker posted. But you can do that. If you're looking for a challenge, checker that already exists. If you've got a challenge idea and you want to check it out, you can do that kind of stuff. Let's see here. But let me look through Mathseeker. Thanks, everyone, for your patience as I'm trying to look at multiple things at once. If anyone wants to repost that, I'm searching through.

59:07Try not to spend too much time. But I'm not finding it quickly. Here we go. So Judy's got one. Let's see here. So GC38GBN. Judy, I either did it or wrong or it's not valid. I think I did it wrong. I'm not doing it right. Guys, I'm messing up. Gary popped in. Gary, are you here to save the day? Or get us going? Because I am just not doing it well. When you get the search, when you see it, that's much better than you thought. Let's see here. I'm just having a hard time scrolling through everything.

1:00:09Do the search not break it up? Let's see. I think I'm typing it wrong. I typed too many Gs and I missed a three. So let's try one more time. OK, guys. OK, here's the one that Judy posted. And. Well, this is the cache page. But my problem is finding a checker on it. This is a pre-moratorium challenge. And so the checker is not automatically required to be on the cache page. And then when I look for a checker, the one that I had saved from before. Yeah, and David says, good, any checker? That's what I was trying to do. It's a lot of pressure to try to figure this out on the fly.

1:01:16Sorry, guys. I'm also trying to keep the air filled. So I have found another checker out of New Jersey. It looks like this says, sorry, I don't have a great drum roll for you all, but B&J Bish fulfills. So you guys probably knew that. It doesn't give us a big output, but we can see here that as I scroll 0 through 9 a through z. So yes, you qualify. Congratulations. And this is their third win. So congratulations. You guys have officially maxed us out. And you have done the ultimate thing by winning it all. So very congratulations. And thanks all for your patience as I'm working through all of this on my own. We didn't give Kevin any controls. Not because we don't trust Kevin, just because he's really really amazing. Yeah, Kevin didn't want to supervise tonight.

1:02:16So he's just watching me like scroll and look. And thanks for your patience to Kevin. So everyone, all our winners, we will be in touch to get you your prizes. So Kevin, thanks so much for inspiring us. I've continued to see many, many ideas through the show notes or through the chat. So if you guys have come up with inspiring ideas, if you hide your own on challenge, tell us about it. I want to feature challenges. You're hiding in addition to challenges you're finding because the more inspiration, the better. And we would love to hear what comes out of this show in particular. So Kevin, thank you so much for your idea and being willing to share with us tonight. Yeah, thank you for inspiring me every month too with the awesome podcast. Thank you very much. So just a reminder, our next show is Tuesday, October 13th. And I will post show notes in the description

1:03:17and in the podcast and in the YouTube after the show. And I get things all cleaned up. And you guys, remember, it's not about the numbers. It's about the challenge. And as Tim would say, challenge accepted. Good night.