Found Treasure! Six Questions with Corey S. on The Tubular Treasure of The Cache Game

Treasures are being hidden all over Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky in The Cache Game! AND they are being found! Congrats to Corey S. who found the hidden treasure of The Tubular Cache. The Cache Game offers both free and paid hunts of which many people are enjoying, and who are solving their clues leading to the treasures! Let’s learn more about The Tubular Cache!

Six Questions with Corey S:

1Q) Congrats on Finding Treasure! Can you share a bit about The Cache Game and how you heard about the treasure hunt?

Thank you! The Cache Game was created by Joel Hunt; he hides the caches in either Indiana, Ohio (my home state), or Kentucky. It’s a great mix of armchair treasure hunts like the Art of Hidden Messages and geocaches. It’s a simple concept: Use the Quat (poem) to find the public place or park where the cache is hidden; then, use the picture to find the location of the cache within the place/park. One free hunt is active at a time with one to two paid hunts active as well. You can purchase each individual paid hunts separately or purchase an All Access monthly subscription for $9.99 which gives you access to two to four paid hunts a month.

I happened to come across it on the MW forum and The Cache Game’s FB page around the same time.

2Q) What inspired you to search for that particular treasure?

I went BOTG for this treasure because it was close to home and was one of the Ohio hunts that hadn’t been solved super quick. I live in Central Ohio and Yellow Springs is only about an hour or so away from me. I love finding out about Ohio’s history and Yellow Springs is pretty well known here but I had never done an in-depth look into it, so it presented an opportunity to learn more about my home state, too.

3Q) Can you share some of the highlights of your adventure? How did you go about solving the clues? Did the clues take you to an exact spot?

Truth be told, there weren’t too many highlights since this adventure turned into being a stop on the way to another planned trip but from the little bit I got to see of Yellow Springs, it was enough for me. I intend to go back very soon to explore.

To solve the clues I used a mixture of research and Google Maps that would lead me to the public park where it had been hidden. Google Maps ended up being the biggest helper in narrowing down the search area while the research ended up being used mostly as confirmers for the final location. From the “Pic” I knew three things right away: the cache was mostly likely hidden on or attached to a utility pole in a park, the park had to have a baseball/softball field, and there was a building with a blue stripe that I figured would be easily identifiable once I located the correct park.

I started with that information, jumped on Google Maps and searched for ‘public parks with baseball/softball fields’; as you can imagine that gave a lot of results, then I tried to narrow those parks down by searching “public parks with pond, pool, or lake” that helped narrow it down even further. We were provided with a Google Maps image with a black circle indicating the cache was within the circled area. On the description for the hunt it was described as being “south, latitudinally of Columbus, Ohio”; from that information I was able to narrow down the search area to part of Indiana and Ohio.

Next, I did some searching on two of the hints in the “Quat”: “Duke of Lancaster” and “Orontes Vicar”. I knew that the Duke of Lancaster referred to the reigning monarch of England, I just wouldn’t make the connection until later. When researching the Orontes River, I learned the ancient city of Antioch was located on its shore, and I knew Antioch was a name I had heard many times used in reference to both OH and IN. At this point, I had narrowed down to a few places so I decided to focus on the third line in the Quat which were seemingly random numbers. I became too focused on them without any solid solve (I love codes and ciphers, so I thought it might be one).

I decided to reset and ignore the numbers but two phrases did stand out to me as I took a new look at the Quat: “a park with two waters” and “located in front of a tower”. To me, it made sense that this may indicate a water tower nearby. I used Google Maps to search for “water tower near public park” and one of the results in Ohio just happened to be labelled “Water Towers” and the park it was next to was Gaunt Park in Yellow Springs. Two water towers sat just outside the fence surrounding the park and I could see that Gaunt Park has baseball/softball fields. Not far to the North, I noticed Antioch University West and figured it couldn’t be that much of coincidence.

After all that, I went about matching everything to the clues and learned a lot at the same time:

Yellow Springs, Ohio, is home to Antioch College and Antioch University West, which would be the vicar, or stand-in, in reference to Antioch on the Orontes. Gaunt Park was named after a former slave, Wheeling Gaunt who was born about 1815 in Carrell County, Kentucky. He managed to save money and purchased his freedom in 1845. He left nine acres to the Village of Yellow Springs. His second wife was named Elizabeth. I initially thought this was the reference to the Duke of Lancaster hint but it wasn’t. The reference seems to fit best with the fact that his former owner was John Gaunt and the first Duke of Lancaster was John of Gaunt.

Using a combination of Street View and photos shared from those who had visited the park, I was able to see the telephone pole and the pool building with a blue stripe on it that was used in the “Pic”.

4Q) What did you enjoy most about the treasure hunt?

I love learning about the history of my state and sometimes Ohio gets a bad rep for being a boring state with only corn fields but I’ve managed to stumble upon some hidden treasures over the years, so the opportunity to see a new place was exciting! I’m an avid birder and love nature photography so I am always looking for more places to explore that I have never been. Anytime I discover new birding hotspots or places to hike, it was a win-win for me.

5Q) Do you have any advice for someone else getting involved in The Cache Game. Would you recommend others to play the game? Are you planning to work on more of them?

I guess the best advice would be to make sure you use the “Pic” and “Quat” together. Don’t just focus on the hints or only use the picture to locate the item once you are BOTG. For some of the hunts, you can get a lot more information from the Pic than you may think at first. I would definitely recommend others play the game even if you can’t go BOTG. Like I said before, I’ve learned a lot from these hunts and many have been outside of Ohio. It opens your eyes to things you’ve never thought of, connections you may have never made before, and you get to explore places you probably have never heard of or didn’t know had such a rich history behind them.

Yes! I subscribe to the monthly All Access plan so I have access to the free hunt and all “Paid” hunts. It’s been fun! I’m working on one right now to hopefully gain entry into the Mega Hunt event that is to be held over an entire weekend next year.

Oh, almost forgot! Joel recently debuted the new ‘Community’ section on the Cache Game website, this allows anyone who applies to become a Community Cacher and choose the location in which to hide their own cache.