Hi!
I've been discussing this challenge with Hans Persson (pgc) about a year ago. At that time he didn't think the Swedish reviewers would publish it. And he was right, because when I introduced it to them, they didn't approve because of lack of alternatives when coming to Virtual caches. Now the only one has turned into four, and the reviewers made a limit of three in this case, so now it's good to go. I have an OK in advance from the reviwer Lord Vampyre if you need that as a proof.
I have gotten myself a GC-code for my challenge, but I haven't finished the cache text yet, but Hans taught me to have a GC-code ready at this moment.
GC-code: GC8J29W
Cache name: Challenge - Södermanland alla kommuner&cachetyper
While I thought it could be a tough checker to produce, Hans Persson turned this obsticle away, when saying it sure is possible to do it. Good! But he wanted me to add my challenge idea through this channel (https://project-gc.com/forum/list?8). Which I now am doing, and for information it is my first time. If I have missed something, please tell me and I'll be happy to give you any information you need! :-)
So here I'll try my very best to describe what the challenge is meant like:
* The first limitation is to have logged caches in country (land) "Sweden", state/province (län) "Södermanland". Caches from elsewhere can be dropped in the DB selection.
* This state/province "Södermanland" has 9 county/municipality (kommun): Vingåker, Katrineholm, Nyköping, Oxelösund, Trosa, Gnesta, Strängnäs, Eskilstuna and Flen. The challenge cacher must have logged in every county/municipality (kommun).
* The second limitation is that here it is possible to log 9 different cache types (no, there is not 9 types in all counties!). And the challenge cacher should by this reason also log these 9 cache types: Traditional, multi-cache, unknown(myst), letterbox-hybrid, wherigo, earthcache, virtual cache, event and CITO.
* So far not so hard to describe. But here: The third limitation is that only 9 and exactly 9 logs is taken into action. This means that the challenge cacher must (or this checker really), puzzle this together so that every county/municipality (kommun) should have been logged (only one per county/municipality). And every cache type should have been logged (only one per cache type). To view it the easiest way I can think of, is making a 9*9-matrix. In my example I have put the 9 counties/municipalities (kommuner) in columns from left to right, and the 9 cache types in rows up to down. I - as the CO - have of course fullfilled the challenge. This is an example on how I can say I have fullfilled the challenge (manually tried out and there a lots of other ways to place the X:es). I hope this makes it easier to understand (I made tab signs between the columns):
Vingåker Katrineholm Nyköping Oxelösund Trosa Gnesta Strängnäs Eskilstuna Flen
Traditional X
Multi-cache X
Unknown X
Letterbox X
Wherigo X
Earthcache X
Event X
CITO X
Virtual X
This means that there is only one cache in Vingåker, one in Katrineholm and so on. It is also just one traditional, one multi-cache and so on. In this example the traditional in Oxelösund is used, the virtual comes from Eskilstuna and so on. 9 X:es in the counties direction and 9 (the same) X:es in the cache type direction. But when just stripping all logs to the ones in Sweden/Södermanland (most people have taken traditionals in all counties), this grid is full of X:es, my guess is that I have around 80 X:es. So in some way the checker needs to be able to conclude where to delete X:es and end up in a grid with only 9 X:es. Maybe this is not the way the checker will be produced but that's how I think of it. I'm confident in Hans, even if I see some problems with this DB query. All the extra X:es doesn't hurt of course, but making it the best viewing experience for the challenge cacher is to strip it down.
Please get back to me with any questions! I know it can be hard to understand every of my details, and my English could probably be better. But... Let's sort it out! :-) And... It's better we get the checker right, than to have it made tomorrow! :-)
Last: Me as CO has fullfilled this for instance in this way shown above, when logging (the first occasion of each community and cache type here) GC40RPX (Trad/Oxelösund), GC56CCK (Multi/Trosa), GCTGHM (unknown/Strängnäs), GC50485 (Lbox/Gnesta), GC4VGB4 (WIG, Katrineholm), GC5P5MK (EC/Flen), GC7JTE2 (Event/Vingåker), GC69GJM (CITO/Nyköping) and GC890PV (Virtual/Eskilstuna).
Best regards
Sten Holmberg
Alias SKroff