[Awaiting feedback] GCAPJJW - 25 caches in counties beginning with G

Could you please create a checker to show if the cacher has found at least 25 caches in counties beginning with the letter G? These could all be in one county, or spread over 25 counties, or anything in between.

Since I get a lot of international visitors here near Death Valley, it would be great if you could include more than just US counties. Please let me know if that is possible so that I can include it in the cache description.

Thank you very much for your help.

PulmonaryHip

Hi there -

Unfortunately, this criteria is not allowed in the guidelines.

Quote

10. Source of Criteria
-- Not acceptable:
Challenges based on words or letters. Examples: use the first letter of regions of found caches to spell a word, find caches with attributes that begin with a certain letter, find caches in counties with the same name.

I guess I don't read the challenge guidelines the same way. What I see are:
Challenge cache criteria may be based upon these geographic areas: countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent).

Challenges (may not be) based on geographic areas other than countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent). Examples: user-defined mapping polygons, latitude/longitude, radius, etc.

Here are some "modern" challenges that use the first name of counties to complete the challenge:
GC90RZ2 - Alphabetic County Names Challenge
GC90CGC - Alphabet Counties Challenge

I don't understand what you see as not in the rules. There are many lists of counties in the US that begin with G.

Please reconsider whether this challenge should be acceptable. I don't agree with your interpretation.

Thank you,
PulmonaryHip

It's not helpful for anyone to try and make checkers that obviously violate the guidelines. Reviewers have to spend time reviewing something that will not be accepted, and then generally the tagger has to go in and change it after it gets rejected. Even if it does get published, HQ might "track it down" and archive it (this happens - to one of mine once).

Don't get me wrong - I hate the guidelines, and I wish this (and many other really fun but unacceptable things) were allowed. But, we all live by the rules. However, we generally say if there's some question, we ask the CO to ask their reviewer, and if they accept it, we make it. So - verify with your reviewer they'd publish this, and get back to us.