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CacheSleuth

Free Throw Cache Builder

Build a flick-to-shoot basketball geocache. Beat the clock, sink the makes, unlock the cache.

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Free, just a username and passphrase, no email. Caches you build show up in My Caches so you can reopen and edit them without hunting for the edit link, and watch plays and wins. The same account syncs My Puzzle Texts across devices and manages your short links.

My Caches
Do not put sensitive, personal, or inappropriate content in a cache. Anything you create here is public to anyone with the link, and you are responsible for what you publish. Keep a copy of your edit key, it is the only way to change or delete your cache later.

Play your own cache before you publish it

Settings that look fair in this form can be brutal, or trivial, in the field. Finish the game yourself, start to end, on the kind of device your finders will use, and check that the difficulty, timers, hints, wording, and the final reveal all behave the way you intended. Every cache you create here comes with a play link and an edit link, so you can test it, tune it, and test it again before anyone else sees it.

Free Throw is a flick-to-shoot basketball game. The view is from behind the shooter: the ball is in hand at the free-throw line and the goal stands up the court. Flick the ball with a finger or the mouse, and the direction and the speed of that flick are the whole shot. There is no aim widget and no arc to line up, just the throw. A soft flick drops short, a hard one sails over the board, and in between there is a swish, a rattle off the front of the rim, and a bank off the glass.

The finder can throw again as soon as the last ball has left the hand, so several balls are in the air at once and they really do knock into each other on the way. Balls that miss drop to the court, roll, settle and fade out. Every make counts once. The whole run is one clock, and reaching the make goal before it runs out is what unlocks the cache.

On the rail, the entire goal slides side to side, backboard and all, so the shot has to lead the hoop instead of sitting on it. That is the same game with a moving target, and it is a real step up in difficulty, which is why the number of makes you are allowed to ask for drops when you switch it on.

The whole run is replayed on the server. The browser records only the flicks, as numbers and the tick each one happened on, and the server throws those same balls itself before it accepts the run, so a score that did not really happen this way cannot be claimed. Your reveal is not in the page until the server sends it. Being honest about the limit: someone who searches for a perfect flick offline could still replay it at a human pace, because the server also checks that the run took at least as long in real time as the clock says it did. That costs a cheater real time, but it does not make cheating impossible.
Anything you create here is public to anyone with the link, and you are responsible for what you publish. Keep a copy of your edit key, it is the only way to change or delete your cache later.

Your cache

Shown to players as a link to your cache page.

Only the site admin can see this, in case they need to reach you about your cache. Never shown to players.

Game settings

Goal

The most makes you may ask for is measured, not guessed: a bot plays the real game thousands of times in every combination of clock, goal and rail speed, and the ceiling is set below what an ordinary pair of thumbs can keep up with. So the ceiling moves whenever you change the clock, the goal or the rail speed, and the number here follows it. Caches you have already published are untouched by that.

On solve, reveal

Shown only after a player reaches your make goal before the clock runs out. Reveal either the final coordinates or a keyword, not both.

What do finders see?

The rules a finder is shown before the first throw:

  • Flick the ball toward the hoop. Which way you flick steers the shot, and how fast you flick sets the power.
  • Throw again as soon as the last ball is gone. Balls in the air knock into each other, so a crowded sky is its own risk.
  • A ball that misses drops to the court and fades. Nothing is lost by missing except time.
  • One clock for the whole run. Reach the make goal before it hits zero and the cache is revealed on the spot.
  • The reveal is banked the moment the goal is met, so anything that happens afterward costs nothing.
Where can I host an image for free?

Paste a direct https:// link to an image. Free image hosts that give a direct link include ImgBB, postimages.org, and Cloudinary. A geocaching.com image link works too. The link must start with https://.

Keep your cache in play to keep it live. Share the play link so people visit it; unused caches are cleaned up over time.

Live preview

My Free Throw cache
Sink the makes before the clock runs out to reveal the cache.