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Gridiron Cache Builder

Build a pixel football geocache. Call the play, beat the CPU, 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.

Gridiron is an offense-only pixel football game. The finder's team always drives to the right, calling a play at every snap: pass or run on early downs, and punt or field goal on fourth. A pass is a drag and release toward the open man, a carry is steered with two tap zones to juke a defender, and a kick is timed on a sweeping meter. The CPU's own drives are not played on screen, they resolve from the same seed and show up as a short ticker card between yours.

A game runs a fixed number of drives, alternating CPU then finder, so the finder always knows what is needed on the last one. Reaching the end zone scores a touchdown, a made kick scores a field goal, and outscoring the CPU by the margin you choose before the drives run out is what unlocks the cache.

Pick a team name and one of three color sets, a difficulty from Rookie to All-Star, how many drives the game runs, and the margin needed to win. Harder settings ask for a smaller margin, because the ceiling here is measured, not guessed.

The whole game is replayed on the server. The browser records only the play calls, throws, jukes and kicks, as numbers and the tick each one happened on, and the server plays that same game itself before it accepts the result, so a win 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 winning game 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 a real game would. 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

Team colors
Difficulty

The most points you may ask a finder to win by is measured, not guessed: a bot plays the real game thousands of times at every difficulty and drive count, and the ceiling is set below what an ordinary finder can be expected to reach. So the ceiling moves whenever you change the difficulty or the drives, and the number here follows it. Caches you have already published are untouched by that.

On solve, reveal

Shown only after a player beats the CPU by your chosen margin. Reveal either the final coordinates or a keyword, not both.

What do finders see?

The rules a finder is shown before the first snap:

  • Call a play at every snap. Pass, run, punt or a field goal, depending on the down and distance.
  • On a pass, drag toward the open receiver and release. On a carry, tap left or right of the ball carrier to juke a defender.
  • The CPU's own drives happen between yours and are shown as a short summary card.
  • Outscore the CPU by the chosen margin before the last drive ends 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 Gridiron cache
Beat the CPU by the win margin to reveal the cache.