Dear Letterboxers,
I do not think Graham meant that we should make our letterboxes impossible to
find. I think he meant that they should not be ''gimmees''.

Many of our letterboxes (mine included) have been too easy to find. I will
continue to dedicate a portion of my boxes to the kids, but I expect that kids
will find more enjoyment in placing boxes in their local neighborhoods for
their friends to find. Children do not generally have the freedom to go off
on their own in search of letterboxes. They need adult supervision getting
kids interested is to help them understand the concept and have fun with it.
Then, when they get older, they will want to put out ''real'' letterboxes
that take some thinking to locate.

I tend to agree with Tom Cooch when he insists that the ''bogeyman stalker''
does not exist. If such villains have shown up in TX or elsewhere, they are
isolated incidents, not trends. It is not for the sake of protection from
vandals that I favor challenging clues, but for the sake of making our hobby
more interesting. Variety is the answer. Some boxes should be easy, others
moderate, and still others should be truly challenging.

Besides, KIDS are SMART !!! When we were youngsters, most of us enjoyed
reading Encyclopedia Brown, the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and even Sherlock
Holmes. These mystery novels were not over our heads, but required us to use
our heads!! We are not hiding Easter eggs... we are creating small mysteries
for clever eggs to solve. Perhaps our kids will grow up smarter as a result.

If you conceal your box beneath a grass plug, I agree that once the general
vicinity of the box has been determined, the exact location of the plug should
be clearly described. But determining the vicinity is another case. Make
them work (and think) for it!! It is better to search for a box and fail,
only to return another day to try again, than to find a box that is so easy a
baby could have found it. How much fun would golf be if the holes were two
meters across? You wouldn't get much respect for being good at jumping
hurdles that were only one foot high!! An image from a letterbox stamp is a
badge that doesn't just say ''I was there'', it says ''I figured it out!!''

For the most part, I think we are debating over our individual perceptions of
the term ''cryptic''. The example Dan gives is an excellent set of clues.
Mind you, compass readings, alone, are as cryptic as ancient Egyptian peasant
slang to the uninitiated. Other passages in Dan't example seem cryptic to me,
such as ''passing the tulip towering and ahead walking 16 planks among seven
tulip sentinals,'' or ''eyes left and trek 308 degrees 109 paces to a tulip
and dual sycas. North 44 paces. The trolls have it, they took it up water.''
And throughout there is the bit about recording the dates and adding them up
for clues... This type of riddle-solving is exactly what we should be aiming
for.

Oh, and one final note... I had always assumed that Thom's email address was a
reference to Letterbox USA and stood for ''This Country's Great Riddles And
Fun Xercise'' !!!

Cryptically yours,
''Der Mad Stamper"
Portland, OR

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