Early Morning Geocache Rant

Okay, so I've been working on this sudoku geocache for three days now, four, I don't know. And it's a b!%@&. I am trying every method to solve this thing I can think of. I've got papers strewn everywhere and I'm going crazy. I've posted both bits on here, but to explain to those blinded by the letters and numbers: It's a 25x25 alphabet sudoku and he has given 19 different squares a unique number ranging from 3 to 25 which corresponds with a letter of the alphabet, the one that goes in that square that you are supposed to figure out. Once you have that letter you are supposed to plug it into a grid below, using it's corresponding # and, voila, you should have something that will direct you to the location of the cache (though he gives no information and you are required to figure this out on your own (not too hard, I grant)). Now, presumably this would be accurate coordinates. I'm no idiot, that was my first thought. So I thought, "Why not bypass as much of the sudoku as possible and try to figure out the lower answer by the most likely coordinates, starting with 49 and 7, North and East, and inserting point and degrees where appropriate." Well, no go. It's obvious that doesn't work out quite right, though the # of individual words still makes me think it might be coordinates. Well, I can't recall when, could have been that first day, I thought, "hey, maybe he did it in German." Nope, things just don't seem to work out with German, either. Now, granted, I could have done some research on the internet to see how they might write out coordinates and gained a little more confidence in that theory, but I didn't and so I moved on. Well, tonight, after still faithfully trying to solve this damn puzzle with only one foray into the world of cheating which I gave up as a bad job while waiting for the algorithm on the cheater to finish, I revisited trying to figure out the chart on the bottom using what would likely be there plus a little information (and I stress little - the letters V and N) I had gleaned from the past two days work, plus the possible letters associated with the numbers. After some trial and error and a few good guesses I finally determined that he did, in fact, put the coordinates in German. The only problem was he spelled two of the words incorrectly and used a gender specific version of a third, also incorrect. So I had previously disregarded the German hypothesis because of carelessness on his part. Now, you may be saying, "Well, maybe he did it on purpose to make it harder for people to get the coordinates without finishing the sudoku." Perhaps, but this is the same guy who made a careless mistake on another cache he placed which could easily have resulted in a wasted afternoon if I hadn't second guessed him while caching, and also the same guy who has buried or partially buried two caches, that I know off. It's a grey area, the way he has them, but definitely not 100% Kosher. I honestly think he doesn't put as much care into some of the important aspects of his cache as he should and puts too much time into making them special in some way or other. I'd give up special for accurate any day. His original rating of a 4 might have been accurate if this sudoku weren't incredibly difficult and he hadn't screwed up. As it stands, his current rating of a 5 is more than accurate - you have to account for the errors, after all. You know, I don't mind a little homework with my geocaching, it certainly makes them more original, but geocaching used to be about getting outside. Now it seems it has become a desk job. Thanks but I can be a couch potato quite successfully without anyone's help.

And for those of you who plan on trying the sudoku to see what my problem was, I don't want to hear about it when you solve it. Let me just take this moment to say "Congratulations. You are special" and leave it at that.