Glossary
The words people use without explaining. If a note on this site uses a term and does not define it in place, it is here.
- GC codeGC 码
- The unique identifier for a cache, always beginning with the letters GC followed by a string drawn from the base-31 alphabet. The base-31 alphabet deliberately omits I, L, O, S and U so that a code read aloud or written by hand cannot be confused with a similar-looking character.
- Difficulty rating难度评级
- A one-to-five scale describing how hard the container is to find once you are at the right place. It covers camouflage, the subtlety of the hide, and how much interpreting the listing requires. It does not cover the walk, which is the terrain rating.
- Terrain rating地形评级
- A one-to-five scale describing the approach: distance, gradient, ground underfoot, and whether navigation or specialist equipment is needed. A terrain 5 in Britain usually means a full hill day with a map and compass, not a strenuous stroll.
- Container sizes容器尺寸
- The standard sizes run micro, small, regular, large, plus a separate no-container category used by EarthCaches and virtuals. A micro is a film canister or smaller; a small is roughly a sandwich box; a regular is an ammunition can; a large is a bucket. The size decides whether there is room for swaps and whether you need to bring a pen.
- Muggle麻瓜
- A non-player: anyone who is not geocaching and does not know the cache is there. The term is borrowed and used without irony. Avoiding muggles is the main practical skill of urban caching, and the reason search behaviour looks so odd to passers-by.
- DNF未找到
- Did Not Find: a log recording a search that failed. A run of DNFs on a cache is the standard signal to its owner that something may be wrong, and logging one is considered good practice rather than an admission of defeat.
- FTF首找
- First To Find: the first person to find a newly published cache and sign its logbook. It carries no material reward and a great deal of informal prestige. On remote caches it can be contended for days or go unclaimed for months.
- TFTCTFTC
- Thanks For The Cache: the shortest conventional thank-you in a log. It is accepted but not admired. A log that says only TFTC tells the owner nothing about the state of the container, the accuracy of the coordinates or the quality of the walk.
- Swag交换物
- The tradable contents of a cache. The convention is to trade up or trade even: if you take a small item, leave something of equal or greater value. Food, scented items and anything that degrades in the wet are not acceptable, because animals find them.
- Trackable追踪物
- A numbered tag or coin that travels from cache to cache, with its journey logged online. The instruction on the tag usually states its goal, which might be a specific country or a particular type of location. Moving one along is expected; keeping one is theft.
- CITOCITO
- Cache In Trash Out: the practice of carrying out litter that you find on the way to or from a cache. Many caches are placed on land managed by charities and volunteer groups, and the arrangement depends on players being visibly better than neutral.
- ROT13ROT13 加密
- A simple substitution cipher that shifts each letter thirteen places along the alphabet and is its own inverse. It is the traditional way to write a hint so that it is unreadable by accident but readable on purpose, which is exactly the right level of concealment for a nudge.
- Multi-cache多段藏点
- A cache with two or more stages. The published coordinate takes you to the first stage, which gives you the coordinate or an offset for the next, and so on to the final. The stages are the point: a good multi uses the landscape to make you walk somewhere you would not have chosen.
- Mystery cache谜题藏点
- A cache whose published coordinate is either wrong, blank or deliberately misleading, and which requires a puzzle to be solved before the real location can be found. Also called an unknown cache. The puzzles range from straightforward arithmetic to research projects lasting weeks.
- EarthCache地质藏点
- A cache with no container, placed at a geological feature. Logging requires answering questions about what you observe and sending the answers to the owner. The educational content is the cache: you are meant to leave knowing something you did not know when you arrived.
- Favourite point收藏点数
- A limited currency that players award to caches they thought were exceptional. Roughly one point is earned for every ten finds. Because the supply is scarce, the number of favourite points on a cache is a far better guide to quality than the find count.