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Grabber Cache Builder

Build a one-tap claw machine geocache. Drop the claw, catch the prize, unlock the reveal.

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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

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.

Grabber is a claw machine with one control. The claw slides left and right along the top of the cabinet on its own, and a tap drops it. Whatever is under the claw at that moment is what it comes back with, so the whole game is choosing the moment. The plushes come in three sizes: a big one is a wider target but heavy, so an off-center grab lets it slip back out of the arms, and a small one is harder to line up but light enough to hold and worth more. A prize caught goes down the chute and its slot stays empty: the floor is dealt in ROUNDS, and a fresh set only arrives once the last plush of the round has gone, so a round ends with one prize on its own and a long wait for it. A claw that comes back empty spends one of the misses you allow. A prize that slips costs the catch and never a heart. A heart prize gives a spent miss back, if there is one to give back. After every drop the claw pauses while the prize is carried away, then sweeps on for a moment with the button still locked, so it always clears the slot it just emptied before you can drop again. The claw speeds up as the catches add up, and how hard it speeds up is yours to set. Score is prizes caught and nothing else. Points, shinies and new friends are for the celebration, so they can never change whether your cache unlocks. Pick how forgiving the grab is, how fast the claw builds up, how many misses finders get, and how many prizes they have to catch. Reaching your goal reveals the final coordinates or keyword.

The whole run is replayed on the server. The browser records only the moments a player dropped the claw, and the server rebuilds the same cabinet and replays those exact drops itself before it accepts the run, so a score that was never really played cannot be claimed. A run also cannot be submitted faster than it could have been played. Your reveal is not in the page until the server sends it, and it is banked the moment the goal is passed, so a miss on the very next drop costs nothing.
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

The tolerance is a share of each prize's own width, never a fixed number of pixels, so it means the same thing on a big plush and on a small one. Reaching a prize is not the same as keeping hold of it: a grab well off the middle lets the plush slip back, which costs the catch and never a heart. The tolerance and the claw speed below both change the judging, and the goal range moves with both.

A heart prize gives a spent miss back, so the budget is a running total rather than a hard count of mistakes.

On solve, reveal

Shown only after a player meets your goal. Reveal either the final coordinates or a keyword, not both.

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 Grabber cache
Reach the goal to reveal the cache.