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CacheSleuth

Spindle Cache Builder

Build a rotate-the-tower drop geocache. Turn the tower, line up the gap, keep dropping.

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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.

Spindle is a rotate-the-tower drop game. A tower of ring-shaped platforms stands in the middle of the stage, and a ball bounces on whichever one it is resting on. The ball never moves sideways, it only ever goes up and down. The tower is what turns: drag left and right and the whole stack rotates under the ball, 1:1 with your finger. Line a gap up under the ball and it falls through to the ring below.

Every ring keeps a safe place to stand, and nothing pushes the ball off a platform, so there is no clock and no drip of pressure while it rests. The risk is in the turning: a hazard sector only costs a life if it sweeps past the ball while the ball is in the air, so a patient player is always safe and a careless drag is always the danger. Pass three rings in one fall without touching down and the ball goes into zoom, which shatters any cracked ring in its path, hazard included, and keeps the chain alive at the cost of a little speed.

Something else is coming down the spindle too. It keeps its distance for as long as you keep moving, but camp on one ring too long and it starts closing in, so standing still forever is never really an option. Crossing your goal depth banks the reveal on the spot, and the run keeps going afterward as bonus depth, so a slip on the way past your own finish line costs nothing.

The whole run is replayed on the server. The browser records only the tower angle you drag toward, and the server rebuilds the same tower and turns it itself, at those exact moments, before it accepts the run, so a descent that did not really happen this way cannot be claimed. Players are also only ever given the rings they have reached, never the rings ahead. Your reveal is not in the page until the server sends it, and it is banked the moment your goal depth is met, so a fall on the bonus descent afterward 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

A harder ramp and fewer lives both lower the furthest you are allowed to ask for, because we measure what an ordinary thumb can actually clear before letting you publish it. The goal slider moves its own ceiling when you change either one. Caches you have already published are untouched by that.

On solve, reveal

Shown only after a player reaches 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 Spindle cache
Reach your goal to reveal the cache.