What is a Muggle? Understanding the Geocache Term "Muggles"

Geocaching is an act of playing hide and seek with many different containers and making use of the Global Positioning System and the other related technologies to find them. Commonly known as “game of high-tech hide and seek”, geocaching can naively be referred to as a high tech treasure hunting game.

Just as Harry Potter and J K Rowling refer to the common people who are less exposed to the magical wands as muggles, the geocache term muggles refers to a person who is not directly related to or aware of geocaching. If a person has tampered with a geocache, such an act is usually referred to as muggling, or being muggled.

Many a times, to increase the fun involved, geocaches are placed where there are high volumes of people or muggles.

Though this is found to add the thrill and fun involved in locating a cache, there is every possibility that it gets destroyed unintentionally.

Hence, it is very important that the geocachers take utmost care to see that the cache is not getting muggled. Now, let us move to to see the precautions that can be taken to prevent a geocache from being muggled.

A geocacher can take many different precautions to minimize the risk of the geocache being muggled. One simple yet effective way is to ensure that the cache is hidden in a proper place.

Any muggle can run into a cache, by simply stumbling upon it if it has not been properly hidden. The next most reasonable step is to ensure that when accessing the cache, the geocacher doesn't raise a suspicion to the people around them. So, before making the ‘final move’, it is always advisable to ensure that no muggles are nearby and watching.

There are also ways in which a cache that has been found by a muggle is not muggled up. The best way to do this would be to enclose a log or a sheet of paper in a proper way along with the cache explaining what geocaching is and the intentions of the sport.

In such cases, even the muggles may make an entry in the log and place it back in the same place, without affecting the spice of the geocaching.

On the other hand, your geocache may go for a toss, if it is discovered by an irate muggle.

Having discovered a lot about geocache muggles, muggling, and how not to be muggled, you must have grasped what a muggle is in terms of geocaching.

So, make geocache puzzles and enjoy geocaching, as it can be a great learning experience for your kids too; just don't let your geocaches get muggled!

Learn more about geocaching here!