Conquering my phobia of blue question marks!

I have gotten into the habit of ignoring caches that pop up in my inbox if they come with a blue question mark icon. Now that challenge caches are on hold, I can't even get excited about them. I do not have the right type of mind for puzzle-solving so unless it's really simple or spelled out, I am likely to fall at the first hurdle. I like to think that all of the mystery caches I've published have been relatively easy to work out. I haven't had to give out many hints anyway!

So, I've been getting a bit depressed by my caching map.

I can't keep ignoring this problem, hoping it will go away. There are certain cachers in my area (you know who you are!) who keep hiding puzzle caches and I just look at the map with my head in my hands. Fortunately I think things are going to improve, for I have recently purchased this:

This is a large and easy to navigate book and I am hoping it is going to develop my brain so that puzzle-solving becomes second nature to me. I shall have a read then give the nearby puzzles another stab and hopefully get somewhere this time. I know the icon moves location once you've solved it but does anyone else wish that it would change colour or something so that we can see at a glance which ones have been solved?

Once I've read the book and solved all of Hampshire's mystery caches, I'll come back to this blog and show off some smileys where previously there'd only been blue question marks!!