Letterboxing Glossary: S
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- scavenging
- The process of looking for letterboxes in 'likely places' without the use of clues. This is most common in Dartmoor where many tors are dotted with several dozen letterboxes at a time. Most letterboxers on Dartmoor start this way since the official clue book isn't available until you've already found 100 letterboxes and scavenging is the quickest and easiest way to get your first 100 finds.
- signature stamp
- The stamp letterboxers use to identify themselves, both in the logbooks of letterboxes they've found and for exchanges. Also called personal stamps.
- SitRep
- Military lingo for 'situation report'. In the letterboxing world, it is slang for reporting the status of a letterbox that someone recently found. This tends to be a controversial term, however, that many letterboxers do not like. If you use 'status report' instead, you have to type a few letters, but you won't annoy anyone.
- slack-boxer
- Someone who has mastered the art of doing as little work as possible in order to find a letterbox. A slack-boxer will hike with others and let other people actually find the box while they watch, perhaps with a few encouraging words in order to appear as if they're helping. Slack-boxers will let others ink up the stamp in the letterbox so they don't have to do it themselves. Slack-boxing is the goal of any lazy letterboxer.
- Smithsonian Magazine
- It was the April 1998 issue of Smithsonian Magazine that pushed letterboxing beyond the borders of Dartmoor. Within a short period of time, a loose alliance of adventurers and rubber stamp enthusiasts, coordinating activities using the Internet, picked up the letterboxing torch and introduced letterboxing to the United States.
- snag
- A dead tree that is still standing.
- Speedball
- A company that produces many stamp carving tools and supplies including Speedy-Stamp.
- Speedy-Cut
- A white carving medium produced by Speedball and hated by letterboxers everywhere for its ability to crumble without provocation. Look for Speedball's other carving product, Speedy-Stamp, that is highly regarded.
- Speedy-Stamp
- A popular carving medium sold by Speedball. The most prominent characteristic is its pink color, and most letterboxers refer to it as "that pink stuff."
- spoiler
- When a letterboxer—usually by accident or through ignorance—gives away information about a letterbox that was supposed to be kept secret. Especially common when locations to mystery boxes are released publicly. Spoilers are very frowned upon in the letterboxing world. What should be a secret should stay a secret.
- S.P.O.R.
- Short for Suspicious Pile Of Rocks. Often, a letterbox needs to be hidden with a few extra rocks and when you see a rock (or several rocks) in a position or location that is clearly not natural, you'll often find a letterbox hidden behind or under it.
- Staedtler Mars
- A company with a popular line of carving medium (MasterCarve) that, to quote their literature, 'cuts like butter'.
- stamp-in
- The process of exchanging stamp images, either with the stamp found in a letterbox or with another letterboxer's signature stamp during an exchange. For stamping tips, visit our Art of Stamping tutorial!
- stile
- Steps or bars for people to climb over a fence. Frequently found near areas were cows or other farm animals graze, but they can be located anywhere a trail needs to cross a fence such as this one found along the Appalachian Trail.
- store-bought stamp
- A commercially sold stamp. Hand-carved stamps are preferred in the letterboxing community, but store-bought stamps seem to endure a minority status. Somewhere in between are custom-made stamps, not quite generic as a store-bought stamp, but not exactly hand-carved either.
- stuff
- A techincal term for those that do not understand real technical terms concerning computers and other electronics.
- switchback
- A sharp reversal in the direction of the trail, allowing the trail to maintain a reasonable grade as it climbs a steep hillside. Switchbacks also help to reduce erosion. Don't be tempted to cut the corners of a switchback, because doing so tramples the vegetation and creates erosion problems.
