TREASURE AND SCAVENGER HUNTS:
How to Plan,
Create, and Give Them
Gordon Burgett
Looking
for a great do-it-yourself Halloween party
for adults or kids?
Want
to get the how-to book to make that happen
in an hour or two?
(Save $2 and
order it digitally, then read it on your computer!)
Also hidden in the book are links to 10 more ready-made clues
and 25 additional scavenger
hunt items—free!
|
3rd edition,
revised and updated! |
(See four short
sample chapters below)
How to plan, create, and give the party of the year for your family,
friends, group, or even city! Step-by-step advice, hundreds of ideas, a
ready-made scavenger list, all the details that will
make you look like a genius!
Bring
back the old-fashioned treasure hunts and scavenger hunts! Better yet, combine
them into a super party! Be the host the party of the year! Memories of the
crisp fall season bring to mind treasure and scavenger hunts, often a Halloween
party theme. Gordon Burgett gives you hundreds of
clever ideas for planning parties that will be talked about for years. Includes
innovative themes and clues, checklists, safety and timing guides, everything
for memorable events for kids, teens and adults.
At
last, a how-to book that share the details of
planning, creating, and giving the party of the year! Learn
* How
to write fun, challenging clues
* How
to avoid problems with safety
*
Where to safely hide the items sought
* How
to create a beguiling scavenger hunt list
* How
to plan a super party around the hunts
* How
to add more enjoyment with brainstormers
* What
you do with: a "magic checklist"!
More
than a step-by-step guide, this book also includes, 12 model Treasure Hunt
clues, 120 suggestions for a Scavenger Hunt list, 15 Brainstormers and a 70-item "Magic
Checklist" for the Super Party!
Table of Contents
Introduction
PART I
Treasure Hunts
What are they?
Who are Treasure Hunts for?
Treasure Hunts for Kids
Treasure Hunts for Early Teens
Treasure Hunts for Adults
Problems
Problems with Safety
Problems with Time and Space
Problems with Clues
Problems with Matching
An Ideal Treasure Hunt
PART
II
Scavenger Hunts
What are Scavenger Hunts?
Who are they for?
Scavenger Hunts for Kids and Early Teens
Scavenger Hunts for Adults
Scavenger Hunt Problems
PART
III
The Super Party
Designing a Framework for a Super Party
Broad
Schedule and Scope
Setting
Starting Time
Ending Hour
Guest List
Time to Invite Guests and Organize
the Party
A Theme
Composing and Sending Invitations
Buying (and Wrapping) Prizes
Planning and Fixing Food
Time to Plan the Hunt!
Combining the Hunts
Creating and Composing Treasure Hunt
Clues
Prose
Poetry
More Poetry, by Format
Riddles
Word Squares
A Mixed
Message
The Collective Fool Clue
Invisibility
In Code
A Map
In a Foreign Language
As a Drawing
Twenty-first Century Tools
The Internet
Digital Cameras
Developing a Scavenger Hunt
List
From
Nature
From People
or Places
Adding in Some Bonus Brainstormers
A
"Magic Checklist"
Finally, a Super Party!
Key
Guests
Team Packets
Background Music
Temporary Coat Holder
Explaining How the Hunt Works
Picking the Teams
Gas Money
Preliminary Team Totals
Team "Performances"
Voting on the
"Performances"
Awarding the Prizes
A Dynamite Party!
Index
Illustrations
by Anthony Avila and Brandon Carr
Trade
paperback / $17.95
144 pages
Also available as an email attachment!
Total /
$15.95
144 pages
------------------------
Four
sample chapters
Introduction
Treasure
and scavenger hunts aren't nuclear physics nor do they lead to the salvation of
peoplekind, but done right they can be plenty of fun
and create a joyous core of an unforgettable gathering that can lighten, for a
few hours, the otherwise more ponderous problems facing us and our kin.
Cavefolk didn't have treasure hunts for fun. They ate whatever
treasure they could catch, and scavenged for the rest. No treasure, end of the
game!
The Dark Agers didn't have it much better. Even when the sun
shone—yes, there was sun in the Dark Ages―they
spent far too much time not being somebody else's treasure.
But we've
got it easier: pizza, VCR's, penicillin, cars, even
the wherewithal and place to have parties. Good thing I waited until now to
write this book!
So, even
though we're only going to live once (at least where I live), why not have some
fun along the way? Better yet, some challenging fun, the kind that calls into play your feet, mind, memory, wit, and guile? A good
treasure/scavenger hunt does all that.
This book
tells how.
Treasure Hunts: What are
they?
In the
simplest terms, treasure hunts are a search for something of value. The search
can be done individually: children scouring the yard for Easter eggs. Or
collectively: four knee-knocking adults creeping through the woods or cemetery
for a clue that will lead them to their next destination.
The
treasure can be the direct reward of the search, like candy hidden in the den
or a $5 bill under a rock in a cave. Or it can be tantalizingly wrapped and
displayed on the sponsor's parlor table, to be
awarded to the team with the highest point total.
It can be
truly valuable, booty gathered during the hunt, or something more symbolic,
like certificates of first place.
In other
words, if treasure of any kind is involved and you have organized people to get
it, you have a treasure hunt! You can title it, dress it however you wish, and
direct it your way.
The
harder part is planning and executing it so the players have fun, are
challenged, and enjoy the search. The ideal is a treasure hunt that leaves them
begging to take part again next year. The worst scenario has the participants
in jail, hurt, or yawning in boredom.
What follows seeks the ideal and steers clear of the worst .
Treasure Hunts for Adults
At last,
the heart of this book. Treasure hunts for kids are fun, and for early teens,
as fun as anything can be. But for adults (which, with a huge, tongue-in-cheek
wink, includes later teens), they can be great, great fun!
To show
you how is the task of the remaining pages.
By
extension, they can be just as much fun for the planner(s). Well done, they can
make your party the party to attend, and eagerly anticipated year after year.
They can brand you as some sort of genius―"who
would have guessed?" And they can be one grande
pain in the rump until they actually get together, "work," and the
guinea pigs get back laughing, safe, and hungry.
The
biggest drawback: you never get to take part. Worst yet, while teams are
tromping through the woods or begging widows for a potato or shoehook, you are left at camp zero to answer emergency
phone calls, imagining cars full of friends flying off the bridge or your
entire list of invitees in the holding tank unable―or
too angry―to call!
Your only
hope is that, inspired by your super party, a friend will try to do you one
better, invite you to solve their clues, and they will be stuck alone with even
greater misgivings!
Read on.
Problems first, then an ideal treasure hunt, building solutions into the
framework, and bringing it all together into a Super Party!
Problems with Clues
Many of
the clue-related problems come from the ways that treasure hunts are laid out.
The best
known way is that clue one, when solved, leads you to clue two, which, when
solved, leads you to clue three, and so on. Let's call those sequential
clues.
A basic
problem with sequentialization is that when any clue
is missing, returned to the wrong place, stolen, or simply blown away, all
progress stops dead at that spot.
Other
problems come from the four ways sequential clues are laid out: (1) each team
follows the same route in the same order; (2) each team follows the same route
but they each start at a different clue; (3) each team has its own route and
set of clues, or (4) some combination of (1)-(3), like three routes each followed
by three teams starting at different clues.
The
problem with (1) is that a smart team will just let a smarter team lead,
playing follow-the-leader. When the leading team finds the last clue, they will
tie them up or put them in a spell, solve that clue themselves, and rush away
to claim the prize, hopefully eating or spending it before the other team
returns to share their tale of woe! A bit dramatic, but you get the idea.
Everybody is bunched up at the same places.
The
second system partially solves that. Each team will start a clue apart and
remain so, assuming they are equally brilliant or dense―an
assumption that crumbles quickly as they, again, pile up at key clues.
That
problem is solved with system (3). Yet it creates two huge problems of its own.
One, the amount of work involved in creating and laying out three, five, or ten
different sets of clues is overwhelming. Indeed, you are better off reading
that whodunit. Plus the complaints later that "our clues were much harder
than yours," or "our terrain was rougher," or "our drive
was longer" aren't worth the hassle, because inevitably some will be
harder, rougher, or longer.
The
fourth system might solve some problems but it will inherit or create others.
By now
you properly suspect that I'm not a fan of sequential clues. I'll show you a better way in a moment.
A very
early treasure hunt that I laid out, in the wake of the Industrial Revolution,
on the outskirts of
Alas, one
team, chosen at random from a hat, was composed of four foreigners. I had my
misgivings but they seemed bright and assured me that they understood precisely
what they were to do. This hunt was held on foot in an area about a mile
square, and the first team to bring back a numbered tag from each of the 10
sites would win.
Off they
went for what was limited to 90 minutes. I doubted anybody would get seven of
the ten clues since they were so shrewdly worded and expertly placed. Twenty
minutes later in bounded the foreigners, winded but clearly victorious! Until I looked at the tags. They had in fact solved their
first two clues―and brought back all five tags,
plus the clue, from each of the locations! They had the ten tags they thought
they needed!
You can
imagine the others' gripes when they went where they were certain the clue led
them only to find an empty sack, without their tag or the next clue!
Plenty of
cheap college food and beverage assuaged the rest of the players when they
returned, and by the end of the night, after we had given away the prizes by
playing other games, we all laughed at the snafu. But for me that was the end
of sequential clues.
A second
way, call it proliferation, is to give all the teams the same clues, let them
find the sites, and collect whatever it is they are to gather to prove that
they arrived.
That is
far better. If a clue is too hard, they just go to the next one. If they can
solve many or all of them at the outset, they can lay out their driving route
to reap the maximum return in the least time and distance.
Most
hunters, though, will solve the clues in the order in which they are written,
and that can lead to bottlenecks and "follow-the-leader," so give everybody
the same clues but list them in a different order. With cut-and-paste on a
computer, even the old-fashioned rubber cement way, that is easy to do.
Another
major change I make is not having anything removable at the clue site: no tags to bring back, no poker chips, nothing but a number
that is well affixed for all time. The site might be a phone booth at Clark and
Miner. The number is on the phone. They write that number by the clue, turn it
in when they return, and if the number is right, bingo. It may be the branch
number of a bank on the ATM machine, the capacity number in an elevator, the
zip code of the town, or the price of a Mexican pizza at Taco Bell. I'll
explain other ways this works later.
Since the
team is seeking a number, if they are being tailed by another team they can
quickly shake them with chicanery. Pull up to a light pole, all jump out,
pretend to hunt for some number at the base, have one person write something
down, and flee back to the car in mock jubilation. By the time the second group
catches on, the first team is long gone. Even better if they find a number: the
other team will be stumped for the rest of the night trying to match it to its
proper clue!
Additional problems with clues?
1. Some
people don't understand them.
2. They get stolen by outsiders who see hunters appear, take something, and
hurry away. So they take something too―the clues―and run away!
Misunderstanding
usually comes because hunters don't know what they must do once they get to the
site to find the next clue: climb a tree, dig in the sand?
But if
you know you are seeking a number, usually a specific number when there are
many, that is what you must extract from the clue: where and, if an issue,
which number. Granted, every team has one member who is lucky to find the car
twice in a row. The rest of the team takes up the mental slack.
Soon
enough we'll explain how clues are written so the confusion is further reduced.
As for
stealing the clue(s), by the proliferation system there is nothing to steal.
The number is affixed or part of the setting, like the phone number, the time
on a clock, or the call numbers of a radio station. Poor thieves, they would be
the most confused souls in the county. Like trying to steal
the laugh from a joke.
|
Gordon Burgett |
(800) 563-1454 |