How to Solve a Treasure Hunt Puzzle
If you are stuck on a puzzle, stop and take a look at it from another angle. Put yourself in the mind of the person setting the question. The first thing this person had was the answer, then they constructed the puzzle to arrive at that. If you know the puzzle maker, consider their style and any…
Making a Treasure Hunt Trail
// // A treasure hunt trail is a simple series of clues, one leading to the next. The secret to setting one up is by starting where the treasure is, and working backwards. Hide the treasure. While you are there, write a clue of how to find the treasure. Find where you would like…
What is your story?
To make a theme for a treasure hunt, there is no better source of tales than the ones that already exist nearby. Perhaps in the past there used to be a monastery nearby - it isn't there any more because all their treasure went missing. There is always a mystery, a fascinating story or a…
Look After Your Brand
When designing your product, especially a treasure hunt with a theme, it is very important to the long term value of your brand to stick to your own design guidelines. Larger organisations have brand guideline documents outlining the rules of using their brand. Making a poster which deviates from…
How To Make Your Own Simple Treasure Hunt
This is a guide to creating a great treasure hunt for your home, which can be adapted for your town, park or even your holiday. You’ll learn how to create a number of different clues, pick a theme as well as how to make an authentic looking treasure map. All you’ll need is a couple of…
Successful event signage
In order to secure a successful treasure hunt, a key part of the publicity has to be the signage leading up to the event. The first and easiest is to have a pop-up banner in reception for all your existing clients to get the message. The beauty of a pop-up banner is that they are quick,…
Treasure Hunt Event Planning Checklist
Pre-Event Planning Web page The first place that people look for what's on will be Google. Get a dedicated page on your website featuring plenty of all the key words that your target audience will be looking for i.e. family, berkshire, bank holiday. Google needs about 6 weeks to register your…
Use a celebrity as a clue – like Stephen Fry
Having adapted the stage version of Me and My Girl in the mid-eighties, Stephen Fry was overwhelmed by its success. When he received a call from Stephen Sondheim, the hugely successful American composer and lyricist, responsible for hits including West Side Story and A Little Night Music, he was…
Take a new perspective
You can turn anything into a puzzle. Take a look around yourself now. There are everyday objects which can hold the secret to an answer that you want someone to get. Here are some simple examples: Letters on your phone pad give you numbers The keys on your computer keyboard have other…
There is something going on…
...but you can't put your finger on it. That might be because you've stumbled across an Alternate Reality Game. This is an immersive real life (transmedia) game controlled by a game designer featuring real characters, a multitude of platforms i.e. computers, texts, conferences, newspaper…
Sunday Afternoon Car Treasure Hunts
Bring back the Sunday Afternoon Car Treasure Hunts! Do you remember frequently seeing streams of classic cars zigzagging along country lanes? It isn't hard to set the clues for one. 1. Get a map of the area. 2. Select ten locations which participants may find of interest so they…
Build Up
You can heighten the experience of your treasure hunt by tantalising the participants with little tastes of what is to come but without letting them know what they will be doing. Issue tokens to use on the day for people who manage to solve little puzzles alluding to the event i.e. anagrams to…
How To Make A Treasure Map
Lots of people ask us how to put together a basic treasure map. If you want to make one yourself, take a look at these step by step photo instructions in this $0.99 book, or try something like this: 1. Blank sheet of paper. 2. Using pencil, draw a shaky outline of the perimeter…
We have a Facebook group showing latest news. Facebook has been embraced by most of the major industries as a way to communicate with clients. If the product is good, then generally the business loves it. If there are plenty of complaints then the dirty laundry has to be washed in public. This…
Scalability
Previously we have discussed how small a treasure hunt can be, but we haven't touched on the subject of how big they can go. The sky and the budget is the limit. Take the USA television program, The Amazing Race, for example. Eleven couples race around the world to be the first back to win…
A Picture Paints 1000 Words
Using good imagery is essential for keeping participant's interest, looking professional and maintaining faith in the hunt. If there is any ambiguity or weak images people taking part will feel disproportionately let down as their expectations for such a novel activity are very high. The best…
Variety is the spice
Give me a long list of dull questions to answer and I'll give you a short list of reasons not to bother: 1) It is not interesting enough. There are two easy ways around this. Make each of your clues a different task or activity that needs performing to solve and introduce a theme. If you have to…
How small can a treasure hunt be?
You can base a treasure hunt on the back of a matchbox. Anywhere where there are distinguishing features of any kind, you can use them to create answers. Admittedly, we specify that any solutions should be based on untamperable objects - matchboxes are getting far and few between now and we all…
What about the weather?
The British weather has a wonderful reputation for taking a good event and making it wet. Rather than fight it, the best approach is to cater for it. If your venue is big enough, you could have a reserve hunt which takes place purely indoors. This can be a costly option which would ram the building…
When is a Treasure Hunt not a Treasure Hunt
You may wonder what the actual treasure is at the end of all these hunts. When catering for a large amount of people, you can't have one pot of gold at the end of the rainbow otherwise you render the rainbow redundant when the first person has found it. To extend the metaphor, you make the rainbow…
