A treasure hunt in four mistakes

We had a few friends over for New Year’s Eve this/last year. We ate, drank and played a few games.

I also created a short treasure hunt, which was well received but suffered from four mistakes. Oops.

The first mistake

First, I planned for five players. That was my Mrs and Miss H, along with three friends who were joining us for NYE.  So I built a treasure hunt that had five parts.

The idea was that each part would lead to a letter, which could then be formed into a word that would lead to the hiding place for the treasure.

That final word was Volvo (the treasure was in the boot of my car).

To make it a little harder, I gave the letters as shapes, like this:

And then Mrs H reminded me that one friend wouldn’t be joining us until about 11 pm, after she had finished her shift at The Crown. Oops.

The second mistake

To make the final puzzle a little easier, I put the letters in age order. So the oldest player would get a V, the next oldest would get a O, and so on.

That meant that the clues for each letter were player-dependent.

Rather than write the name of the player on each clue, I created a code for them to crack. So, taking A=1, B=2 (and so on), I took the letters of each name and added them up.

So Steve would be 19+20+5+22+5 = 71.

(You can probably see where this is going.)

Unfortunately, it was only after I handed the players the clues that they told me that two of the numbers were the same! I genuinely hadn’t spotted my error before that.

(Luckily, it was easily fixed – once they solved the clues and worked out which set of clues was whose, I made sure they went to the right place.)

The third and fourth mistakes

For the next part of the hunt (the main part), the players had to answer questions that would lead them all over the house. The answer to each question was a letter – either an actual letter (“Eighth letter of Dunstanburgh Castle artist (in the kitchen)”) or a number that would give them a letter (“How many coat hooks are there by the front door?” – there are five, which gives E using the code as above).

Answering those clues led the players to where they would find the final clue (the shapes described above).

Only, as ever, there were two mistakes in this part of the treasure hunt… Again, they were easy to fix – but they were a little annoying.

No playtesting

It’s not the first time I’ve let (very avoidable )errors slip into my treasure hunts. In fact, I can’t think of a hunt that hasn’t had an error in it.

But that’s because I don’t test them. Inevitably I leave them to the last minute, so I don’t check them thoroughly.

And as my treasure hunts are one-and-done events for my family, anyone who could test them is inevitably playing them.

So I suspect the errors are here to stay.

Treasure Hunt 2023

 This year’s Christmas treasure hunt:

Add together the fifth and sixth prime numbers. Then subtract 1.

Find the three consecutive odd numbers whose sum is 27. What is the middle number?

The first letter of the capital city of Myanmar.

Decrypt this using a caesar cypher with a shift of 3: “Wkh dqvzhu lv wkh ohwwhu g.”

What is the number of the chapter titled “The Forbidden Forest” in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone?

The ninth prime number.

The first letter of the name of the artist who painted three castles.

A bat and a ball cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost, in pence?

The first letter of the name of the artist who painted a wine bottle and two glasses.

A score.

Treasure Hunt 2021 (part 2)

This was my second treasure hunt of 2021, created quickly in the days before New Year’s Eve when we had my brother to stay.

This time I searched for new ideas, and found this excellent page on Hobby Lark which led me to this Caesar cipher code creator and this maze code creator.

You can read about my previous treasure hunts here.

Constraints

To keep things simple, the treasure was in a single location (in a basket underneath our television). To make things trickier, I used lots of codes.

The overall structure of the hunt looked like this:

1. I gave the hunters their first code to decipher.
2. This lead to four other clues, hidden around the house.
3. Solving those clues led to final treasure.

The first code

The first code was a letter-replacement code. I created four letters from me to the hunters, with their code. They first had to break the code.

The four letters looked like this:

This says:

DEAR JACK

YOUR CLUE IS IN HARRY POTTER AND THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN WHICH IS OUTSIDE THE UPSTAIRS BATHROOM

LOVE UNCLE STEVE

Each  of the four letters started with ‘Dear …’ and ended ‘Love Uncle Steve’ (or ‘Love Daddy’ or ‘Love Steve’ depending on how I addressed it).

To create the code, I wrote the letter in MS Word and changed the font to a heiroglyphic font.

The clues themselves were slightly wordier than I would normally use to make them easier to decode.

The four clues—mazes 

The four clues led to four maze clues, each created using this online maze code creator. As the final maze was in a Caesar cipher, the other mazes explained how to crack the cipher. (Tip for using the maze creator—it works best with a long sentence, and you may need to refresh the maze a few times to get one that isn’t too easy.)

The first maze explained the basic principles:

(The final clue is in code.)

The next two codes explained how to crack the codes.

(The first words are “THE TREASURE”)

(The final clue is a Caesar cipher with a shift = 1)

And the last code read uif usfbtvsf jt jo uif cbtlfu voefs uif ufmfwjtjpo which means the treasure is in the basket under the television (in a Caesar cipher).

And with that we were done!

Treasure Hunt 2021 (Part 1)

This is the first of two treasure hunts I created in 2021. This one we played on Christmas Day. (You can read about previous treasure hunts here.)

Constraints

We were staying at my in-laws for Christmas, and we would have seven hunters. I wanted each hunter to find their own treasure (rather than in a single location). 

I was recycling an old treasure hunt idea that I’d not used in a long time. To make it a little harder, the hunters would have to work out which clue was theirs.

The overall structure looked like this:

1. I gave the hunters their first clue.
2. The hunters work out which is theirs.
3. They then follow the trail to the final clue.
4. The final clue was a slide-keyboard puzzle that gave them the final location of their treasure.

Which is my clue?

I used a simple number puzzle to identify the clues. So I gave each letter a number (a=1, b=2 and so on) and then added the letters in that person’s name.

So John = 10 + 15 + 8 + 14 = 47

(The hunters found this hard, so I had to explain the code on the day. In hindsight, I should have given them a clue, such as A=1.)

The clue trail - stations

Stations is the name we give to a particular type of hunt. In Stations, clues are placed all over the house as slips of paper. Here’s a typical set of clues for stations (there will be one for each hunter).

I printed these out on a single sheet of A4, and then cut them up with a guillotine into six slips of paper. (So with seven hunters, this would end up with 42 slips.)

The first row is the one the hunter starts with. (47 = John. I could have made it easier but just putting “John” in that row.)

The other five rows are scattered randomly around the house—in halls and in rooms. (Be careful to spread them out and not put all of one hunter’s clues in one location.)

The last clue leads to the treasure. As these were photographs of things in the house, I could have put the treasure in the last location (in the drawers). But I added a final puzzle.

The final puzzle

The final puzzle was inspired by the sliding keyboard I use on my smartphone. 

So everyone received a squiggle:

I also gave them a sheet of paper with a keyboard printed out (at the correct scale):

Putting one over the other (and holding them up to the light) reveals this:

And following the clue reveals A L C O V E—this hunter's treasure was in the alcove.

Treasure Hunt 2020

Every year I create a treasure hunt for Christmas Day (you can read 2019’s here). This was 2020’s.

Constraints

We had three guests for Christmas, and with Mrs and Miss H, that meant I had five hunters to cater for. We decided that the treasure (Toblerone bars) would be in a single location.

My plan was for each hunter to have their own set of clues that would come together to reveal the treasure’s location.

So the overall structure looked like this:

1. I gave the hunters all the clues. The clues were grouped into sets.
2. The hunters worked out which set was theirs.
3. They then solved the clues—resulting in an anagram.
4. Solving that first anagram took the hunters to a location where they would find a letter.
5. Those letters were a final anagram leading to the treasure.

Sets of clues

I grouped each players’ clues by dog breed: spaniel, poodle, terrier, husky, and dachshund. Each player had 6-8 separate clues (36 clues in total).

These are the clues for “spaniel.”

Other sets were smaller—depending on the experience of the hunter. (This was Megan’s so I gave her more clues than most because she will tear through them quickly.)

Whose clue is it anyway?

I used what3words in 2019, and it was too good not to use again. This time I found street and place names with the names of those playing—so, for example, fuses.reassure.fats points to Megan Drive somewhere in North Carolina, while kicks.reach.dwell points to Stevensville and appealing.jots.panther points to Down Hatherley Lane. (I could do this all day.)

(Looking back, it didn’t matter who each set belonged to. The important thing is that each set leads to an anagram.)

To solve each clue

First answer the question. So Christmas Day 3pm BBC1 [3] means that the hunter must find what is on BBC1 at 3 pm on Christmas Day. It’s The Queen, and [3] means take the third letter—e.

Similarly, Number of unopened poppies in lounge [2] refers to a painting in our lounge. There are two unopened poppies, making the letter w.

Then take those letters and rearrange them to make a word. (In Megan’s case, wellies.) This told you where another clue was.

(Or it could have lead to the treasure, if I was doing individual treasures.)

The final clue

The final clue was one of five letters: A B D E R. (So Megan found the letter D where we keep our wellington boots.)

Rearranging this anagram revealed BREAD, and the treasure was hidden in our bread bin.

Once solved, we were done, and everyone gorged on chocolate.

2019 Treasure Hunts

When we grew up we always had treasure hunts at Christmas - and in time my parents handed to me the baton of coming up with an annual treasure hunt.

These days I only tend to do them when we are at home for Christmas, as I usually base the clues on things that are around the house. So this year we were at home, and this was our treasure hunt...

what3words.com

The key to the treasure hunt this year was what3words.com. This website has split the earth into 3x3m sectors, each with a unique identifying address. It’s great for places that don’t have a proper address (some parts of the developing world) or if you need to be rescued from somewhere remote (on a mountain, say). Everyone should have the app.

Our garden is big enough that it is split into numerous sectors, so it’s great for a treasure hunt as well.

The first clue

The first clue was in an envelope that I put under the Christmas tree along with all the other presents. Inside was the following:

Honeybee door handles
Key cupboard
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Gnomeo and Juliet
Window seat cupboard
Guarded by a wooden redcap
Matilda
Elves Lego

These are all clues to locations around the house. So the first clue refers to a cupboard which has honeybees on the handles. In each of the locations was a further clue, in one of four groups.

Clue Group A

This consisted of two clues: a series of empty boxes that need to be completed like a crossword, and a QR code to what3words. (It turns out you can create your own QR code really easily.)

The other three groups of clues filled in the words.

Clue Group B - solution to word #1

This consisted of two clues - another set of empty boxes and a set of clues along the lines of:

1 - How many birds flying over Dunstanburgh Castle?
2 - Port of Ness artist
3 - Number of windows on Megan’s study door
4 - How many copies of the Road to Huisinis are there?

And so on.

The answer to the first clue is in a picture we have of Dunstanburgh Castle that hangs in our kitchen - there are eight birds, and “eight” is the word needed. The second letter is highlighted in the grid, and that's the first letter of the word needed for Clue Group A, above.

Clue Group 3 - solution to word #2

This consisted of three clues:

Harry Potter and the...

A QR code which read “page-letter”


And this:

764-1
202-5
486-3
84-2

The idea is to find the first letter on page 764 of a certain Harry Potter book (the letter “t”), and so on. I made it a little harder by not specifying which Harry Potter book - but only one of them has 764 pages (The Order of the Phoenix) so it wasn’t that hard.

(And I should say that these are the versions that we have - the clues may not work for all copies of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.)

Clue Group D - solution to word #3

This was just a picture of a bar of soap.

Putting it all together

Typing the three words into what3words identified that the treasure was in our garden shed.

It took about 20 minutes to solve, and as usual took much longer than that for me to prepare. The technology was a bit tricky, and didn't work first time (neither Megan nor Mrs H had used either QR codes or what3words before, so there was a bit of a learning curve there).

But that didn’t matter, I had a lot of fun doing it and I had fun watching the hunt being solved.

Recycling on New Year's Eve

My brother was due to join us for New Year's Eve, and a couple of days before he asked if I could prepare a treasure hunt. He was providing the treasure (thankfully), and I thought I would use the same structure of hunt. I changed the location of the treasure, but used the same basic approach.

I changed the picture clue to an Enigma code (created using the splendid Enigma Simulator App), with the following four clues:

Enigma Simulator App 


K Railway, 5 printing groups


Rotors: EFGH


DNYGB XPTF