Treasure Hunts - "Stations"
When I was growing up one of my favourite bits of Christmas was the treasure hunt. As would happen every year, Santa would mysteriously lose a few presents and leave them secreted all over the house. And we would have to find them.
The presents were always fairly minor "tree-presents" - the real fun was in finding them.
As I grew older, I started creating the family treasure hunt. Some years ago I moved away and haven't spent many Christmases at home - so I haven't created many treasure hunts recently. However, in the summer of 2006 I was asked to create one for a family get-together. As I'm now a bit rusty I used an old standby, a game we call Stations.
Stations
Here's how Stations works:
- Each player is given a piece of paper with their name at the top and the name of their first station (eg, St Pancras) below.
- They then have to hunt for another piece of paper that has "St Pancras" on it. That will also have the name of a second station on it.
- When they find that station, they will also find the name of their third station - and so on.
- Eventually, after collecting several of these the player comes to the last piece of paper. Instead of the name of another station, this shows the location of their treasure.
Sounds simple, eh? (If that sounds confusing, don't worry as I've created an example pdf with some clues that will hopefully make sense - it's at the bottom of this page.)
There are a few things to be wary of:
- First, everyone has their own set of clues and stations. (If you make a mistake and use the same station twice, it will all go horribly wrong!)
- Second, the pieces of paper with the stations are scattered in groups around the playing area. For example, if you are playing in your home, you might have clues in the kitchen, dining room, hall, bathroom and so on. (If you start in the lounge, you probably won't have any clues there.)
- It's often good to keep the treasure separate from the clues so that eager treasure hunters don't accidentally stumble over them. (As we had good weather, I put the clues in the garden (stuck down with tape so they didn't blow away) and the treasure was all in the house.)
This is how I created the clues:
First - I used MS Word to
creat a table with two columns and five rows. On an A4 sheet of paper,
this creates a table with cells that are more-or-less the size of
business cards. The exact size really doesn't matter. (I've included
some of the clues at the end of this document so that you can see what
I mean.)
Second - For the older kids, I gave them a full set of 10 clues (that's actually quite a lot - but I didn't mind as I wanted to wear them out!) The younger kids got just five clues (ie, one column).
Third - Rather than use the names of stations, I used a mixture of words and pictures. The pictures were all taken from clip art - they were trains, dinosaurs, rockets, tanks and other things that little boys tend to like.
(We called this game "Stations" because we used to use the names of stations on the cards. (I found the London Underground to be best.) However, there's no need to stick to stations - you could use anything: flowers, animals, spaceships, pictures, numbers - whatever.)
Fourth - The last clue took the treasure-hunter to the location where the present was. As it was a fine day and the kids were running around in the garden, I put all the presents in different rooms in the house. (Or in one instance, I messed up and put two clues in the same place - so we made sure each present was clearly labelled so the right kid got the right present.)
(I've linked a pdf file at the bottom of this article with some sample clues so that you can see what I mean.)
Advance preparation
Before the day I printed out all the clues and cut them up. I also printed out a complete set of clues so that I had a copy to refer to in case anything went wrong.
Preparation on the day
I mixed the clues up thoroughly, and distributed them in several different locations around the garden. As we were outside, I taped the clues down so that they didn't blow away. (If we had been inside I wouldn't have had to worry about that.)
I actually placed the clues during lunch, while the kids were all in once place and kept there by their parents. (If you're inside, this is easy if you can get everyone into the one room.)
Then I sat all the kids down and explained how the treasure hunt worked - and set them going.
During the hunt
Kept an eye out for problems. The two that occurred was that the kids didn't come across one set of clues for ages, which was confusing them (so I pointed out in general direction), and also one kid accidentally picked up the wrong clue. (This is self checking if the treasure is named - he'll end up in the wrong place and won't be able to find the treasure with his name on it). I got him to show me what he'd done, spotted the mistake and let him finish the rest on his own.
Variants
Here are a few variants that I've used in the past:
One big clue - Instead of
hiding each treasure individually, you can hide them all in one place.
Then use the final clue to be part of a bigger clue pointing to
where all the presents are hidden. This means that everyone has to
bring their clues together and try to solve the final puzzle (which
might be an anagram or a mathematical puzzle or something even more
fiendish).
Christmas Cards - instead of
using pictures, you could use chopped up pieces of old Christmas cards.
(Doesn't everyone recycle their Christmas cards this way?)
This works as follows:
- The first clue is one half of a Christmas card.
- When they find the other half, they turn that over to find a word or picture.
- When that word or picture is found, it's on a new piece of Christmas card, and so on.
Sample clues
Click here to download a pdf file containing some of the clues I used for Stations.
This article may be re-published as long as the following paragraph is included at the end of article and as long as you link to the URL:
Article by Steve Hatherley. Find out more about hosting interactive murder mystery games for your friends and family at http://www.great-murder-mystery-games.com.