Creating a fun scavenger hunt or treasure hunt doesn’t have to be hard or time consuming. In the case of a treasure hunt you just need to come up with some clues to get the hunters from the start to the finish with however many stops along the way you want to include. The biggest problem that people seem to run in to is in creating the clues that get the hunters from one spot along the hunt to the next spot. In fact, one of the most common questions we are asked is how to come up with good scavenger hunt clues. In the article I’m going to tell you the simplest way to create any treasure hunt or scavenger hunt without actually buying a product outright. This method will give you more power and as long as you have a printer available you’ll be able to pull it off like a pro this time and any other time you need to create a treasure hunt or scavenger hunt!
You Need Clues for a Treasure Hunt and for Some Scavenger Hunts
One answer to the question of how to get clues for your hunt is that you just figure out where you want to hide the clues for your treasure hunt (or what objects you want found in the case of a scavenger hunt) and then you start making up riddles or clues about those locations and items. It can be difficult to get it going, and some items are very challenging, but I’ve found that generally I just need to get myself into the flow by coming up with a clue or two and the rest just start coming – sometimes at an alarmingly fast pace. Of course, other times I can’t get the clue train going at all and I need to look elsewhere for inspiration. For those times, I make use of a treasure and scavenger hunt clues site that I helped create! It’s called HuntClues.com and it’s full of exactly what you’d think!
If you don’t want to come up with your own clues then making use of a site such as HuntClues.com, where there are thousands of scavenger hunt clues and treasure hunt clues, is definitely the best option. Just browse though the list and collect the clues you want! It’s like a scavenger hunt for scavenger hunts clues – except easier! The answers that are provided are the hiding places or items you want found. All that’s left for you to do in the case of a treasure hunt is to determine the stard and end point and then hide a clue in each one of the specified locations and you’re done! The great thing about coming up with scavenger hunt clues this way is that you don’t have to do much work at all, but in the end, you get to build a really cool treasure hunt / scavenger hunt.
Using HuntClues.com to build a Scavenger Hunt
Here are a couple of sample scavenger hunt clues and instructions on how to make use of them. Let’s say we’re planning on doing an indoor hunt in a fairly typical household. We’ll choose some clues and then plan our hunt. Note, another way to design the hunt is to figure out where you want to hide all of your clues and then to seek out riddles that will lead the hunters to those specific locations. Either way works great and it’s really up to you how you want to do it! In this example I just go looking at the clues that are out there and pick a few and then I design my hunt around those clues.
Sample Treasure Hunt Clues
Here are three clues for a candle:
- When young I am tall, with age I grow short.
- I love to glow, but breath is my foe.
- The more I glow the shorter I grow.
Note: I listed three clues so it would be clear that there are many ways to write clues that describe the same place, I won’t do that on the rest.
A clue for a dictionary:
The only place in the world, where saturday comes before thursday.
A clue for an envelope:
Start with an “e” and ends with an “e”. I am 8 letters long, but typically contain only one letter.
A clue for a washing machine:
I help with the laundry, but first you must feed me!
A clue for a shower:
It’s not rain and no one’s sad, but with out me you’d smell bad!
After you’ve Picked Your Scavenger Hunt Clues
So now that we’ve found some clues related to things we have access to in the house we just need to hide the clues each one. This is the easy part. Determine which place you want to hold the final treasure and do not place any clues there, but find the clue that points to that place. Once you have it go place the clue in one of the other places you have a clue to match. Once you’ve placed that clue, then do the same thing for the clue pointing to where you just hid a clue. And so on. When you get down to one more clue in your hand all you have to do is decide where you want the hunt to start! Place that clue there and then send the hunters to that point when they are ready to start the hunt. That’s it!
Wrapping it up
That’s all there is to it! You’ve now built a treasure hunt from scratch that will be fun for everyone involved and it’s only taken a few minutes of your time. By using huntclues.com you can drastically shorten the amount of time that it takes to build a scavenger hunt and be comfortable knowing that you can pull it off with out a hitch any time you need to put together your own scavenger hunt or treasure hunt again! I hope you’ve found this little tutorial helpful. Please comment below if you’ve found it useful and if you have any additional ideas on the subject!
As always Happy Hunting!