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Tags: irl, scavenger hunt
A few weeks ago I was stuck in an incredibly boring meeting. As my body began shutting down, my brain made one final plea for survival and cried out, “Scavenger Hunt!” The background noise of plotting Farkas points along a Westian information vector died away as I feverishly began planning a scavenger hunt.
Instead of a traditional Scavenger Hunt, I thought a photo one would be more fun, especially since everyone in our group either had digital cameras or cell phones with cameras. I also decided that rather simply than collecting everything, there should be some contest to get the best representation of a Scavenger Hunt item. With that in mind, I sent out these rules to my friends.
The Rules
- We have enough people for two teams (cars) of four people each. I’ll act as judge and await the return of the teams at the house.
- On Friday each team will be given a sheet with Scavenger Hunt items. These items fall under the categories: People, Places, Random, Fantasy, and Bonus Points (5 categories with 5 items, so 25 items in all).
- The two teams will then head off in different directions (this is important) and begin photographing the items. Every team member can take pictures, but the team can only select one photo to be judged.
- Judging will work something like this:
Person: Donald Trump (worth 5 points)
Team A takes a picture of one of his books.
Team B takes a picture of him.
Team B wins that category and gets the 5 points.Random: The Statue of Liberty (worth 5 points)
Team A takes a picture of a guy dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.
Team B takes a picture of the Statue of Liberty inside a snowglobe.
Team A wins that category and gets the 5 points. - Teams will have two hours to complete the Scavenger Hunt. The first team back gets 10 bonus points.
- Calling and mocking the other team is not only encouraged, it is required.
- Points stealing. If you see the other team around town take a picture of their car to steal 5 of their points. If they take a picture of you, the points stealing is negated so be sneaky. Only one points stealing attempt per location (or square mile).
I also added that couples, partnerships, alliances should be split up.
After teams were picked and dinner arrangements finalized, the teams headed out at 8:00 p.m. with copies of the item list for each person and a map of the county for each team.
The Items
People (5 points each)
- Dracula
- Vanilla Ice
- Ms. Pac-Man
- Grimace
- Spider-man
Places (5 points each)
- The wrong side of the tracks
- Australia
- Key West
- Bermuda Triangle
- Gotham City
Random (5 points each)
- a sundial
- a white russian
- karaoke
- a street musician
- voodoo
Fantasy (5 points each)
- a dragon
- fairies
- a haunted house
- a castle
- a flying carpet
Bonus Points (10 points each)
- most cop cars in front of a Dunkin’ Donuts
- the dirtiest bathroom
- the coolest car
- the cheapest gas
- preachiest church sign
People have asked how I came up with this list. What I tried to do was be as subjective as possible. For instance, I didn’t want to have Denny’s as a place because both teams would come back with the same or similar pictures — and where’s the fun in that? I wanted the teams to have room to interpret what was on the list and I wanted to encourage creativity and exploration. One thing I specifically tried not to do was to have something already in mind for what the best photo would be. Also, I trusted that both teams could figure something out for each item, so I really didn’t care how doable something was. Australia could have easily have been Uzbekistan and I’m sure they would have figured something out.
The Hunt
The game went well, with one team hitting home base ten minutes before the other team — they elected to get the bonus 10 pts instead of getting one more photo.
Here are some of the winning pics with commentary:
Vanilla Ice
Yes, vanilla ice cream with ice on top. The other team had a similar thought, but I had to go with the team that actually bought ice cream.
Sundial
I expected one of the teams to hit Target’s garden section, but this worked instead.
Grimace
So apparently McDonald’s discontinued the McDonaldland characters last year — which is what I was going for. However, this beat the other team’s pic of Paul scowling.
Spider-man
Hitting Past Present Future, our local comic book store, netted one of the teams a ton of points. Especially when the comic book guys started shouting out page numbers where good pics of Gotham City could be found.
Bermuda Triangle
I LOLed and this team took the category.
Haunted House
The comic book guys also suggested Party City for Halloween surplus which led to layers of subterfuge and the win.
The Coolest Car
This was found inside a McDonald’s while looking for the evil Grimace. Who knew?
Afterthoughts
The hunt was a success, even with a lop-side score of 105 to 55 (the bonus categories may have been worth too much). The only thing that didn’t work was point stealing, which is too bad. We’re definitely going to do this again, except with a longer time limit and an earlier start to get more daylight hours.
Interestingly enough no cop cars were found at Dunkin’ Donuts.
On March 3rd, 2008 at 4:06 pm, anony-mest wrote:
now that gas is $12/gal., you need to add a green alternative or take odo readings and limit the driving to 10 miles, or so. the bermuda triangle is hilarious, although, I think those are only shorts and don’t meet the “bermuda” definition.