Scavenger hunt with board gamers
My board-gaming friends this past weekend decided to hold a Halloween scavenger hunt. They initially wanted to throw a Halloween party but since they said their place is too small, they decided to organize this event instead. The event took place in downtown Phoenix in about a square mile radius, and six teams (about half of them I knew from board-gaming events) participated from 7:30 to 11:45 p.m.
The rules were this: Each team would get a text message containing a video clue every 45 minutes. If the team solved the clue by sending a photo or answering a question at the correct location within the 45 minutes, that team would move onto its next clue. If 45 minutes passed and you either got the wrong location or wrong answer, then you’d get penalized and the next clue would be sent. You also were penalized if you and your team members didn’t have costumes, plus, time bonuses were given out for best costume and most original team costume.
I’ve never done a scavenger hunt so this was uber exciting to me. The hosts are awesome board-gamers with whom I enjoy playing some of the heavier, crunchy games. And it was great to see fellow gamers getting into the spirit of gaming, on a real-life city grid! I invited three friends to join my team, and the four of us set off on our walking journey. We were a band of misfits — me dressed as Minnie Mouse in a red tutu, with Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and a tall slab of bacon (who had a nametag that said Kevin). Get it? Har, har.
But man, the first clue took us almost 40 minutes to figure out (mostly because we weren’t sure what we were looking for inside this park, which basically spanned the half-mile diameter of the zone). Once we figured out what we needed, we had to run across to the other side of the park. Who knew there was a giant panda sculpture in the middle of a downtown Phoenix park? We certainly did not.
Our next clue took us to the southernmost part of the zone (and of course, the park was at the northern tip), so we hustled to get there, only to realize that once we got there, nothing that was mentioned in the video clue was at the location. We ended up getting this clue wrong and were penalized. The next few clues we were able to figure out in a timely manner, but we seriously were spanning the entire zone with each clue. Only Clues 5 to 6 were in the same area from each other; otherwise, we were just spending so much time going back and forth. We all decided to rent bikes for next time!
In the end, we ended up coming in last, which was a super bummer. During the recap over margaritas and tacos, we learned that the moderators were switching the clues around for each team, so that teams didn’t run into each other in the streets as some teams were going faster than others. When all the clues were revealed, some seemed easier than others, and we didn’t get any of those ones because we got stuck on the hard ones. Womp, womp.
Overall, it was an amazing experience, and the hosts did an excellent job on the creepy videos and coming up with really cryptic clues. Shoot, some of the clues stumped most of the teams! And of course, it was great running around the city in a fluffy red polka-dotted tutu the week before Halloween.
