Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Tips To Generate Fantastic Clues For An Excellent Treasure Hunt

If you’re making a treasure hunt you're probably trying to come up with some clues. A lot of treasure hunts for youngsters take place around the house, so the subject of your clues are going to be normal things you come across in a house, stuff like under the bed, behind the couch, or in the refrigerator. Treasure hunt clues for around the house can be hard or easy depending on what age you are making the hunt for. For example, if we are creating a clue to lead the treasure hunters to the bathtub, an more simple clue for younger kids could be:

Soap and water you will find in me
When you get out, clean you will be

A little bit more difficult clue for the bathtub geared towards older children could be:

Boats sail the high seas in me,
But not a man is lost at sea!
My shores are shiny and very slick,
My waters won’t ever make you sea sick!

One of the keys to writing great treasure hunt clues is to be sure you focus on your target audience and adjust the difficulty level of the clues. You definitely want the clues to be a bit of a challenge, but you don’t want them to be too hard. If they are, the treasure hunters can get frustrated and throw in the towel.

Despite what you may think, a good treasure hunt doesn’t necessarily mean you will need to have a great treasure. A great treasure hunt starts with great clues! It is not referred to as “give me a treasure”. It’s called a “treasure hunt.” Yes you do have to have a treasure, but it’s really all about the hunt. The entertainment is the challenge of hunting. And to have a great hunt, you will need excellent clues.

Sunday, November 6, 2011

How do you make outstanding treasure hunts?

Recall when you were a youngster, what entertainment really good treasure hunts were. The sense of mystery and intrigue of solving the clues and the anticipation of what you would find at the end. Indeed, that is the first part of any good treasure hunt; keeping the suspense going. You should have several clues so that they don’t merely proceed right to the treasure, however not too many so that it just will become long and boring. Normally around four or five is perfect. Many times, it doesn’t make much difference what the “treasure” is at the finish. A good treasure hunt is characterized by the hunt. Don’t get me wrong, a good prize is awesome, but folks will really like the hunt based on the hunting itself.
There are various different things that you can do for hunts. One particular kind of treasure hunt is to make a treasure map. A treasure map will show the location of the treasure and how to find it, therefore to keep the mystery alive you need to obscure markers on the map to ensure the location of the treasure won’t be obvious. Furthermore, on the map you might keep distances obscured and put some problems, riddles, or questions that the treasure hunters must answer in order to know the distance to proceed in certain directions.

A different sort of hunt would be to have one clue lead to the location of the next clue and so on until finally the last clue shows them the location of the treasure. This is the most popular variety of treasure hunt. When creating the clues it is necessary to not make them too hard, but not too simple as well. If they are too simple and obvious then there isn't any sense of mystery involved in discovering the treasure. Remember, the fun is in the hunt. Needless to say if the clues are too difficult then it isn’t any fun either because the hunt comes to a halt.

It requires practice to compose great clues. It is easy to make the clues too complicated because you know where the next spot is. Therefore the clue makes complete sense to you, but the treasure hunters are coming in cold with no notion where the next location is. That causes it to be really tricky. The treasure hunters probably are not thinking the same way you were and will look at the clue totally different than you do.

It requires practice and work to create a great treasure hunt and to write great clues. But if you are able to develop a fun hunt, it will definitely be worth all the time and energy that you invest.