Scavenger Hunt Project

A long time ago (a couple of years, I guess) my son and some of his friends started a Mystery Solver “club” at his school.  It was really never clear to me what exactly their organization’s charter was, but occasionally they would invent some crime that needed to be solved during recess. Scribbling misspelled notes into a notebook collecting clues like rocks, shells, and acorns seemed to be a big part of this process. He saw my security badge from work and said he wished he had one for his club. Since I don't own a laminator I couldn't make one for him right away.  About once a quarter he would remember that he wanted an ID badge of some kind and we would talk about it for a bit but nothing ever got done.

Sometime before Christmas I was in Office Max and I noticed they had laminator-less badge making stuff – I guess I should have known that stuff existed - and it reminded me of the Mystery Solver club. So that started the ball rolling on the idea for my own mystery for the boy and three of his friends to solve.

Their journey started out with an envelope with the words TOP SECRET spray painted cartoonishly on the front. Each of the parents helped to place the envelope somewhere where their child would find the mysterious package the night before the event.

Inside the envelope was a pen, a small notebook, a book of maps and photos, a wooden jigsaw puzzle piece with part of a code, a part of a code translator, and a colored wooden piece with some notches cut into it. There was also a letter:

The letter said:

Dear Candidate,

You and three of your friends have been identified by our secret organization to complete a series of tasks to see if you are suitable to join our ranks.  You will all be judged by your cleverness and ability to work together to solve the series of puzzles we have arranged for you.

You and your team will meet at 1:30 PM, Saturday, February 6^th at Location A in the enclosed Map Booklet.  You will learn the identity of the rest of your team at that time and place.

You must tell NO ONE except for your family about this mission until after it has been completed.  You may bring them along if you choose, especially if you need transportation.

In this envelope you will find:

·       A puzzle piece

·       A part of a decoder

·       A painted piece of wood

·       A notebook

·       A pen

·       A book of maps

Each one of these items is custom made for you and you alone. But beware! You must bring this envelope and ALL of its contents to Location A.  DO NOT LOSE THEM! If you do NOT bring ALL of these items to the meeting place then your team’s mission will most likely fail.  You will need to depend on one another to make the mission a success.

If you and your team succeed then you will all be granted the status of Field Agent in our organization.

We wish you the best of luck.

I am told that each of the kids went completely nuts when they found their envelope and read the letter. I can only speak to my boy’s actions of course. He found his on his sink as he was getting ready for bath time. After going through the contents and reading the letter he was literally shaking with excitement. He repeatedly asked “Is this real? This isn't a trick, is it?” And then he hit me with the question I knew was coming but still hoped he wouldn't ask.

He inspected the jigsaw puzzle piece and examined its wood-burned lettering and quietly asked “Did you do this?”  There was a hint of disappointment there, as if a little bit of magic was swept away.

“Look,” I said as seriously as I could, “All I can tell you is that I am forbidden from saying anything. Please don't ask me any more questions.”  If anything, that lame non-answer ratcheted up his excitement even more!  Sweet.

See, I knew he would be suspicious especially since, for several weeks prior, he was forbidden from going out into the garage while I was working. Normally he is welcome to watch, invited to join in, or is actively helping with my projects. Also, a pile of random looking “stuff” was growing in one corner of the normally tidy(ish) room, doing it's very best to look as unimportant as possible. I'm sort of space-limited out there, so the best I could do was try and pull off a Purloined Letter and hide things in plain sight. It seemed to work ok, but I'm thinking that was a “one time good deal” thing. I’d never get away with that again.

The next day I woke up early to hide the items around our part of the neighborhood and then go with the neighbor to the local park.  I rang his bell and he and his daughter (a Mystery Solver candidate) answered the door. Excited, she started “Guess what! Guess what!  I… ummm…” Then, remembering the rules in the letter, ran back inside the house without saying another word. Pretty funny!

We really didn’t worry too much about the ones we hid in our neighborhood being discovered but the ones in the park were less under our control.  We waited a little while to go and hide those at the locations that were referenced in the map booklets.

Oh, yeah, a little about the map booklets.  Each one had the same park and neighborhood satellite images in them but no two books had the same areas marked on these maps and no two books had the same close-up photos of the hiding spots other than the initial meeting location.  That is, if the clue told them to do go to Location B, they would see that only one of the maps had a location marked “B” on the map, and only one (a different one) had a close-up picture of that location (a certain park bench, say).  This was one of the ways I designed into this adventure to make them work together and not turn the thing into a footrace.

So, anyway, the neighbor dad and I went to the park and hid a couple of items… We also brought a basketball with us because there’s something just a little bit seedy about two middle aged guys hanging out in a park without their kids.

The four kids converged on the spot at the appointed time and each was excited to see the others.  They quickly agreed to assemble their jigsaw puzzle and use the decoder pieces to read the secret message.  The secret message congratulated them on working together and directed them to find a magnetic box at Location B – a park bench.

Now, from the satellite photos I figured this was like any type of park bench – wood and lots of metal bits.   Nope. Nearly all composite, with very little metal. Thankfully, the metal was ferrous and the box (an Altoids tin painted black with a big white question mark on the lid) had enough to grab onto. We were a bit worried that the box was too obvious but I guess it was only visible if you knew where to look. In fact, it took the kids nearly five minutes to decide to look UNDER the bench and leave the nearby light post (also in the pic) alone.

Inside the box were three pennies, a steel washer, and a note telling them to find “a log that wasn't a log” at another location in the park. They arrived at the next location but only one of them was brave enough to crawl under a clump of bushy overgrowth to retrieve a piece of wood that looked a little suspicious. The piece of wood was a cedar log that I had cut in half lengthwise, routed, and reassembled using brass hinges. In the routed out hollow was a red wooden arrow with four holes and a note directing them to go to the next location.

The next spot was in the neighbor’s backyard. There they found a waist-high circular table with the letters of the alphabet around its circumference and vague instructions to “build the arrow” and give it a gentle spin on the table. The placed their pennies and the washer in the arrow and gave it a spin. CLUNK!  The arrow came to an abrupt halt on position Q (a hidden magnet pulled the washer and stopped the arrow dead).

At location Q they found a wooden box and  were directed to build the device from the parts they saw there.  The completed device was a series of colored octagonal  blocks that were free to rotate  on a spindle. Only by following the clues could the device be built correctly and the next location be determined.

The next stage was a grid of letters surrounded by a colored border. The colors corresponded to the colors of the notched wooden pieces they received in their mystery envelope. Once all the pieces were in place in their correct locations they were told to “find the keys” at the next hiding place.

Once there, they discovered a small wooden box in the shape of a piano. Inside the piano were four different, oddly shaped wooden keys. Each key had copper sheeting on one side and a label that said, simply, “PUSH”.

Now, up until this point everything had gone smoothly. Arguments were kept to a minimum, everyone was having fun, and all the little puzzles and contraptions worked as planned. We were long overdue for a glitch.

The penultimate stage required the kids to insert their keys into the appropriate holes in the lid of a wooden box and push together. Doing so was supposed to light a light in the dark box that would illuminate the instructions that could be read if they looked through a peephole labeled LOOK.

In the shop I tested that simple circuit about 20 times and I was satisfied that, with about an ounce of pressure, the copper strips on the keys would make good contact with the switches (made from brass picture hangers) and backlight the message to be read through the peephole. What I neglected to consider is that when you instruct four seven-year-olds to PUSH and not give them any other guidance they will put their full effort into it.

The switches were not designed to endure the tens of pounds of body weight they were subjected to and so they were immediately and irrecoverably crushed! (The switches, not the children. The kids are fine.) Under my breath I cursed my stupidity, quickly disassembled the box, and had them hold the peephole part up to the sky so they could read the message and move on.

At the last stage they found another wooden box. Inside were four magnifying glasses and four personalized, laminated security badges declaring them to be official members of the Virginia Mystery Solvers – the kind of badges I told you about in the first paragraph of this post.

They were all very happy to have finished their mission successfully. The kids and the parents all had a blast. One of the dads (a GM of an AM radio station in Virginia) even gave a shout-out to this project on the air the next week which was pretty cool.

So the dads are now hard at work coming up with a new challenge for them. This one, we are pretty sure, will involve the dads being “kidnapped” and the Mystery Solvers will need to follow the clues to rescue them before it’s too late…