Category Archives: Scavenger Hunts

An Amazing Race using Text Messages

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Here’s an idea for a fun activity for a group of friends: set up an Amazing Race using TextClues. First, split everyone into teams. The leader of each team needs a cell phone to answer the text message challenges. You’ll want to have clues that lead the teams on an amazing race all over the city.

Before you start the race, you’ll want all the teams to compete in a contest to determine who gets a head start. This can be a trivia game or each team can dress up in matching costumes Parcours Obstacle Gonflable and you judge which team looks the best. Based on the scores, you can stagger the teams so that one leaves every 5 minutes, so they don’t all race off at the same time. You can schedule all the text hunts to start at the same time but just don’t give them the envelope with the first clue until they leave.

It’s up to you whether you want all the teams to have clues in the same order, but we do have a “shuffle” button if you want to randomize the clues for each team.You’ll want to come up with a scoring system. Each team has three tries for each clue, so you can give them 3 points if they get it right on the first try, 2 points on the second try, or 1 point on the third try. Finally, there should be a bonus for the time taken for each team to finish the amazing race and get back to the starting point. You could make this a percentage bonus to prevent teams from just guessing everything wrong but finishing first.

Here are some ideas for clues you could use:

Clue: Welcome to the 2012 Amazing Race. Check for the first clue in your envelope. (Inside the envelope you have the clue: Head west 10 blocks. What year was the church built?)

Answer: 1967

Clue: Head north to the park. Mike will be waiting for a game of bean bag toss. He’ll tell you the answer when you finish the game.

Answer: Mike is awesome

Clue: Good job. Now head to the fair trade coffee house where we always meet up with Liz. On the wall they have a picture of a plantation from what country?

Answer: Brazil

Clue: Head to the high school track and meet Jen. You guys will have to run some laps :) She’ll tell you the answer when you finish your sprints.

Answer: Jen rocks

Clue: How many tennis courts are on the other side of the school?

Answer: three, 3

Clue: Head south 6 blocks until you reach a park. What’s it called?

Answer: Jacob’s Park

Clue: Head to the baseball stadium. How many years has it been open?

Answer: 34

Clue: Use the pay phone to call Mike. Everyone on the team has to talk to him to make sure you’re all still there.

Answer: Subway

Clue: Yes hop on the subway and take it north 3 stops. Head into the shopping mall. What’s the name of the hair dresser up on the third floor.

Answer: Antonio’s

Winning Message: Alright you’re done! Now run back to the start of the race before the others make it back!

 

Try our demo to see how to create a text message amazing race.

Corporate Team Building Activity: SMS Scavenger Hunt

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With weather as nice as we have been having lately, there is no better time to have a team building or corporate scavenger hunt at your company! Instead of being confined within your office building, why not have the hunt occur out on the streets/within the city (if your location permits). A text scavenger hunt allows for people in your department to enjoy some fresh air, have a nice change of scenery, and have a fun day out with their team!

Now, when you first bring up “scavenger hunt” with your department, they may be a bit hesitant or unsure of how they feel about it – they may feel like it is childish, or would rather not participate in such events.  But I can guarantee you that once they get into the hunt, and become slightly more competitive by wanting to beat their fellow colleagues to win the hunt, they will be sure to have blast by the end of it all! Our website, TextClues, makes it super easy to create a scavenger hunt because you do not need to leave a paper trail of clues around the building or city (wherever the hunt is taking place) instead we let you send text messages to each team’s cell phone for the hunt, so the setup is quick and easy!

How should you set this all up?

  • Begin with finding out how many participants will be available to participate in your event (block off time in your teams calendar for a good two hours so that the team will have to join in on the team building experience!).  Once, you know the number of people, you can split off each team into smaller groups of 4 – 5 (or they can be larger or smaller depending on the number of people you are working with).
  • Determine the end location of your hunt
  • Where you want the hunt to take place? In your building, on your floor, or out on the streets
  • Think of whether you want to include any props within your hunt: e.g.: camera for your team to take photos during the hunt

Let’s give an example of how the hunt can work:

Clue: What year was the company founded? Hint: you may find this on a plaque on the outside of our building – respond with the answer

Answer: 2005

Clue: Great job! Now, go to our favorite coffee shop that we order coffee from for team meetings and take a team photo with the server. Reply with “done” when complete.

Answer: Done

Clue: Perfect. Head on over to the building where most of our town hall meetings take place and respond with the animal that appears outside the door.

Answer: Bull

Clue: Great! Now go on inside the building and find the stationary store. Purchase the cheapest possible item you can inside the store and respond with “done” when complete.

Answer: Done

Clue: Head back to the Thursday night pub that is a favorite of our department. First one back wins the prize, and gets first dibs on the appetizers! :)

 

Team building activities are an important part of any organization:

  • They help your department members get to know each other and have a fun time outside of a work setting to ensure morale is kept up
  • They let the department reward the time and effort the team puts into working with the company, and that you want to show them how much you appreciate their hard work

Scavenger hunts are the perfect team building exercise because it allows individuals within a team to work together to find out the answer to the next clue and build some overall team spirit. Use TextClues for your next scavenger hunt, and we can guarantee you that this will make scavenger hunts such a breeze for your company, and enjoyable for the employees, that you will be coming back each year for more!

Trivia Night

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You’re holding a trivia night with numerous people, however there are always a few challenges surrounding it.
1) If there are teams, and you are calling out the question, and the team that raises their hand first gets to answer, what do you do if multiple people raise their hand to answer the question first? Who gets to answer first?
2) If you are making individuals write out their answers individually to the questions, this requires time to collect team answers and mark the answers which wastes the time overall of people taking part in trivia night

Why not use a quick and easy program like TextClues to go through trivia night? TextClues is a text-message based program that can run on any mobile phone, so anybody with a cell phone can participate on the fun during Trivia Night :) With TextClues, you can have all of the questions and answers set up via the TextClues website. All *you* will need to do as the host is grab the cell phone numbers of participating individuals and away you go!

The best way to make this work is to have a few different rounds. One round can be trivia questions, another round can be “Name that song”, where you play a clip of a song and individuals need to figure out the title of the song. You can also use the Real-Time Dashboard on the website to determine who entered in the correct answers at the end of Trivia Night, if points are given based on the team with the most correct answers.

Let’s show you how this can be done. I’m using the word “pass” as an alternate answer to each question, so if the team does not know the answer to a question, they can type “pass” and  still continue on with trivia night

Question: Welcome to Trivia Night. Here is your first question. In what year did the War of 1812 end?
Answer: 1815, pass
Question: What was the name of the first Beatle’s album?
Answer: Anthology, pass

<song portion of trivia night>
Host: Now, we will play a clip of each song and you must type in the correct title

Question: Name song 1 <play clip of a song>
Answer: Sexy back
Question: Name song 2 <play clip of a song>
Answer: Hey Jude

At the end of it all, you can go through the answers with the crowd, while also looking at the Real-Time dashboard to see who got the most questions right.  Pretty easy to set up right? :) Try out TextClues for your next trivia night, and you won’t want to stop using it for future nights because we make it *that* easy!

Special Mother’s Day Treasure Hunt

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Mother’s day is coming up in a few days. Here’s an example of a text message scavenger hunt you could send her on that special day.

Clue: Hey Mom, Happy Mother’s Day! Ready for your scavenger hunt? Reply ‘yes’ to this textMother's Day Kiss

Answer: Yes

Clue: How many pounds did I weigh when I was born?

Answer: 8

Clue: Good you remembered :) What’s your favorite restaurant?

Answer: The Keg

Clue: That’s where we’re taking you tonight! What’s on the picture in the family room?

Answer: Cottage, The Cottage

Clue: Remember all the good times we had there with grandma? What bird swam in the lake and made a call in the morning?

Answer: Loon

Clue: Another bird question :) What colorful bird do we always see eating at the bird feeder in the backyard?

Answer: Red Cardinal

Clue: Okay go look under the couch for a surprise. Reply ‘found’ when you find it

Answer: Found

Clue: Hope you like the chocolates! Come give me a hug and text back what what I say

Answer: I love youMother's Day Flowers

Clue: Go down to the basement. What’s hidden by the freezer?

Answer: Flowers

Clue:  Those should look good in the kitchen. Head to the dining room and look at the pictures. What sunny place did we go last year?

Answer: Mexico

Winning Message: That was such a great trip. Now go upstairs. There’s one last surprise waiting for you under your bed!

If you want to create your own text message hunt try our free demo.

A Mother’s Day Scavenger Hunt

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Mother’s Day is coming up fast! But don’t worry you’ve still got time to give you mom a great surprise. TextClues is here to help you make a scavenger hunt that your mom will never forget.

TextClues is great in so many ways:

  • It will save you time
  • It is easy to use
  • Uses new technology which is sure to surprise
  • Can be used with other ideas or on its own
  • Provides a more personalized gift

You can use a scavenger hunt a few different ways on Mother’s day.

You can use it to lead your Mom to the present you were already planning to get her. She’ll love that you’ve personalized a hunt just for her and you’ll turn an ordinary gift into an extraordinary one.

You can also create a scavenger hunt that is a gift in itself. Lead you Mom on a hunt down memory lane with clues about your past and present. You know how sentimental your Mom can get so give her the clues she will love.

For more ideas check out our how to guide for creating a unique Mother’s Day scavenger hunt.

City or Campus Tour

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Are you trying to organise a city tour, a campus tour, or just a general tour of an area for individuals but you don’t know where to start?  Are you trying to organise a tour of your facilities so that you don’t necessarily need to be physically present on the tour, but at the same time ensure to give your guests a good experience of your facilities or surroundings?
Using an easy-to-use tool like TextClues, it can organise a tour for your group in a way that you wouldn’t normally have expected!

TextClues can be used in two ways for a tour:
1) To help guide individuals from one location to another that are new to the area
2) To determine whether individuals within a certain location remember where facilities and specific points of interests are (if they have already been on a tour)

Both of the above would be setup in the same way, however it is simply a matter of how you would word your clues.  We’ll give examples of both, but we’ll start off with a completely new group wanting to tour around an area for the first time on their own…

Say, for example, you are a tour company, and want to provide customers the ability to take tours on their own time, stroll through the streets at their own pace, but still make use of your touring service. You could easily have users subscribe to a specific “tour hunt” via TextClues that will bring them to interesting attractions around your city
:)

Here’s an example for the city of Toronto:

Clue: The tour begins in the heart of Chinatown – Dundas and Spadina. Do you see the big tall tower (aka CN Tower) south of you? Walk down Spadina towards this tower. Take time to stroll down the street, go into some shops/markets, and enjoy a fresh drink. When you’re done, text “yum”
Answer: Yum
Clue: Have you reached the big tall Tower yet? If not, keep going until you are at its base :) Take time to take some photos and if you are up for it, have a ride up the tower too! When you’re done with the area, text “yay”
Answer: Yay

Now, if you want to test out some students at a campus, to see how familiar they are with a building, you can make it a bit more interactive :) Fictional campus used in the below example.

Clue: Start at the main campus. Go to the building on campus that has a cannon outside of the building. What year is found on the cannon?
Answer: 1853
Clue: Great job! Now, where on campus can you buy a nice big smoothie? Go there now and tell is the best selling item.
Answer: Fruity Blast

As you can see, you can have all sorts of fun creating a scavenger hunt/text messaging tour and make the tour go any way you would like it ;) And with TextClues, the organisation of it all just makes it *that* much easier.  Try it out today and you will see how easy you can have it work for you too.

Summer Camp Text Scavenger Hunt

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Camp CreekA scavenger hunt is a great way to get kids aquainted to a new camp. They can be used for camp orientation or to get the kids to explore areas of the camp they have never been before. You can ask them questions about landmarks and get them to learn what the camp has to offer.

You can use TextClues to send the clues by text message, but just make sure you have cell phone reception at the camp!

Here’s an example hunt that needs a compass:

Clue: Head north for 10 minutes until you reach water. What’s the name of this creek? Reply with the answer.

Answer: Five mile creek

Clue: How many swinging ropes are attached to the tree nearby?

Answer: 3, three

Clue: Good. Now head west upstream. How many kayaks are on the bank?

Answer: 11, eleven

Clue: Good. Walk a little further and cross over the bridge to the other side. What’s carved on the top of the totem pole?

Answer: Eagle

Clue: Good. Follow the path and when you reach the fork in the road look down and tell me what’s growing below the sign.

Answer: MushroomsMushrooms

Clue: Yes. Alright, go right at the fork and keep walking until you reach a clearing in the forest.  What’s in the middle of the clearing?

Answer: fire pit, pit

Clue: We’re going to use that for the bonfire tonight. What kind of tree has white peeling bark?

Answer: Birch, Birch tree

Clue: Good. Find one and peel a bit of the dried bark off. We’ll use that for fire kindling later. Head to the flag pole. What year is engraved on the plaque?

Answer: 1973

Winning Message:  That’s when the camp was founded. Now follow the trail east. When you reach the lodge go inside for lunch!

Car Rally Scavenger Hunt

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Car rallies can be used for all sorts of events and occasions – birthday parties, school or church retreats, or just general fun get togethers.  How does a car rally work?  It is basically a scavenger hunt, however done by using a car to get from one destination to another.  Thus, it should typically last a couple of hours.  It is also done with at least 2 or more people per car, as the clues tend to be a bit trickier and need some team work to figure out where the next destination should be ;)

A few important things to consider with a car rally:
1) Where should the end destination be (the last clue should lead to this place :) assuming a place that everybody participating in the car rally should gather at the end for some more fun ;)
2) The team that arrives at the end destination first is the winner! However… the below should be considered!
3) If someone on the car rally gets stuck with a clue and has absolutely no idea where to go for the next clue, there should be a contact person that teams should be able to contact, if they need some help – of course, penalties should be put in place, if someone needs to call in for help :) e.g.: if a team calls in for help, that team has 10 minutes added to their end time. So, if a team ends up finishing the hunt in 2 hours, but has called in once for help, their end time is 2 hours and 10 minutes.  If another team arrives at the end destination at 2 hours and 5 minutes, with no calls for help, they would be the official winners!
4) Do you want to include props as part of the hunt? e.g.: teams need to take pictures at specific destinations or buy items from a certain store? If so, the teams need to be provided with cameras or have cameras on hand and ensure that teams have money available with them to use for purchases on the hunt.

Let’s end off this post with a car rally example :)

Clue: We’ll start off easy – Sometimes you throw a dart at me, others use me for shooting practice. I am a…
Answer: Target
Clue: Correct! Go to the nearest Target store and tell me what kid’s item takes up the most space in the store.
Answer: Bicycles, bikes, bike, bicycle
Clue: Great! Now, get on one of those bikes and take a picture with your team ;) Where in the area is a good trail to take a bike?
Answer: Stoney Creek, Stoneys
Clue: Perfect – get going to the creek now. And reply with “yes” when you arrive there
Answer: Yes
Clue: Great – Go to the area where you can rent boats. How many statues are surrounding the cabin?
Answer: 5, five
Clue: Thats right! Take a silly team picture amongst the statues. What is the cheapest item you can buy inside the cabin?
Answer: key chain, keychain
Clue: Yup! Go buy me a nice keychain as a souvenir :) Next up, are you getting rather hungry? There was a movie called “Super Size Me” based on this franchise.
Answer: McDonald’s, McDonalds, Mc Donalds, Mc Donald’s
Clue: Thats right! Go to the closest McDonald’s and take a picture with one of the employees. Type “ok” without the quotes when this has been done.
Answer: ok
Clue: Hope the employee didnt find you too odd :P It’s time for some fun! Which playground can you find a water slide?
Answer: Raven Park, Raven
Clue: Right! Hop on over there and take a picture of your team mates playing in the playground. Type “ok” without the quotes when done
Answer: “ok”
Clue: I normally slither around, but you can get a good drink out of me.
Answer: Snake’s bar
Clue: That’s right! Head on there now for a drink or two, and find out what place you’ve come in. Don’t forget to buy me a drink :)

And that’s a simple car rally :) No need to leave paper trails around the city with a tool like Text Clues. We do the work for you :)  Try it out today, and you’ll make your next event out one for your group of friends or club to remember!

A Gift She Won’t Forget – Mother’s Day Scavenger Hunt

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This Mother’s Day give you Mom a gift that will keep her smiling, take her on a walk down memory lane and turn into a memory she’ll never forget. We want to show you how, with a little bit of work, you can make your Mom feel like a million bucks!

Memories
Remember what a great Mom she’s been!

Buying a bouquet of flowers and treating your Mom to a fancy dinner is a popular way of celebrating Mother’s Day. We’re going to show you how you can design a scavenger hunt that will change an ordinary Mother’s Day into an extraordinary one. Taking the time to create even a simple scavenger hunt will show your mom how much you care and is sure to mean the world to her. Most mothers care less about material things than feeling the care and love of her children

It’s not too difficult to create a hunt that will have your Mom walking down memory lane and reminiscing on all the happy times she has had as you’ve grown up. Now is the perfect time to remind her how great of a Mother she has been all these years. You’ll want to think back to milestones in your life that you can use to create clues. We recommend finding old photo albums and any type of baby book your mom kept because it’s a perfect spot to find clues.

Look through the books and find questions you can ask like: How old were you when you learned to walk? What time were you born? When did you get your first haircut? How much did you weigh when you were born? Where was the family on page ten of the photo album?

Some of the questions your mom may be able to answer without looking at the books but add some hard ones so she will have to look them up. Then she can enjoy looking through the old books and photoalbums and look back on some fond memories. She’s sure to enjoy flipping through the pages of the books she worked hard to create.

A great idea is starting the hunt by handing her a vase. As she gets each clue right she will be led to a spot where you’ve hidden some flowers to start making her bouquet. That way as the hunt progresses she is able to add flowers to the vase and build up the beautiful bouquet of flowers you bought her. At the end of the hunt she can then be surprised by an invitation to a planned dinner with the whole family.

This inexpensive hunt will only require a few hours of your time and will really be something special for your mother. After everything your Mother has done for you it’s the least you can do!

You should consider using the textclues service which will help you create a really unique hunt and will save you time. A few of the benefits include:

  • Planning the hunt out in advance and starting the hunt whenever you would like
  • All the clues will be sent via text to your moms phone so there is no need to lay clues around the house (less setup and cleanup time)
  • You can ask multiple questions about one album or book which will be hard with physical clues
  • You’re mom will be shocked that she can text in answers over her phone and get the next clue
  • You’ll be able to use the service to make other scavenger hunts after Mother’s Day!

See how it works by trying out the Demo.

Why use Text Clues for your upcoming Easter Scavenger Hunt

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You’ve only got a few days away until Easter and you want to plan a really cool scavenger hunt for your kids, family, neighbours, friends, or anyone really!!! :) What do you do???

1) Don’t panic!!!

2) Use the quick and easy to use tool called Text Clues to make your next scavenger hunt!  Text Clues lets you create personalised mobile text message scavenger hunts for all occasions, and with Easter around the corner, what better time to starting using the tool?!

Why?

– It adds a little twist to the regular scavenger hunt (more fun and interactive – not looking aimlessly for prizes)

– Unlike a regular scavenger hunt, you don’t have to leave multiple paper clues throughout the hunt (i.e.: less set up time for you!)

– You can set up a hunt in minutes, and send it out to multiple numbers, thus again saving you time!!

– It works on any mobile phone :)

– It only costs $15 for 100 clues so you can create many many scavenger hunts for all occasions (and not just for Easter!)

– Great support to help you throughout your scavenger hunt needs and to ensure your scavenger hunt runs smoothly

Begin using Text Clues today and you and the huntee won’t be disappointed ;)