How to run a treasure hunt

The builder makes the paperwork. This explains the game it makes the paperwork for, and what actually happens on the evening.

1 · The idea in one minute
2 · Building it
3 · Choosing stations
4 · Writing clues
5 · The loop and the starts
6 · Printing and cutting
7 · Hiding the boxes
8 · On the day
9 · Saving and sharing
10 · Keeping it safe
11 · When it goes wrong

1 · The idea in one minute

Your stations form a loop. Every team starts at a different station and follows the clue it finds there to the next one, all the way round, picking up one piece of a treasure map at each stop.

The moment a team holds every piece, it runs to the assembly point, lays the map out, and the X shows where the treasure is. First team there wins.

Two things make it work. Because teams start at different points, nobody can simply follow the group in front. And because the loop is a circle, every team walks exactly the same distance whatever station they began at — so nobody is handed a shorter route.

Eight stations, eight teams, about ninety minutes is the shape most people end up with. Six stations is a comfortable hour. Twelve is a long evening and somebody will get bored on the walk.

2 · Building it

The builder opens with an example hunt already filled in — generic places, no clue text you would actually use. It is there so you can see the shape. Type over it.

If you would rather start from nothing, open Game Library → Empty hunt.

Tab	What goes in it
Setup	The title on every printed sheet, the area description, and the assembly point — where teams run when they have all the pieces. Make that somewhere you will actually be standing.
Teams	One row per team. The colour is the important part — it is printed on the ribbon, the cards and the boxes. Names are optional; put them in and they appear on the start card and score card, which children like.
Stations	The places. Each one also carries a pin position for the play-zone map — drag it roughly where the place is.
Clues	The clue that leads teams to each station. See below, this is the bit people get backwards.
Print	Everything at once, as one long document.

3 · Choosing stations

Pick places a child can describe. "The big tree" works. "The third lamppost on the left" does not.
Walkable in five to eight minutes between neighbours on the loop. Look at the map sheet: if two pins are far apart, that leg is a long silent walk.
No main roads between stations. This decides the route more than anything else.
Somewhere to hide a box that is out of sight but not up anything.
One of them should be your base, so the assembly point is also on the trail.

4 · Writing clues

The one thing people get backwards. On the Clues tab, the clue you write for a station is the clue that sends teams to it — not the clue they find when they arrive. The builder puts each clue in the box at the previous stop on the loop. So the clue you write for "The big tree" is the one hidden at whichever station comes before it.

Seven puzzle types, and mixing them is what keeps it interesting:

Type	What it is	Good for
Riddle	A rhyme describing the place	Anyone. Use for the first and last stops
Anagram	Scrambled letters of the place	Readers. Keep it to one short word
Picture clue	Two pictures that add up to the name	Younger children — no reading needed
Secret code	Caesar shift. There is a helper on the Clues tab	Older children, and it feels clever
Directions	Plain instructions from the last stop	A leg that would otherwise be hard
Missing vowels	`P _ R K G _ T _`	Quick, and works while walking
Math	A sum whose answer is a number at the place	Mixed-age teams — someone can always do it

Use **double asterisks** to make the place name bold. Put each line on its own line — short lines read better in a torch beam than a paragraph.

Aim for thirty seconds. A clue that takes five minutes to crack is a clue that stops the game. The walk is the game; the puzzle is the doorway to it.

5 · The loop and the starts

The loop is the order stations are visited. The starts say which station each team begins at. The builder fills both in and you rarely need to touch them.

Two rules if you do change them. Every team must start at a different station, or two teams walk the whole evening together. And the loop must visit every station once — the builder draws it on the map sheet as a dotted line, so look at that: if it crosses itself a lot, teams will pass each other, which is fun, and if it doubles back, somebody is walking a long way for nothing.

6 · Printing and cutting

Print the whole document once. In the print dialogue choose A4, margins none or minimum, and turn background graphics on — without it the colour bands vanish and every team's cards look identical, which is the one thing that must not happen.

Sheet	What to do with it
Cover	Keep it with the kit
Game Master guide	Read it before the day. It has the whole plan
Answer key	Do not leave this lying around. It has every solution
Master card	Fold and stand it where you sit. It reads upright from both sides
Station labels	Tape one on each box
Clue cards	Cut apart. One pile per colour per station
Start cards	One per team, handed out at the briefing
Score cards	One per team, for ticking off pieces
Treasure map	One per team. Cut each into its pieces along the dashed grid
Play-zone map	One per team, so they know the boundary
Cricket bonus	Optional. Run it at the last station
Certificate	Fill in the winning team's name

Cut the map pieces last and keep each team's set in its own envelope. Mixing two teams' pieces together is the single most common way an evening goes wrong, and it is very hard to untangle in the dark.

7 · Hiding the boxes

One box per station. Inside each box, for every colour:

that colour's clue card for this station,
that station's map piece,
a small treat.

So a box at station 3 in an eight-team game holds eight clue cards, eight copies of piece C, and eight treats. Every team visits every station, so every box needs everybody's things in it.

Hide them out of sight but at ground level. Nothing that needs climbing, reaching over water, or moving something heavy.

8 · On the day

An hour before: place the boxes. Walk the loop yourself as you do it — this is when you find out that one gate is locked.
Briefing: ribbons on, hand each team its start card, score card and play-zone map. Say the boundary out loud and point at it.
Say these four things: take only your colour · leave everything else exactly where it is · stay inside the boundary · when you have every piece, run to the assembly point.
Go. Teams walk to their own start station and begin.
While they run: marshals walk between stations. Their job is to top boxes back up — a team that finds an empty box is stuck through no fault of its own.
The finish: first team to assemble the map and find the treasure wins. Let the others finish anyway; the certificate is for the winners, the treats are for everyone.

Evening light. Most people run these at dusk, which is lovely and means every team needs a torch, and clue text needs to be big. If you are printing small, print bigger.

9 · Saving and sharing

Save game keeps the hunt on the device you are using — nothing is uploaded, and nothing you type leaves your browser. It stays there until you clear the browser's site data.

Game Library lists what you have saved, and lets you open, duplicate, rename or delete any of it. Duplicating last year's hunt and changing the clues is much faster than starting again.

Export writes the whole hunt to a .json file. That is how you move it to another device, send it to whoever is helping, or keep a real backup. Import reads one back.

Clearing your browser data deletes your saved hunts. There is no copy anywhere else, because nothing is ever uploaded. If a hunt took you an evening to write, export it.

10 · Keeping it safe

Walk the route yourself first, at the time of day you will play it.
Mark the boundary on the map sheet and say it out loud at the briefing.
A grown-up with every team of young children. Older teams can go alone if the zone is enclosed.
Marshals roam rather than standing still, so there is always somebody within shouting distance.
One phone number on the score card — yours — so a lost team knows who to ring.
Count everyone back in at the assembly point before anybody goes home.

11 · When it goes wrong

What happened	What to do
A box has been emptied or taken	Marshals carry spares of every colour's card and piece. Print two extra sets for exactly this.
A team cannot crack a clue	Marshals give it away after three or four minutes. A stuck team is a team that stops playing.
Two teams end up together	Check their start cards — one of them almost certainly went to the wrong station first. Send it to the right one; it has lost nothing but a few minutes.
A team takes the wrong colour	Harmless, as long as they put it back. It is why the rule is said twice at the briefing.
The printout has no colour	Background graphics are off in the print dialogue.
The map pieces do not fit together	Two teams' sets got mixed. Each team's map is a complete set on its own — hand out one whole set and carry on.
Rain	Clue cards in sandwich bags. Ten minutes of work, saves the evening.
The builder looks empty on your phone	Saved games live on the device that saved them. Export from the first device, import on the second.

A note on what is stored

This builder has no accounts, no server and no database. Everything you type stays in the browser you typed it in, and the only way it leaves is if you export it yourself. Nobody else can see your hunt, and neither can we.

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