Tag Archives: scavenger hunt

The Zcavenger Hunt Was a Huge Success!

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Several friends started sharing this video with me not long after it was posted (and already going viral).

While so much of modern politics is mired in mudslinging, negativity, fearmongering, and hate speech, Zohran Mamdani opted instead to get his fellow New Yorkers moving, excited, and motivated in a healthy, fun, engaging way: a scavenger hunt.

This video got 114,000 views in one day. And as for the actual turnout:

Participants who arrived early received their playing card and their first clue:

So many players documented their adventure across social media, not only excited about taking on this walking-friendly public challenge, but meeting fellow New Yorkers who were similarly buzzing about this fun, educational event!

The cards ran out quickly, but that didn’t stop many intrepid puzzlers from taking on the journey regardless.

They were assisted by many fellow Zcavenger hunters sharing pics of the clues online, as well as offering photos to document their progress!

The tweet above brilliantly summarizes some of the joys that come along with a public event like this. It’s not all about winning or completing the challenge. Sometimes, it’s about discovering something new about a place you thought you knew, or exploring a place that you didn’t know before!

It was an absolute joy to follow all of the posts across Twitter and Bluesky about the event. It gave me flashbacks to The Great Urban Race from years ago!

A recurring motif was all the fresh air and exercise the Zcavenger hunters were enjoying. It was a beautiful day and solvers made the most of it.

By any and all metrics, this was a huge success. THOUSANDS of New Yorkers came out to explore, enjoy the city, meet fellow puzzlers, and revel in a truly rare occurrence: a campaign event that left people smiling at the end.

Feels like all of enby NYC is out here doing the #ZcavengerHunt and that's rad

— Francis Heaney (@francisheaney.bsky.social) 2025-08-24T20:45:36.808Z

When I talk about puzzles bringing people together, this is the energy I mean. Whether it’s a tournament or a scavenger hunt or simply a few people gathered around a kitchen table, puzzles are community builders.

Yes, puzzles can be a solitary endeavor, and a delightful one at that, but so much of the joy of puzzling comes from solving together, sharing the experience.

Here’s hoping we see more of this energy in the future.

The Puzzliest Hallmark Holiday Films!

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Unless you’re trapped under a rock, you’ve probably seen at least one of the barrage of Hallmark holiday films unleashed on the viewing public over the years. They release so many, in fact, that many times, they have more new holiday movies than there are days between Thanksgiving and Christmas!

And I’ve watched a LOT of them. This won’t surprise longtime readers, given my extensive reviews of Hallmark’s Crossword Mysteries series in the past.

But you might be surprised by just how many Hallmark movies feature puzzly themes as the hook on which to hang yet another holiday romance.

So today, let’s look at the puzzliest offerings of Hallmark’s holiday season!

The Christmas Quest

Debuting just this week and starring Hallmark movie royalty like Lacey Chabert, Kristoffer Polaha, and Erin Cahill, The Christmas Quest answers the question “What if Indiana Jones, but Christmas?”

They’ve got ripoff music, the map gimmick, and even a giant boulder joke, as Lacey’s treasure hunter recruits her ex-husband (an expert on dead languages) to complete the treasure hunt started by her mother years before.

Okay, so it’s less Indiana Jones than that one episode of MacGyver with the big sapphire, but it’s actually cool to see the mix of Scandinavian lore with standard Hallmark tropes… even if the ending doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Mystery on Mistletoe Lane

A historian and single mom moves into a historic home for her new job, and her children discover a Christmas mystery lurking in the walls of the house.

As our historian butts heads with the former head of the historical society, as well as the douche-hat deputy mayor, she tries to revive the town’s Christmas spirit (in a historical way), drive up interest in the historical society, and unravel the festive mystery she calls her new home.

The scavenger hunt with semi-riddle-y clues is pretty fun (and turns the obnoxious children into more engaging characters as they explore), and unlike many of the “puzzly” Hallmark films, you can enjoy solving along with the characters. Plus you get the big reveals, the perfectly timed snowfalls, and a romance that takes about two weeks to cook. Not bad.

On the 12th Date of Christmas

Two designers of puzzly scavenger hunts — a man who prefers working alone and a woman who needs to find her confidence and voice — are seeking the same promotion, but get thrown together to create a holiday scavenger hunt for a big client.

These might be the two least socially capable people in the universe, so seeing them bumble around Chicago as they come up with twelve festive events to coincide with the 12 days of Christmas is a little bit of a chore.

Honestly, this one is barely a story. She resolves her voice thing in the first twenty minutes, and the requisite 90-minute-mark misunderstanding is so cartoonishly simple to resolve, and yet, they both buffoonishly avoid doing so.

Unlocking Christmas

An injured air force vet returns home and meets a doctor just starting out in town, and sparks definitely do not fly at first glance.

But when they each discover a key and a riddle waiting for them that night, they work together to solve a Christmas mystery that requires them to perform a few acts of kindness for others along the way.

This one is relatively harmless fun, as this romance is clearly being orchestrated for the benefit of both lonely parties. Of course, that doesn’t stop the side characters from being much more likable than our protagonists. I’d rather watch hometown boy’s soon-to-be-father best friend and doctor lady’s new hospital pal solve Christmas mysteries instead.

Christmas in Evergreen: Tidings of Joy

Katie is vacationing in the famously (almost suspiciously) Christmassy small town of Evergreen, only to get roped into writing about the town for a magazine article.

But as she explores the town and gets wrapped up in its many Christmas stories (including a smashed magic snowglobe AND the mystery of a lost time capsule), she finds her cynical views on Evergreen fading and her affections for a particular Evergreen resident growing.

This almost feels like a parody of a Hallmark movie. They set up the out-of-towner, the Christmas mystery, the friends-who-clearly-like-each-other, the loved-one-who-will-miss-Christmas, and more within the first few minutes.

Plus there are so many Hallmark alums (many of them referencing OTHER Hallmark movies) that it feels intentionally wink-at-the-camera-y.

The puzzling here is very minor, but it’s worth watching for two reasons:

  1. the friends-who-clearly-both-want-more-but-don’t-want-to-risk-the-friendship who work together to fix the magic snowglobe
  2. one very funny bit of CGI moment you simply have to experience for yourself.

A Christmas to Treasure

We switch to Lifetime for this one, but most of the Hallmark tropes still fit.

Six childhood friends are reunited at Christmas by a treasure hunt, posthumously created the old woman who used to host their clubhouse.

While one treasure hunter hopes to find the money he needs to buy the property and bring it back to life, another wishes to find seed money for his growing business. And wouldn’t you know it, they used to date but things ended badly. Will one last treasure hunt be the key to everyone’s happily ever after?

Kinda cool to see a non-hetero romance take center stage for once. That being said, this one is incredibly saccharine-sappy, and the most entertaining character is the wacky villainous real estate agent trying to cash in on the property.

As for the puzzly hunt… it’s more of a walk through memory lane for the characters, so not much to solve here.

The 12 Games of Christmas

A film from the Great American Family channel takes up the final spot on our list today, as our protagonists actually get sucked INTO a Christmas board game and have to complete holiday tasks in order to return to the real world in time to enjoy Christmas festivities.

Sounds like a slam dunk, right? Cool concept, great cast, what’s not to love?

Well…

The “lessons” behind each festive task were so ham-fisted and the logic so lacking that I couldn’t even enjoy the campy fun of it all. It was a bummer, because I was sure we had a winner on our hands here.

So, when it comes to Hallmark holiday fare, are the puzzly ones any better than the average festive fare? It’s hard to say.

There are lots of Christmas scavenger hunts (like the one seen in the creatively-named Christmas Scavenger Hunt), but most of them are just lists of things to do, and not the more elaborate puzzly hunt of our first entry.

But I think they do make a nice scaffolding upon which to spend two hours watching attractive people fall in love. Add a smattering of snowfall, and you’ve got a recipe for Yuletide entertainment… or at the very least, fun background noise while you do a jigsaw puzzle or solve a crossword.

Hosting A Holiday Puzzle Hunt?

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If you’re looking to spruce up Christmas morning with a puzzly challenge, or maybe prevent the kids from tearing through that wrapping paper in record time, you could create a mini holiday puzzle hunt for them to extend the holiday fun a little longer.

There are several ways to do this. You could have Santa leave them a treasure map to follow. You could create a scavenger hunt with different places to check. Or you could create a puzzle hunt where each clue or puzzle leads to the next and has to be solved in order.

But how do you flesh it out and keep it seasonal? We’ve got a host of suggestions awaiting you. Sprinkle a few of these across the house on Christmas morning and you’ll be sure to delight the puzzly denizens of your home after Santa has come and gone.

Maybe they have to look for gifts wrapped in a particular type of wrapping paper. Perhaps there are clues written on them or hidden inside, or maybe the wrapping paper itself sends them on to their next clue.

If it’s more of a scavenger hunt-style of game, the wrapping paper approach is perfect. They could be stashed around the house, waiting to be found, and there’s no threat of them being mixed up with the actual gifts.

Perhaps there are puzzle pieces at the bottom of their stockings, and they have to work together to assemble them and figure out where to go next. (Craft stores have plain white mini jigsaw puzzles, you could write out or draw out clues, mix up the pieces, and distribute them in several spots with ease.)

Did Santa leave a clue when he sampled the milk and cookies left out of him? Maybe a gingerbread man points the kids in a certain direction, or Santa urges the children to have breakfast before the festivities start (pushing them toward another clue in the kitchen AND toward a healthy Christmas breakfast in the morning).

Your Christmas tree is also perfect for concealing clues and puzzly elements. With lights and ornaments galore, it’s the ideal spot to hide things, whether it’s letters that spell things out, or numbered clues to be solved in order. You could even hang different numbers of various objects (6 candy canes, 3 silver stars, 4 photo ornaments) that are used as a code later to unlock something.

Does the Elf on a Shelf have a clue? Did it see something, or can it point them in the right direction? Is there a paper chain of snowflakes where the different branches of the snowflake are highlighted like clock hands?

Once you start looking at the trappings of the holiday in a puzzly way, you’ll find more and more methods for stashing hints and elements of your puzzle hunt anywhere and everywhere.

Hopefully these suggestions got you off to a good start! Have you hosted a holiday puzzle hunt or celebrated the holidays in a puzzly way, fellow PuzzleNationers? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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Go For a Nice Relaxing Puzzle Hunt with Letterboxing!

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Who can resist a treasure hunt? Who doesn’t want to play the role of the clever intrepid adventurer who reads maps, deciphers clues, solves riddles, and finds a hidden cache that eluded so many others?

We’ve discussed them in the past, covering famous ones like Forrest Fenn’s poem or the visual treasure hunt clues of The Secret, as well as tips for creating one of your own.

But did you know there’s another sort of treasure hunting out there that requires nothing more than your wits, your patience, and your willingness to exercise and explore?

[Image courtesy of Underhobby.]

It’s called letterboxing.

Essentially, you’re hunting for small, weatherproof boxes in publicly accessible areas — parks, for instance — with the goal of celebrating your success locating the well-concealed box. From a given starting point — a letterboxing catalog, or a website, or one given to you by the letterbox designer themselves — you must hunt down the box. (Your state might even maintain an archive of available letterboxing spots. Mine certainly does!)

Sometimes there are clues, or puzzles to be solved, or it’s simply meant to be found by determined, keen-eyed hunters.

Inside, you’ll find a logbook awaiting your personal stamp (to mark that you found it) as well as a stamp unique to that letterbox for you to use in your own record book to record your success in locating the box.

Devoted letterboxers often keep careful records of how many letterboxes they’ve planted, how many they’ve found, which letterboxing events they’ve attended, and more.

And it’s a hobby that dates back more than 150 years!

[Image courtesy of Ms. Nasser’s Art Studio.]

Now, if this sounds familiar, there’s good reason for that. Over the last fifteen years, an updated version of letterboxing has emerged: geocaching.

Geocaching functions mostly along the same lines, but with one crucial difference.

Geocaching is all about finding exact GPS coordinates.

But it can also involve the same exploration, puzzling, and problem-solving as letterboxing. I’ve seen some that contain puzzles that reveal coordinates to other geocaches, like popsicle sticks that have to be sorted to reveal the necessary numbers. There are even some that require you to solve a puzzle to open the letterbox itself.

Some people are very clever indeed, and they’re waiting for you to accept the challenge.

Have you ever been letterboxing or geocaching, fellow puzzlers and PuzzleNationers? Are you planning to try it out in the future? Let us know in the comments section below. We’d love to hear from you!

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Puzzling Virtually at Norwescon 43!

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nwc43

Over the weekend, I participated in an online version of the celebrated sci-fi, fantasy, and horror convention Norwescon.

Although many of the convention’s panels and events have a writerly focus, plenty of attention is also given to art, films, games, and pop culture, so there was plenty for puzzle and game fans to enjoy at the event.

Naturally, since the convention was being held virtually rather than in person, some creativity was required to redesign events to be enjoyed from the comfort of attendees’ homes.

For instance, costumes were shown off through video or submitted photos — there was even a closet cosplay challenge held where participants had twenty minutes to create a costume based solely on what they could find in their closets!

As for my contributions, each year I host a themed scavenger hunt and an escape room for teen attendees to enjoy.

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The scavenger hunt adapted to the format easily. We cast volunteers to portray different characters from the film The Princess Bride, and players had scheduled times to actually interact with them through Zoom chats. Players downloaded a PDF of the rules and some puzzles to be solved, and they would receive a code phrase upon completing each of their assigned tasks.

(The code phrases, when properly combined, revealed a secret word which would “trigger” a surprise video.)

Their more puzzly tasks included using instructions to whittle down a list of 40 possible ingredients down to the three Miracle Max would need for his miracle pill for Westley, as well as solving a logic puzzle to find evidence that an ROUS was innocent of a royal guardsman’s disappearance.

And on the last day of the convention, they attended the wrap-up panel where we explained the hunt in full, thanked the cast, announced the winners, took suggestions for a theme for next year’s scavenger hunt, and even played a Cameo video from a member of the film’s cast as a surprise for all the attendees!

It was a rousing success.

3po top half

Adapting the Star Wars-themed escape room for a virtual format was far more daunting. After all, one of the most satisfying aspects of escape room solving is to actually physically solve puzzles, unlock containers, open doors, and defeat all sorts of key locks, combination locks, and more.

My solution to this problem was to still allow players to “unlock” and open something, just something virtual: password-protected PDF files.

wall unit 2

[This “panel” required a 5-digit code and a 3-digit combination to unlock.]

I created a webpage with images of all the “locked” panels for them to virtually open, each of which had symbols to indicate what sort of lock there was, as well as links to the password-entry screens. As they found keys and solved puzzles, they coordinated to try different panels and see which keys and codes unlocked the PDFs, which then opened to give them new tools and puzzles to solve.

It wasn’t the most elegant solution, but once players got the hang of it, they were soon racing through the room, using a built-in chat window to keep track of items they hadn’t used and working out passwords in real time.

One of the players even started livestreaming her efforts to solve a pipe puzzle on Twitch so everyone could solve along with her. It was a very cool and innovative way to virtually solve!

Hopefully, we’ll be back in person for next year’s convention and we can get back to opening locks and running around for a proper scavenger hunt. But either way, it’s nice to know we’re adaptable and creative enough to still pull them off in the virtual space when circumstances arise.

After all, as long as the players had fun, we can definitely call it a win.

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Make the Season Bright (and Puzzly)!

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Christmas is fast approaching, but there’s still time to put a nice puzzly spin on this festive holiday.

Naturally, we have a few ideas for how to do that without shelling out more of your hard-earned cash. (This is why you won’t see puzzle boxes or those marble-run boxes for gift cards here. This is all DIY!)

So let’s look at some puzzle-inspired ways to enhance your Yuletide endeavors!

[Image courtesy of Destination Imagination.]

Scavenger Hunt / Puzzle Hunt

Yes, this is always the first suggestion on our list because it’s a fun idea you can tailor to any age group. Whether they’re solving riddles, figuring out vague references to places in the house, or simply searching for gifts like Easter eggs, it can freshen up the Christmas morning experience to exercise their brains before they put their arms to work tearing open wrapping paper.

puzzlelove

Puzzles for Presents / Puzzle Password

I know a couple who absolutely love cryptic-style crossword clues, and on more than one occasion, before one gives the other a birthday or Christmas gift, they’ll have to solve a cryptic clue.

Often they’re about the couple themselves, or multiple clues will spell out a message. It’s a sweet little puzzly way to “earn” your gifts, if you’re into that sort of thing.

You can easily do this with kids by pretending the wrapped gifts are “locked” and they have to figure out a code or find a “key” to free the present. (Heck, some ribbons are so resilient that you really can lock up a present!)

daggertrap

Paper Locks

Similarly, you can create actual paper locks to be opened or employ the puzzly art of letterlocking to create a little mechanical puzzle to be unraveled before opening a gift.

There are some wonderful DIY tutorials and YouTube videos out there detailing how to create these whimsical little challenges, and it’s pretty impressive how much you can do with some paper, glue, and creativity.

[Image courtesy of Nadim’s Craft.]

Origami Puzzle Box

And speaking of all the things you can do with paper, it should come as no surprise that there are puzzle boxes out there that you can create with the Japanese paper-folding art of origami.

Some are simple, some are complex, and yes, none of these will stop a child determined to get to that gift, but these are wonderfully intricate and stylish ways to present someone you care about with a gift experience they’re remember.

Do you have any suggestions for making the holiday season puzzlier? Let us know in the comment section below! We’d love to hear from you.

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