3 puzzles you can use in an office treasure scavenger hunt

Are you looking to spice up your corporate life with a little Adventure? Here are three ideas to get you started on creating your own office adventure!

White Board Marker Secret Message

White boards and dry-erase markers are commonplace in offices and they offer a great opportunity for a quick Adventure puzzle.

For this gambit, you’ll need:

·       A white board

·       Dry erase markers in multiple colors

·       A tool to make labels

Step 1: Figure out what code you want hidden on your markers and how you want to hide it. Will it be made up of letters or numbers? In my example, I wrote the message “USE BOTTLES TO WATER FLOWERS” read from top to bottom, left to right. The longer the message, the harder it will be for your players to guess the answer.

For a younger or more inexperienced crowd, you can simplify your code by writing only one number or letter on each marker, or have the message read left to right instead of up and down. Try to make it clear how to read the solution if it is not obvious.

Step 2: After deciding on what code you will hide on the markers, write the appropriate letters on your markers. In my example, I used a label marker, but you can have the same effect by using strips of scotch tape and a sharpie marker.

Make sure that each marker is a different color!

Step 3: Write a message to your players on the white board. Write each line of the message using the same color but change the color of the first letter of each line to match the correct order of your marker code. Your players will use this as a hint to place the markers in the correct order to get the secret message

My Adventure was themed around finding supplies for a secret promotion party. I’ve recreated my white board message.

Step 4: Decide on how you want to jumble your message.

Here’s the Rebus Puzzle. Just sound it out!

In the office I work at, we have a holder for the markers attached to a white board. I shuffled the markers and put them right back into the holder.

You can do something similar or place your markers elsewhere in your hunt, either the reward for solving a puzzle, hidden around the room, or placed in a known location (like a cup of pens, pencils and markers).

As part of the puzzle in my hunt, I rotated the markers so that the letters were hidden unless someone picked up or spun each marker. To make sure that the letters on the markers were found, I created a simple rebus puzzle to direct the players to “LOOK AT THE MARKERS”.

Alter Common Place Fixtures

A fun puzzle in the workplace (or in any adventure) is to toy with your player’s preconceived expectations. Think about your planned Adventure location and take note of items you see daily. You and your players have become so accustomed to seeing these objects every day that a subtle change may not even register at first.

For example, a stand of business cards or a bowl of candy.

Both items are very common in offices, do you even take notice of them anymore?

As a puzzle or a clue to your adventure, try altering one of these items.

Add a set of fake business cards (like the one seen here) to the rack that offers a clue or puzzle

Find similar looking candy to the type that is normally in the bowl of candy and use its new flavor as the solution to a puzzle. If you normally have a bowl of round peppermints, see if you can purchase a similar looking candy with orange or lemon flavoring.

Another commonplace item that is easy to change without people noticing is photographs. Here is an example I used in a recent hunt.

These photographs (blurred for privacy) are hung up on my desk at work. I subtly altered a few of the photographs to include hidden American Sign Language (ASL) symbols.

During the adventure, my players were given the clue below and an ASL alphabet guide.

The clue paper had boxes in the same locations as the photos hanging up at my desk and indicated which ones to look at and which order to translate the hidden ASL signs.

I altered these photographs and hung up the new photos weeks in advance. My players who had seen these photos everyday never noticed the change until they got the clue during the hunt.

 Tips from The Mystic:

·       If you create a taste-based puzzle, make sure that the flavor is recognizable. My office has a dish of peppermints and I found another candy product that looked the same but was bacon flavored. However, none of my play testers could identify the bacon flavor. I had to scrap the idea. Flavors like orange or lemon are more easily identifiable.

·       As mentioned before, your players may not even notice the changes you’ve made to the play area. If the changes you’ve made are important to your Adventure, add extra hints to point your players to the changed items.

Video Projector Puzzle

Another staple of most office buildings are video projectors. Usually, they can be found in conference rooms and employees are able to hook up their laptops and use them to broadcast their computer screens. If you have access to one of these projectors, here’s another idea for your in-office Adventure!

For this gambit you’ll need:

·       Access to a laptop in which you can create new user accounts

·       A video projector with the ability to connect your laptop to it (wirelessly or via HDMI cable)

·       Tape

Step 1: Figure out what code you will hide with this gambit. For this example, I hid a four-digit lock code.

Step 2: On your laptop, create a new profile. This is so your players can freely use the laptop without messing with your personal account or files. If you don’t already, put a password on your personal profile so it is not accessed accidentally.

If you would like to, you can also password protect your adventure profile and have your players discover the password as part of the game.

Step 3: Create four rows of folders, each row containing ten folders each. Name each folder after a number – zero to nine. These will represent the numbers on a padlock. As many computers won’t allow folders with the same name, you can make each folder unique by adding a letter. For example, row one can contain folders ONE (a), TWO (a), and THREE (a), while row two can contain ONE (b), TWO (b), THREE (b).

Mix up these folders so that each row contains all ten unique folders but in a different order. Look at my finished folder set up below. Note that I left the trash can and two additional folders called “BLACK” and “LOCK”. The folders served as a hint to use this code for the black lock.

Step 4: Take a screenshot of your finished desktop. For this puzzle, the placement of each folder is important, and you don’t want any player to accidentally move or delete folders and ruin the puzzle. Set the picture of the desktop as the desktop wallpaper. You can easily google how to do this on your own machine. Once you have set the photo as the desktop background, delete all the folders from the desktop. You’ll be left with just the background photo of folders that cannot be clicked, opened, or moved.

Step 5: Broadcast your laptop screen in the same manner you will have your players broadcast it. Find the four numbers that will be used for your padlock and outline the folder and folder name with tape. When your players broadcast the desktop screen, the secret four numbers needed for the lock will be circled on the screen or whiteboard you’ve put tape on!

Tips from The Mystic:

·       Before you set up this gambit, try placing a small piece of your tape on the back of the projector screen, or in the corner of the wall and wait a little bit before peeling it off. You want to make sure your tape won’t leave a mark on the screen or take off paint from the wall when it is removed. If you see damage from your tape, try a different type of tape or look for a different gambit. You don’t want to get in trouble with management!

·       Although it may be obvious to you that you will need to broadcast the computer on to the wall or projector screen with the tape, it might be confusing to your players. Add extra hints to lead your players to broadcast the computer screen over the projector. In my adventure, I put additional hints in the recycle bin folder on the laptop. Have someone playtest this to make sure your clues are clear!

 NOW IT’S YOUR TURN!

Have you created your own Adventure at work? Have you attempted any of the gambits above?

We welcome you to share your experiences old, new, good, and bad on the Constructed Adventures subreddit and on our Discord Channel. You can also find us on Instagram

Remember, every day is an opportunity to learn something new!