Interesting Scavenger Hunt Items...

[Jordygirl]

A scavenger hunt is (probably) going to become a fairly big deal in my current WIP but I can't think of any things to put on the list. Help please?

[Joycecwilliams]

What about things that people have to get from hotels, but without checking in.

Bars of soap

Coffee packets

shampoo

[Polenth]

Where is the hunt taking place?

[Clair Dickson]

I've seen quite a few scavenger hunters who use photos in their hunt-- (picture 2am at a retail supercenter... ) so there's some ideas.

Out of state license plates is one for the photo hunt.

That's all I have to add... I've never done a scavenger hunt. =)

[kct webber]

DNA samples from famous people. :D

[Shweta]

I have no clue but googling "scavenger hunt ideas" got me these:

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_a_good_list_of_things_for_a_scavenger_hunt _party.
http://www.reasontoparty.com/scavengerhunt.htm


Many of 'em are probably too mundane for a novel but hey, I figured it might help :)

[Woodsie]

A neighbor's underwear.

[katiemac]

Which character organizes the hunt? What kinds of objects would he or she choose?

[maestrowork]

I'd say either go with something mundanely hilarious or bizarre. Don't settle for anything ordinary. Ordinary is boring.

[Jordygirl]

Some info on the scavenger hunt: the main character kind of gets sucked into it by a guy she meets at the lake. It's him and his friends against another "team" (so I don't really know who has SET UP the thing). I know I want interesting/funny items and that some travel is okay. Not all over the country, but all over the town and nearby cities/towns are fine.

Thanks for all the help so far... keep it coming (please!)

[Shweta]

Just a thought, Jordy -- would you like me to bounce this to Office Party at some point? People often come up with crazy wild things there :D

[CaroGirl]

These things always seem to endorse vandalism by asking for stuff like street signs, hubcaps and traffic cones. Also, funny or difficult-to-find things like a pink feather boa (you could have the guys not know what that is), a black cowboy hat, a 1968 penny... stuff like that. Good luck!

ETA: a laminated diner menu, a blue marble, a teacup and saucer that don't match, one individually wrapped piece of Bazooka Joe bubblegum, a Twinkie.

[maxmordon]

Foreign Currency

A magazine from the 90's

A sport shirt from the local team

An autographed book

Three empty glasses of mayo

Pistaccio nuts

[DeleyanLee]

Think about the area you're having them hunt in and the fun/stupid/different things that could be gathered there.

For instance, there's a particular water tower in a town near where I lived many years ago that's extremely phallic. One scavenger hunt a friend went on required (in not so clear and somewhat vulgar terms) a picture of someone dressed in white stroking the tower.

There was a sizeable sports stadium in town. Another item was to get XX amount of gum from beneath the seats there.

Think about your location and what would be fun to dramatize about it.

Good luck.

[allenparker]

My suggestions from past scavenger hunts I was on or involved in:


1. A picture of a policeman or policewoman with a naked guy in the background.


2. A female nipple imprint in a jar of peanut butter.

3. A matchbook with a verifiable phone number of the cocktail waitress at the <insert Hotel/Bar name>.

4. Yellow pages from a phone booth. (yeah, I'm that old and good luck!)

5. Two strands of dyed hair. (Must include root)

6. A cup of coffee from the Waffle House, but must have lipstick stain on cup.

7. A picture of a fireman with three guys mooning in the background.

8. Two girls flashing their boobs at the corner of <insert busy intersection here>.

9. And the last, but certainly my favorite... A Polaroid of a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.

[Gary Clarke]

A grave rubbing with the year 1974 on it.

a set of false teeth.

a set of french boules

the full body clippings from a white french poodle

[Kitty Pryde]

Some gems from my uni's freshman scavenger hunts in san francisco:

-a photo of a team member mooning the Blue And Gold Ferry (because they have the colors of our rival uni!)--it was funny that we were mooning an empty ferry, until a ferry packed to the gills with tourists scooted out from behind the empty one and we traumatized all those innocent folk who just wanted to take a boat trip to sausalito!

-a durian (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Durian) fruit--10 pounds of stanky spiky death in fruit form, most americans don't recognize it, it's incredibly hard to locate outside of SE Asia, and you have to barter for it because the little old ladies selling it won't speak english.

-A mural painted by the same artist who painted our own dorm's mural, or a mural with a specific thing painted on it

I think the really fancy adult scavenger hunts that are run at some colleges are really elaborate 'quest'-style affairs, a la The Amazing Race. People have to collect a clue before they can move on to the next clue. For some, accessing the net to search on the go is a must. I don't have a link but surely you could find some for inspiration.

[Maryn]

Remember, too, that most people will not give away anything of value or utility to a scavenger hunt, so some of the items suggested, while clever, are going to prove unobtainable unless the hunt people carry cash.

Maryn, who would not give away a sport team jersey, a cowboy hat, or nipple imprints

[Maryn]

Stray thought: I've heard of themed scavenger hunts in which the object is to collect the most items printed with, say, pink roses or filled wine glasses, whether they're menus, stationery, or wallpaper samples.

Maryn, who likes the idea of a digital photo scavenger hunt, where you photograph items rather than physically get them

[windyrdg]

Go to your local video store and see if they have the movie Scavenger Hunt. Very funny as I remember and useful for research.

BTW I vote with Maryn. Photos are better than the real thing. Especially in an era of digital camera and cell phones that take pictures. I'm imagining your characters having to have their picture taken at, say Hollywood and Vine and all the adventures they have trying to get there. I know I'm writing your book for you, but what if an eccentric millionaire offered a really huge sum to the winner?

[CACTUSWENDY]

If close to a rual area how about a glass of fresh milk from a cow. (real milk is super thick compared to what folks drink now days.)

Or a cow pie. (That's dodo for those of the city.)

One lb. of chicken feathers. (Can still be attached to chicken.)

One complete stalk of Corn...roots and all.

If by a river/steam/lake....a live fish in a jar. (Not the tropical kind from K-Mart)

A copy of the Beatles 'I want to hold your hand'....on a 45rpm record.

One bag of toe nail clippings

[willietheshakes]

A cup of hot fat.

And the head of Alfredo Garcia.

[FOTSGreg]

A web hotspot in a small rural town
A radar station
A Siberian Husky (complete with one brown eye and one blue eye)
A naval low-frequency transmission antenna
A truck scale
A coffee cup with the Joint Chiefs of Staff logo imprinted on it
The Necronomicon

[Donkey]

A close-up photo of someone giving a gargoyle the "bunny ears". (the peace sign hand signal behind the head) (Think about where you find gargoyles.)

A photo of one of your crew being "arrested" and handcuffed by a policeman. (doesn't have to be an actual arrest)

A photo of one of the male members getting his nails done in a salon by a Korean woman or being helped into a pair of pink high heels in an upscale shoestore.

A photo of a crewmember knee deep in pig shit/manure/dung.

[Quossum]

I was on a scavenger hunt once where we had to collect sounds. Each team was given a small tape recorder and off we went. I think some of the things we had to collect included:

The ferry's horn
Seagulls
Someone burping "Happy Birthday"
A fart

There were several other things which would involve travelling to specific spots in Galveston to get those particular sounds, but it was certainly a fun and different type of scavenger hunt.

I read a novel where a scavenger hunt was instrumental in the collection of liquor for a party. The characters went from house to house claiming to be on a scavenger hunt with only three things left. The other two were impossibly obscure, but the third one was "an open but unfinished bottle of liquor." Needless to say, they got plenty of liquor, and there was a hilarious scene where they encountered a vague, frazzled prof who gave them one of the other weird, obscure items and a Rumplemintz bottle with a crystallized inch of liquor at the bottom.

Ah, I remember the book! Alamo House. Hilarious book. Paperback version massacred by having the ending severely chopped off; read the hardback version instead!

--Q

[regdog]

My suggestions from past scavenger hunts I was on or involved in:


1. A picture of a policeman or policewoman with a naked guy in the background.


2. A female nipple imprint in a jar of peanut butter.

3. A matchbook with a verifiable phone number of the cocktail waitress at the <insert Hotel/Bar name>.

4. Yellow pages from a phone booth. (yeah, I'm that old and good luck!)

5. Two strands of dyed hair. (Must include root)

6. A cup of coffee from the Waffle House, but must have lipstick stain on cup.

7. A picture of a fireman with three guys mooning in the background.

8. Two girls flashing their boobs at the corner of <insert busy intersection here>.

9. And the last, but certainly my favorite... A Polaroid of a dog peeing on a fire hydrant.


:ROFL::roll: Interesting friends you've had there

[Perle_Rare]

Here's a few from my Engineering Scunt (scavenger hunt) years:

1. The largest number of fridge magnets.
2. The largest flag. Doesn't have to be a country flag.
3. Underwear that comes from as many different countries as possible. (One guy ended up taking his underwear off because it was made in Zimbabwe.)
4. A specific coin from a particular year.
5. A keepsake from a particular location. For example, a silver spoon from Niagara Falls.
6. A set of handcuffs.

There were many more items--along the lines of allenparker's list--but our team was always too small so we only concentrated on the things we could get. Our scavenger hunts were all-nighters that also had organized activities we had to participate in to collect points. For example, there might be a game of "strip" poker (it was permissible to show up wearing twenty bras under fifteen layered t-shirts) scheduled during the night or we might be required to provide a team of 4 that competes to be the fastest team to rotate the wheels on a car. I remember we got bonus points for that one because I was the only one who'd rotated tires before so I ended up as the leader, showing my male teammates how to do it. We also got bonus points because the owner of the car wasn't aware that the car wasn't safe at home at 3AM. (The owner's daughter had borrowed it for our purposes... Rumour has it, she did return it before it was missed.) Of course, one team showed up with an old-style VW Bug and had one guy lift the bumpers while the others rotated the tires. Entire tire-rotation took them less than a minute. They won that one hands down.

Those were the days... Thanks for the trip down memory lane and I hope this gives you some ideas for your story! :D