Today I've mostly bin...

[Bunnylump]

Oh I don't just THREATEN that. I actually do it. Haven't you noticed the toenails I removed with pliers? It's not easy getting hints from him, you know...

[Scurra]

It's not easy getting hints from him, you know...

That's not true. Whether you understand the hints is a whole different story...

[Bunnylump]

Actually, to be fair, you have been much more forthcoming. But as you only had a couple of toenails left I'm not altogether surprised. NOW all you need to do is to be forthcoming AND comprehensible. Next, it's the Chinese water torture.

[dramaticat]

Well, this was yesterday actually!

Went on my first ever Easter egg hunt.

I was crap. I was the last to find mine and had to have clues.

In my defence, early on in the hunt I was told I was very warm when I was nowhere near it. I spent ages looking in a place where there were no eggs at all

Today I'm on a car treasure hunt. I'm not much good at reading maps. What do you think the outcome is likely to be ...

[Bunnylump]

Stopping at a pub and staying there???

[tricia]

A nice drive down to Lomond shores at Loch Lomond, scenery as usual was stunning. I keep taking this for granted as it is only 20 minutes from home. Then a trip to a local garden centre to get some plants to replace those that died over winter. We planted them this afternoon and hope we get no frosts! Dutch friens arrive next Saturday so its got to look nice. Im hoping that my day out will clear my head to the remaining puzzles.

Tricia

[MBH]

....travelling

While you've been travelling, I've been hacking your family photo album. I don't care what you say - I'm sharing this with the rest of the gang

[giraffe]

I love it!

(Have you seen my new avatar? It's a picture of a couple of passing giraffes that I took on Saturday morning. )

[LAT]

Both photos are great!

We went to the garden centre this morning and saw some giraffe statues for sale. They must have been about 12 feet high at least. We resisted the temptation to buy one but I would have loved to see the look on our childrens' faces when they next came home if we had!

[giraffe]

Ooh now you're talking!

[LAT]

Dutch friends arrive next Saturday so its got to look nice.
Tricia

And I am off to the Netherlands on Wednesday. But only for one night. Hopefully long enough to have some lovely white asparagus.

[Bunnylump]

Today we went for yet another walk, this time to College Lake wildlife reserve. We saw a hobby, lapwings, a cormorant, and lots of pretty wild flowers. I'm NOT knowledgeable in any way about these things - they needed looking up after we saw them!! But it was another beautiful day. Even better my friend then invited us back for our tea, so no cooking either. Yippee!!

edit

Jet setting again, LAT?? Have fun.

[LAT]

Work unfortunately, not fun exactly!

[dramaticat]

Stopping at a pub and staying there???

Well, we did stop at the first pub we came to - but we only had a coffee! We didn't get a break after that. I was desperate for the loo after being in the car since 10.30 - we finally got back to the starting/finishing point at 6pm - it was only supposed to take five hours

We were quite grumpy - some of the clues weren't worded very well so we didn't put down exactly the answer they wanted and got docked marks for that. I think there was one thing nobody found!

Nevertheless, we came second

[Bunnylump]

Well done!!
We did a car treasure hunt years ago, when my children were quite young. It was arranged to raise funds for the Pepper Foundation nurses (my husband is very involved in an annual charity concert fundraiser). It was a brilliant idea - they had organised it to go all round pretty Bucks and Beds villages, spotting things like Pub Names, unusual topiary, weird chimneys etc. It also incorporated a visit to Waddesden Manor, a ride in the steam train at the Bucks railway centre (where there were more clues), and the whole thing finished at Bletchley Park. They had also been out and put up signs with letters which could be easily seen from the road which spelled out the name of the next year's project. The big problem was that they had decided to use some line map direction scheme which is used in the army. Basically, no one really understood it, and so we spent the whole day going the wrong way!!! There were cars driving up and down roads with perplexed looking puzzle hunters in them.

The hunt was supposed to last a couple of hours but ended up taking all day. We got all the clues but got lost at the end, and by this time had crying hungry children in the back of the car. So we opened the "emergency only, this will disqualify you" map. I'm really glad we did, when we saw what we WOULD have won (as it turned out we were the only ones who got all the clues). It was a picture drawn by Tony Hart (of "Vision on" fame) which was all plastered with the name of the charity, and was HIDEOUS). We finally got to Bletchley Park at about 6pm, and so many people had NOT got there, there were hundreds of doughnuts left over. My son, who was by this time starving, unbeknown to me, ate about 5 doughnuts, and was then sick ALL THE WAY HOME.

[dramaticat]

Don't get me wrong - it was a very popular event and most people did enjoy themselves (at least for part of the time ) and the weather was great. We all had a good time having a drink at the pub at the end.

What I would learn from this - if I ever decided to run one myself - is having set out the route, checked it etc etc, take off two or three locations because people trying to work out clues are going to take far longer than you ever did finding them in the first place! I think the main problem was that it was simply too long.

Oh, and make sure no one can misinterpret your clues and if you want specific wording in the answers, make sure you say so!

Thinking about it, I did do a treasure hunt as part of the murder mystery day I wrote. But that was five locations, where people had to read five statements about what various suspects were up to at the relevant time and which led on to the next location. There was nothing cryptic about it and people who were fit and healthy did it in 15 minutes!

[Bunnylump]

You see, I had vaguely thought it might be nice if we ever manage to get our acts together to meet up some time to do a treasure hunt. But the one I went on, like you say, was too long and too complicated. In a way, I think Scurra's suggestion of using the map trail I wrote for the Shakespeare issue as a car trail was actually a pretty good one. If we did something similar, but then hid clues at the locations it might be fun. Having said that, it would require someone to live nearby to do that. Also, of course, you end up in a car with only a few people, so don't get as much time with others. Added to that, everyone is so far afield it's not as if everyone could meet up in one day without staying over somewhere. So it all gets horribly complicated. I know, having tried to organise that mini meet last year. And then for various reasons loads of people couldn't make the same date either.

[Scurra]

Why do you suppose I get all of the PB puzzles tested by several people before the rest of you see them? And even then I frequently get it wrong! The only real advantage I have is that the magazine is supposed to last for a month or two, and it's not a race, so there is room for people to get stuck.

I play a lot of board games, and they often come with an estimated "playing time" on the box. And that playing time turns out to be surprisingly accurate - but only after you have played the game a few times and are feeling confident. The first time you play, the game will take at least twice as long as the box says - and that's not counting the time taken to go through the rules as well. And then people who aren't expecting that get quite upset because the time on the box looks like a massive underestimate.

The same is true of things like the treasure hunt you describe. The people who set it are operating at a massive disadvantage, which is that they know how it is supposed to work! They forget to factor in the "first time" effect, which badly skews time estimates.

[gill216]

Talking of meets it's time to think about this years meet. I'll make a new thread.

[giraffe]

I've only done one treasure hunt and I was ready to strangle the kids at the end of it (Not because of them, but they were within reach!). A lot of the clues involved reading the small print on the notice boards outside churches, (what time is choir practice on the 23rd March?) or the rules of the local angling club, which were pinned to a gate by the river (no-one found that one) It was all too obscure and involved hopping in and out of the car, and you kept catching up the other teams and seeing what they were doing. I hated it. I had always thought they sounded like fun.