Christmas treasure hunt?!

[WaitWhatOh]

My big kids (adults in their twenties) are very excited by the idea of something like a treasure hunt to find their Xmas gifts, or clues to solve. And I have absolutely no idea how to go about organising it! And clue writing?!! Any help would be gratefully received.

Could you put some prompts into co pilot /chatgpt?
we did one for a big Xmas present when the kids were 7/10 so very much ‘up the apples & pears to where all the books are kept’ type clues. The kids all thought it was great and a really good way to drag out the excitement

DH does one every year to find a small thing eg tub of chocolates. He spends an infuriating amount of time writing clues on Christmas Eve (like the day has snuck up on him, FFS) but it’s always worth it. Sometimes they’re round the house, sometimes the house and garden, and sometimes the wider village depending on weather. Start at the end and work back, I reckon.

I've done quite a few for adults and kids over the years.

Some suggestions:

1 - Anagrams are easy simple clues but take people a while to figure out. Just pick something recognizable in your house, jumble up the letters and then leave the clues in the right place.

2 - Close up pictures are fun. Take some really close up pictures (as close as your phone will go, then crop in a bit) of places, and let them figure out what they are looking at.

3 - Hide clues on the Christmas tree.. This was a fun one, one year one of the clues lead to the tree, where there were 5-6 clues hanging up in hard to see places. A group of 4-5 adults frantically searching the tree was great.

4 - Describing things from a first person perspective "I am small and blue and I like to ___" is another fun and easy way to make riddles that lead to specific things/places in the house.

Oh my goodness you guys are amazing. Thank you so much! Great help.

We're usually making a slideshow with questions and slides with questions and answers come alternately. Here is a tutorial on making a video with pictures, and you can add questions of all sorts in there: to make as many words of randomly placed letters as possibe; close-up pictures of something so that the players would guess what this "something" actually is; science or geography facts; anagrams; creative tasks like writing a short poem with certain words, etc. Each question or task gives you a certain amount of points for completing it and then everyone gets prizes based on their total score.