Can AI generate treasure hunts?
If you are looking for inspiration, AI can be used to help you generate a treasure hunt. By phrasing your questions carefully you can ask AI to create various treasure hunts which you can use straight from AI, or combine them to pick out the best bits from the generated suggestions.
We asked “Write me a treasure hunt for kid’s birthday party”
When we asked AI to generate a treasure hunt for a kid’s birthday party the response included a full plan on how to create a treasure hunt. It included preparation suggestions such as getting a treasure chest to fill with treasure, a list of rhyming clues such as “Ye need to find the place where ye rest yer head, and search underneath the bed!”, and instructions on how to run the treasure hunt. We thought these were excellent, and an incredibly quick way to get some great clues. The fact that it chose to theme it on pirates was surprising as the original question did not specify any sort of theme, but what was nice is that theme was applied to the clues themselves by using “pirate language” in the wording and in some of the planning preparation.
WE asked “What is a good treasure hunt for a garden party?”
We asked AI to create a treasure hunt for a garden party. AI approached this slightly differently to our question about a kid’s birthday party, as it gave some suggestions for themes (pirate, fairy tale quest & nature explorer) before listing out some preparation points such as making a map of the garden. It was really good that what it generated included some clue design ideas and some actual clues. The clue ideas it suggested were
- Riddles: “I have a face that doesn’t frown, I have hands that do not wave. I have numbers on my face, and my hands move at a steady pace. What am I?” (Answer: A clock)
- Puzzles: Jigsaw pieces or word searches that lead to the next clue.
- Visual Clues: Photos or drawings of locations in the garden.
- Physical Challenges: Tasks like “find the tallest flower” or “count the number of garden gnomes.”
In addition to the above it suggested some actual clues that could be used, such as:
- “To start your quest, find the old oak tree, where treasures are hidden, one, two, and three.”
- “Follow the path where butterflies play, find the bench and you’re halfway.”
There were some additional tips given too around safety, weather, teams and refreshments.
What is not good about an AI generated treasure hunt?
The worst thing about an AI generated treasure hunt is the lack of personalisation, which is to be expected. However, if you were to provide more information then it would tailor it further for you, so the more descriptive you are the more appropriate the response will be. We told the AI that we don’t have an oak tree in our garden and it responded
“No worries! You can adjust the clues to fit the specific features of your garden. Here’s a revised example of clues for a Pirate Adventure Theme, tailored for a generic garden setting:”
The clues it then gave all avoided the use of an oak tree (prevalent in the first set of clues).
Another downside to the generated clues is that sometimes they don’t quite make sense, or could be confusing, such as
“Near the roses, under a rock, lies the next clue, right by the dock.”
The clue here would be under a rock by the roses, but “right by the dock” makes it a little strange (does anyone have a dock in their garden?) and is evidence of the pirate theme being crowbarred into the clue.
The best treasure hunts are hands-on, with clues that have hunters make or use something, and all the suggestions in the AI generated treasure hunts were disappointingly just simple riddles. Have a look at our puzzle ideas, challenges and codes for lots of ideas to give a variety of treasure hunt clues – using these will make your treasure hunt more interactive and fun!
Should I use AI to generate a treasure hunt?
From our experiments an AI generated treasure hunt is great for inspiration but you will almost always want to tweak it, introduce more interesting clues and make it fit with the place you are doing your treasure hunt. Instead of getting AI to generate the whole treasure hunt you could ask it for a specific clue instead – we wanted a riddle for a clue hidden behind a TV and it produced a good riddle.
The speed at which it pulls together a full treasure hunt makes it very useful if you need a last-minute activity. Within 30 minutes you could have a treasure hunt ready to go. It might not be the most polished activity but it would still be enjoyable.
If you are going to use AI to help with planning a treasure hunt we advise you plan as much as you can yourself (themes, locations, items you want to use etc) and then ask AI for the specifics such as riddles.
How we generated treasure hunts with AI
We registered an account on ChatGPT (https://chatgpt.com/auth/login) which gives you access to the latest version of their AI system and the ability to go back and see your previous chats. This is a free service currently, so sign up and have a go!
