How to use AI to plan a Scavenger Hunt for Teenagers

Can AI plan a party? Yes. Can AI plan a scavenger hunt birthday party? Also yes! Today we threw an AI generated scavenger hunt / treasure hunt for our teenager and it was a huge hit. In this post, I’m going to explain how to plan a scavenger hunt using artificial intelligence.

Mom’s Party Planning AI Helper

There was a time I would have joyfully put together a treasure hunt through sheer will alone, writing every line of every clue and coming up with clever riddles and puzzles to solve.  I’m not in that time right now. I’m working full time, getting a master’s degree and doing my best to make sure the family is fed and that our house is not at risk of turning into a bio-hazard…so things that require more than minimal mental power don’t get done.

For things like coming up with written details, AI is a miracle if you know how to do the party prompt engineering to get the response you need. In about 20 minutes, AI buttoned up all the party details for a treasure hunt after very little thoughtful work on my part.

Prompt engineering for scavenger hunt planning

To plan something like a scavenger hunt or treasure hunt, you’re going to have to be really specific about what you want your AI to do and how you want to do it.

Here’s a starter list with things you are going to want to include//my answers for what I’ve shown in my treasure hunt example throughout the post:

• What you need the AI to do: create a treasure hunt with puzzles, clues and QR codes
• Who your target audience is: 17 year old boys
• How difficult should this be: medium
• Interests of the audience: The boys like weight lifting, protein powder, their mommas and hanging out with their girlfriends when they are not playing video games.
• Where the treasure hunt stops are at: give it a list and location!
• Add additional details, like things available to use: we have puzzle boxes
• Set the tone: make it funny.

In paragraph form, this turned into:

There are many (many) generative AI tools to use out there, but for this example, I used ChatGPT 4.0. With the above information (I didn’t include any links, just the location/store names), here’s what it gave me:  

The results are not going to be perfect, but they’re going to be a really good start to get things 80% there and it beats the heck out of brainstorming from square one!

Use Google Forms for your Treasure Hunt

Since you’re not going to be standing right there with your teenagers over the course of the hunt, you need  a way to deliver clues and create a few riddles or puzzles for them to solve.

A super helpful tool here is Google Forms. You can set these up for free, and configure the form to deliver the riddle: “I weigh nothing, but you can still lift me. I have no form, but fill every room. What am I?” The players would have to type the right answer in the form, “air” to receive the code that opens the lock: 314.

You can also ask the AI specifically to “create a Google Form script” for you so you know step by step what to put into the form. It does a pretty good job of breaking this down into easy-to-follow directions.

Create QR Codes to get to Forms

But how do your party-goers get to the Google Form while on their adventures out in the field? Use QR codes. ChatGPT will offer to generate these for free because it likes to hallucinate that it can do things like that, but you’ll want to use a QR code generator for this instead. When you set the QR codes up, be sure you’re using a service that will keep the codes up and available until after your party. I had pretty good luck with the QR code generator available for free within Canva.

Always say YES!

ChatGPT’s AI will usually ask you if you want some sort of deeper details or tools to go along with what it just generated for you. Say YES!

Sometimes it comes up with something even better, or it digs a little deeper into a section with further details on how to actually pull something off.

A good example:

For the above riddle, AI decided it wanted to take a little different direction and have a bit of an attitude:

I found the second attempt at the clue much more amusing than the first. Of course, you’d still need to edit the output a bit to show the code to open the lock on the box when the correct answer is given, but you’re able to piece together something much richer for the party experience. ((AI rule #1 is always make sure there is a human involved!))

One more example of why you want to ask for more after the first generative answer…

Above was the first AI attempt at Clue 3. I said “yes” for more detail and got this:

So much better! Same idea, but more details gives your participants some guidance to get started on this challenge. If your kids are super creative on their own, you can probably skip this, but I find those that need a little prodding really respond to guardrails and detail.

Make a Birthday Scavenger Hunt Logo

Yes, AI can do this, too!

After you’ve created your clues, put in “create a logo for [name’s] scavenger hunt” and the AI will create a graphic. These graphics used to be terrible every time, but as the tech has had a chance to improve, for better or worse they have much higher quality. On the plus side, you get a cheap easy logo. On the minus side, you can make absolutely zero changes to what you get and asking it to fix things doesn’t always work out in your favor.  A logo always ties everything together, so sometimes you take what you can get…for free!

AI for Party Planning and Organization

Seriously, you ask the right questions, and you have to put very little brain power into this. Ask the AI for a “Setup Checklist” and it’ll even do all the organizing for you – and don’t underestimate this step, as I myself did not ask for a check list and spent a considerable amount of time organizing each stop. The checklist I had it create today as an example:

I could have gone to bed two hours earlier had I bothered to ask for a checklist.

Steps for Planning Your Treasure Hunt

Your treasure hunt party for your teen (or scavenger hunt for teens) is more than just AI. Here are the other things to think about when you’re planning a party like this:

Step 1: Pull out a map and figure out where the stops are.

Step 2; If you’re going to use shops to help with your hunt, check with the shop owners to make sure they’re willing to help out!

Step 3: Use AI to help build the scavenger hunt clues and organize it.

Step 4: Buy any puzzle boxes needed, or create puzzle type clues to solve. (i.e. find an old floor puzzle and write a clue on it.)

Step 5: Add in layers of fun with wrapped boxes containing props like silly hats, silly glasses and superman capes if your crowd is up for that. Plan (and pre-pay) for a snack stop or drinks!

Step 6: Book a finale. You can bring a few pizzas to the endpoint, or make a reservation for your group to end up at as the last clue.

Step 7: Organize your clues so they’re easy to drop off or hide the day of the hunt.

Step 8: Place your clues the day of the hunt and watch the fun unfold!

What Will You Do for YOUR Hunt?

We made the teens wear silly hats, glasses and super man capes that they received during stops throughout the hunt. They got to stop for pre-purchased key-lime pie on a stick and dropped into a magic shop for a pre-arranged short performance. There were cool puzzle boxes I picked up on Amazon they figured out how to open, and they did a LOT of eye-spy hunting for tiny little clues. And to my surprise, none of them were too cool for any of this adventure.

Use the AI to do the hard parts of treasure hunt planning for your teenager, but don’t forget to add in a healthy dose of your own creativity!