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Okay all you fabulous party planners out there, you’re in the home stretch now.  Just a few more steps and you’ll be ready to roll.

Step 14:  Plan Your Clue Hunt Agenda
Sending all you teams to the same locations at the same time would make the game too easy.  You need to keep them guessing by sending each team to the various clue spots in a different pattern.  All this information can be tough to keep track of mentally, so I like to organize it on a clue hunt agenda.  To make your own, simply download the file below and fill in a route for each team.  You may want to reference your Team & Clue Breakdown to help you remember what ingredient you’re planning to hide in each location.  Try not to follow a set pattern, you don’t want the teams to catch up to each other and then simply follow each other along the race.  Start each team in a different location and then choose a route for each team.  It’s okay if the teams overlap locations a little.  In other words, it’s okay if the blue team and the green team are both scheduled to be at the cemetery on their third stop.  Just make sure they don’t match each other on the fourth stop as well.  Here’s an example of what a completed team agenda would look like:

Orange Team:
1st location: Zuck Park (starting location)
Ingredient: Cauldron
Clue leads to: Cemetery

2nd location: Cemetery
Ingredient: Mouse
Clue leads to: Beach

3rd location: Beach
Ingredient: Snake
Clue leads to: Pier

4th location: Pier
Ingredient: Skeleton
Clue leads to: Tower

5th location: Tower
Ingredient: Spider
Clue leads to: Pond

6th location: Pond
Ingredient: Bat
Clue leads to: My house (ending location)

An agenda like this is critical to keeping track of the little details.  For example, by glancing at the agenda, I can see that the Orange team will be visiting the Pier on their fourth stop, that they will be searching for a skeleton, and that the clue attached to their Orange skeleton will lead them to the Tower.  Although all the teams will be finding skeletons at the Pier, the clues attached to the skeletons will vary based on their team’s assigned route.  You’ll understand why this is critical in our next step.

Step 15:  Attaching Your Clues to the Ingredients
It’s really important that you go slow during this part of the planning.  By attaching the wrong clue to the wrong ingredient, you can send your team completely off course.  Here’s how I keep it organized.  First, print out all of your clues on the various colors of paper, crop them and then sort them into piles by color.  Next, separate your ingredients into piles by color.  Use your Clue Hunt Agenda to help you figure out which clue to attach to each ingredient.  My advice?  Don’t actually attach them until you’ve laid out their entire route.  Just spread out the team’s clues on the table and place the ingredient you’ll be attaching on top.  Once you’ve got the route for that team laid out, roll each clue, slide a spider ring on to it and attach it tightly to the right ingredient with thin black ribbon or clear thread.  Here’s an example set up using the agenda above:

Orange Team:
1st location: Zuck Park (starting location)
Ingredient: Cauldron
Clue leads to: Cemetery
(place clue with mouse in the Orange cauldron)

2nd location: Cemetery
Ingredient: Mouse
Clue leads to: Beach
(attach clue with snake to Orange mouse)

3rd location: Beach
Ingredient: Snake
Clue leads to: Pier
(attach clue with skeleton to Orange snake)

4th location: Pier
Ingredient: Skeleton
Clue leads to: Tower
(attach clue with spider to Orange skeleton)

5th location: Tower
Ingredient: Spider
Clue leads to: Pond
(attach clue with bat to Orange spider)

6th location: Pond
Ingredient: Bat
Clue leads to: My house (ending location)
(attach clue with Witch to Orange bat)

Once you’ve got all the ingredients attached to their proper clues, sort them into piles by ingredient and toss them into ziploc bags.  Use a magic marker to label the bags with their clue location (ie the bag of spiders will be labeled: Tower).  Once you’ve got all that set, hide them somewhere that you’re kids won’t touch them!  I learned that tip from experience.  :)  Last steps will be posted tomorrow…thanks for hanging with me this long.  Just thought I’d pass it on.