Scavenger hunt

For the 1979 feature film, see Scavenger Hunt.
Scavenger hunt participants cross an item off their list

A scavenger hunt is a game in which the organizers prepare a list defining specific items that need to be found, which the participants seek to gather or complete all items on the list, usually without purchasing them.[1] Usually participants work in small teams, although the rules may allow individuals to participate. The goal is to be the first to complete the list or to complete the most items on that list. In variations of the game, players take photographs of listed items or be challenged to complete the tasks on the list in the most creative manner. A treasure hunt is another name for the game, but it may involve following a series of clues to find objects or a single prize in a particular order.

According to game scholar Markus Montola, scavenger hunts evolved from ancient folk games.[2] Gossip columnist Elsa Maxwell popularized scavenger hunts in the United States with a series of exclusive New York parties starting in the early 1930s.[3][4][5] The scavenger-hunt craze among New York's elite was satirized in the 1936 film My Man Godfrey, where one of the items socialite players are trying to collect is a "Forgotten Man", a homeless person.[6]

  1. ^ Debra Wise (2003). Great big book of children's games: over 450 indoor and outdoor games for kids. Illustrated by Sandra Forrest. New York: McGraw-Hill Professional. p. 158. ISBN 0071422463.
  2. ^ "The Hunter Games", The New Yorker. July 2, 2012.
  3. ^ "The Press: Elsa at War", Time Magazine. Nov. 7, 1944.
  4. ^ "Life Magazine", Life, vol. 9, no. 25, Time, Inc., p. 53, Dec 16, 1940, ISSN 0024-3019
  5. ^ "Elsa Maxwell, The Hostess with the Mostest". Clan Maxwell Society of the USA. Retrieved 11 April 2010.
  6. ^ Murray Pomerance (2007). City that Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination. Rutgers University Press. p. 153. ISBN 9780813540320.