How to create interesting personalized questions for a city scavenger hunt?

When you have a good game concept that you re-use with different groups, it is nice to add a decent amount of customized questions for clients or locations. A city scavenger hunt for adults needs to have especially clever and not very easy to answer questions.

There is always an option to let clients collaborate and suggest a few company specific questions. You can go deep into a company’s history on their webpage and gather two or three facts from there, or use some photos from their website as a puzzle picture.

But if you know the participants’ hometown, then there are a few clever question composing ideas for giving out fun facts about locations- counties, cities, towns. Also when you would like to open up some facts about your home region for city tours, then these tips also apply. Below are ideas with example questions from different regions of the world.

TIP 1 Most towns have sister cities or towns. Info about these can be found on a town’s wikipedia page or official website. Introduce them in a question. People might be surprised how towns have official friendship relations with other far parts of the world.

Chicago has 28 sister cities around the world. Which of the following are sister cities? Choose as many as you think are correct!
-Accra (Ghana)
-Delhi (India)
-Toronto (Canada)

TIP 2 Sometimes it is fun to take out a map and look how far are neighboring counties or states. It tests your skill to imagine a map and how places are exactly arranged. This adds a difficulty level by putting some facts that players already know into a format which is not so easy to come up with the answer.

Think quick, the timer is ticking! Which of the following provinces share a land border with Ontario? Choose as many as you think are correct!
-Nunavut
-New Brunswick
-Manitoba
-Quebec

*For those of you not from Canada you can get help from looking at the map : )

TIP 3 Questions about celebrities from this specific location. There must be some famous person- scientist, actor, singer, writer, politician born in that town/city/county. And most definitely this person has done something peculiarly well.

 Lars Ulrich is a drummer and one of the founders of Metallica. He was born in Gentofte, Denmark. He is the first Danish person to receive an award for….
-Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2009
-“Men for feminism”, spokesperson of the year in 1995
-MTV noted him for “Worst music video appearance of the year” in 1987

TIP 4 Movies are shot at or plots take place in location. Make a fact about that. You can add media to questions in Loquiz so use pictures or youtube videos.

CLICK on the picture icon and look at the image! Is this classic film set in San Diego?
-Yes, surely it is
-Nope, nope, nope

TIP 5 Questions about flags, official seals like coat of arms. All countries have these and most often counties, states, towns and other forms of local municipalities or even organisations also.

There are two animals on the Malaysian coat of arms. What are they and what do they represent?
-Tigers, represent strength and courage
-Tigers, represent honesty and wisdom
-Tiger and Eagle, represent strength and freedom

TIP 6 Regions and towns are most often known for being “first” “biggest” ect. in something. It might be technology innovation, sports team, culture, historical building, natural monument, or law passed. It might even surprise people from there.

Temesvár  in Romania was the first city in Continental Europe to have something innovative. What?
-electric public street lighting on in 1884
-radio tower in 1719
-free public transport in 1971

If you have time to visit the venue then location based questions about sculptures, trees, building details, information boards ect. are as personal as it can get- so having a few of these in an game would give the last polishing finish. Try out creating these types of questions for your city scavenger hunt and share in the comments below what kind of feedback you have gotten from players. Also let us know what kind of angles for creating “local” questions you have used.