office party scavenger hunt clues

December 10, 2008 3:45 PM

Help me come up with some good riddles to use as clues in my work's holiday party scavenger hunt.

I'm on my work's activity committee and we're planning on holding an office wide scavenger hunt at out holiday party. We need to come up with good riddles/clues for items which can be commonly found in an office (ex. red sharpie, picture frame, mirror, stress ball, etc.)

Any riddles (and the answer!) would be great!

posted by nerdcore to grab bag (3 comments total)

Here's some sites for starters.

There were also a lot of good riddles in The Hobbit.
posted by Effigy2000 at 4:08 PM on December 10, 2008

I was sorry to see that you only go tthat one response, even if it helped. Here's two riddles that I came up with when I woke up this morning.

When I work, it looks like blood
but I can bleed, or be a dud
I don't need to be shaken
or spat on,
I work best if you keep my hat on.
(the red sharpie)

If I C U, U C U, 2.
If I C me, ∞
(mirror)
I thought the texting abbreviations might make it more mysterious than, "When I see you, you see you, too. When you see me, infinity."

Basically, you can create these riddles by thinking about what each thing does and making a little (rhyming or not) poem out of that description. Add a little bit of obfuscation with vague wording and lateral descriptions (like calling the marker's cap a hat above). What do paperclips do? Well, they keep things (a vague word) together. Paper can be called leaves or sheets. So, maybe something like this will work: "When leaves all fall everywhere, we will hold them and keep them there." That one is not so great, but I just came up with it. You can also add to the riddles for more characteristics of the item. Like, what's the difference between paperclips and staples? (one's a bunning stitch...?) Well, staples have teeth, need a machine to be used and aren't as curvy as a paperclip. So, go from there to expand your clues until only the item you are thinking of answers all of the parts of the riddle.

Good luck!
posted by HE Amb. T. S. L. DuVal at 10:49 AM on December 11, 2008

We had one a few weeks ago.

One was something like, "This kind of book was once available only to the wealthy, and in modern times is not sold in stores."

The other was something like, "This always stays in a corner, but is able to travel around the world."

The answers are (go one key to the right on your keyboard... I hope):
ogibw viij
oiarlfw arlno.
posted by TheSecretDecoderRing at 10:24 PM on December 11, 2008