Freshers’ Treasure Hunt

If you’re a person who loves solving riddles, if the word “adventure” makes adrenaline rush through your body, if you want to explore the campus or just want to make some new friends – treasure hunt is what might catch your fancy. Treasure hunt is a team game that is quite popular in colleges throughout the world and our IIT-Kanpur is no exception. As the name suggests, in treasure hunt, you’re supposed to hunt down the “treasures”. It’s the very first team activity with prize money that a fresher participates in (and might as well be your very first night out in the campus). The Freshers’ Treasure Hunt is organized jointly by ELS (English Literary Society) ,HSS (Hindi Sahitya Sabha) and the Quiz Club. Almost always it is theme based (generally the theme is the Antaragni theme) i.e. the whole treasure hunt props up a plot. Each team (consisting usually of 5 members) is given a clue, which when deciphered, divulges a location in the campus which has the next clue. This way, the team deciphering all the codes at the earliest is deemed the winner. Working out the mind-benders, cycling as fast as you can to the next clue, deceptive discussions to lead other teams to the wrong locations, “overhearing” the other teams ( always huddle your team while discussing confidential stuff to save yourself from this) – the fun and drama is exhilarating.

To add to the drama and spice things up you may do some things yourself, like having a dress code for your team, using clock positions to show direction or go a step ahead and develop a rudimentary code language – because at the end of the day it’s more about how much fun you had rather than how well you did. Treasure hunt is an excellent way to have an upbeat time with friends (and possibly earn some bucks). Like when in “The Big Bang Theory”, Raj makes a scavenger hunt ( pretty similar to treasure hunt) for his buddies and they end up having a great time (though it ends a bit opposite to what Raj anticipated).

The big hunt kicks off at the OAT (Open Air Theatre in case you didn’t know) at around 10 PM. To start off, your team is handed a list of things to be found. This is the scavenger hunt. You’re supposed to get as many as you can! The aforementioned list contains wacky items like:

– Heart Shaped cushion

– Photos with all the senators of y12

– High heels (2.5 inch+, bonus for 4 inch+)

And some normal items too ( bill from CCD, issue of Vox Populi, etc.).Then, if your team collects enough items to clear the cutoff after the scavenger hunt, your night just starts! The treasure hunt kicks off, and you’re given the first clue. The clue will be cryptic and once you break the code, it’ll lead you to some location in the campus. Hence, this is the perfect opportunity for you newbies to get lost and explore the huge, huge and beautiful campus we have! The clues will lead you to places where you’ve never been before, in fact to many places you’ve never heard of before, even (did you know there was a liquid nitrogen plant here?).

The clues will be something like this:

“Maltose is a sugar, more or less. Your destination lies in this substance. Take it, break it down. Analyse it, remove nothing from it, and there you have the location. “

( From treasure hunt ’12)

Solution : Remove “nothing” meaning 0 which would strongly hint towards removing the “o” from Maltose. Rearrange the remaining alphabets (MALTSE) to get SAMTEL. That’s your place!

It’ll take you some time to figure out each clue. Sit with your teammates and apply your brains to decrypt the clue and you’ll have some of the most wonderful moments the whole night. At every point you will have to do some simple task like playing dumb charades, solving some word games, maybe even playing a bit of football! The treasure hunt will continue till 5 AM (sometimes, even later). And you’re sure to have some amazing memories of the treasure hunt, regardless of whether you win or not. This is definitely one event in which participation and the journey is completely worth it.

So listen up people, don’t miss the treasure hunt. It’s an excuse to make new friends and explore as much of the campus as you can while having a lot of fun. So hope you y14 adventurers will turn up in huge numbers for the event.

(The Literary Society and Quiz Club treasure hunt is generally held shortly after Freshers’ Night. Details will be sent to your webmail!)

Written by Alankrita Bhatt and Rishabh Anand