Here’s how scavenger hunt became a popular adventure sport

Almost all of you have grown up playing scavenger hunt with friends and family, isn’t it?  For the uninitiated, it is a popular and thrilling family game indoor which unfolds like this. Individuals or teams seek to find a number of specific items or perform specific tasks, shared through a list. The goal, as you can guess, is fairly straightforward: Compete against the opponent to seek out the greatest number of things or perform the most number of tasks on the given list. Sounds, fun and exciting for sure! But do you know that there’s an interesting story behind the popularity of scavenger hunt? Come, let’s find out.  

The naming of scavenger hunt 
Interestingly, the name ‘scavenger hunt’ is derived from the crazy act of scavenging or search for strange objects. As you already know, scavengers are those animals (such as vultures, raccoons, crows and termites) who search for dead plants and animals and look for materials to feed on. However, in real-life scavenger hunt, no one asks to find dead stuff, but it definitely involves finding some weird things.  

A party in Paris 
A scavenger hunt, also known as the treasure hunt, is presumed to have been evolved from ancient folk games. However, it only became popular when an American Jazz Age gossip columnist named Elsa Maxwell introduced it in a party in Paris in 1927 where she asked her guests to find some hidden items throughout the evening. As you can understand, it was meant to be a fun party activity. But you won’t guess some of the items she put on the list: Music-hall star Mistinguett’s shoe, a black swan from the Bois de Boulogne, a large park in Paris and the red pompom on a French seaman’s hat, all exotic French items! Well, the consequence was more severe than expected. While a ferocious swan attacked and injured two people, one of the guests, the wife of British diplomat Sir Charles Mendi was even accused of theft by the French Navy. As if that wasn’t enough, Mistinguett had to perform barefoot in a hall full of audience at the famous Casino de Paris. All in all, it was an evening hard to erase from history. 

The sensational response of the scavenger hunt impressed the hostess Elsa Maxwell so much that when she returned home to New York, she began organizing several parties all throughout the 1930s just for the sake of scavenger hunts. After all, who doesn’t like fun clubbed with a little bit of risk?   

The tech version of today  
Interestingly, in recent times, the idea of scavenger hunting has gone to a whole new level, thanks to introduction of geocaching. It is a high-tech version of hide and seek that people sitting anywhere in the globe can participate in. It’s played using GPS receiver (installed on smartphones) that helps locate geocaches or hidden containers at a specific longitude and latitude. Once a player obtains a geocache, he or she needs to record it alongside their name in a universal digital logbook. This also helps keep track of scores. In case you didn’t know, there are more than 5 million geocatchers in the world at present.