Scavenger hunt — Automatic coordinate maps

1. Problem
1. Basic
• Need to get from one station to the next
• Wanted to be “location independent” (play with friends in Berlin and family in somewhere else)
• Wanted a translation from the “station riddle” to the next station
2. Extended
• Wanted to play with multiple team at the same time
• Each team starting at a separate station
• Then following the station in order
• After the last station, all teams should be routed to the same destination
2. Abstract solution
• For many riddles, it’s relatively straight forward to map the solution to a number
• With the prevalence of smartphones, giving people coordinates in the “google maps” format is an easy way to lead the teams to a station
• Solution: each team gets a “coordinate map”, which is a table with two columns. One contains numbers which are the possible solutions to the riddles. The other contains coordinates. This map can be used to translate riddle solutions to coordinates for the next station.
• For this to work, you need to “enrich” the correct solution and coordinates with decoys
• Sample some random numbers and random coordinates close by to the correct ones
• In addition, the map can be adapted to each team so that the solution of the last station leads to the destination.
• This is a bit annoying by hand, so I developed a small tool to do it for you.
3. Introduction waypoint-weaver
• Installation
• Get a config
• Explain config
• Show output