You know the one. It’s usually Hunt the Thimble – but why limit it? It can really be any miniscule object of your choice. (Not too miniscule – you do want to find it again. Unless you don’t mind feeding the vacuum cleaner more than usual.)
1) Hunt the Thimble
We ended up with a plastic thimble from a Christmas cracker one time, so we do tend to play hunt the thimble. It’s of a size that it can sit on top of a door frame, ready and waiting (and spying out suitable places to hide).
One person hides the thimble – we usually count up to 10, or something similar, to give them time to hide it, but not too long. Everyone else has to close their eyes, or look away, so the hider can find a place to hide the thimble.
We’ve found that it’s best to do the following:
– agree that it must be hidden in the same room as everyone else (or you can’t see it)
– make sure it’s relatively in plain sight (no hiding it behind a cushion)
This gives the finders a sporting chance!
The finders guess a location, and can also get up and move around, looking.
The hider stays still and indicates how close you are. The fun generally comes in the description of hot (close) or cold (far away) e.g.
hot…hotter…burning…on fire! (ie. you’re pretty much on top of the item)
cold…colder…ice cold…freezing…etc.
If you are playing with a younger hider, you also have to help them be consistent about hot/cold signals. (You can be near an item, hear ‘hot’ – but then move a fraction away and hear ‘freezing’…)
Younger hiders like the sense of control, and keeping the adults guessing. Adult hiders can enjoy accurately guiding a child to the thimble, and their enjoyment of actually finding it. Â Best to tailor it to the needs of your group.
When to play? Straight after a meal can be good – when the grown ups want to sit down and digest, and when the younger players want something to do.
2) Variant: hide another object of your choice
If you feel confident enough about hiding a treasured item (e.g. a Lego minifigure, or something of that kind), this can be fun. Animal figures can allow for hunting/stalking, especially those like dinosaur figures.
A human figure can be in different terrain (land/sea/forest/desert etc), which can allow for some verbal clues too if the finders get stuck.
Any figure you might be using as an alien can be exploring your planet e.g.
What is it doing?
It’s tasting brown grass… (the fibre of a carpet)
It’s scaling a tall building… (to one side of a piece of furniture)
It’s looking for intelligent life forms… (in the fruit bowl) etc.
Have you had any hunt the object successes? Or disasters?