Seeking Overview

As the seeker, it is your job to move and gather information as efficiently as possible. At your disposal are 80 questions, which you can ask the hider at any time. The hider must answer all of your questions truthfully, but in exchange for answers, they’ll be rewarded with cards from their hider deck. Choosing the right questions at the right time is key to a quick round — ask too many and you’ll be bogged down with curses or blown out with hours of time bonuses.

To make sorting through these questions easier, we’ve divided them into six simple categories. All of the questions in the same category cost the same number of cards, and share the same sentence structure — it’s simply a matter of choosing a noun or value. Some categories are more useful during different stages of your search, so be sure to keep an open mind and change up your strategy as you close in on the hider.

You cannot ask multiple questions at once; if you are waiting on an answer from a previous question, you cannot ask your next question until the first has been answered.

You can use the internet for research, but you cannot use Google Street View. We have found Street View to be far too powerful when it comes to matching photos, and it makes the game generally less fun. This is our strict rule about research, though you can choose to implement other rules if your group deems them necessary, such as an additional ban on searching for any images of train stations.

As you collect information, you should record it in your investigation book and on a printout of your game map. There are many types of information you can collect in a given round — photos, direction and context clues — and you’ll want to stay on top of everything if you want any chance of finding your hider.

A Note About Mapping Apps (And Their Errors)

Easily playing this game is going to require using a maps app on your smartphone or other device. We’ll just say right now: we recommend that you use Google Maps for playing this game. We designed this game, and our question categories, with Google Maps in mind, so you’ll likely get the best gameplay when using it. It’s also the only major mapping app where it is easy to measure distances, which will often be necessary for questions. In order to measure a distance, hold down anywhere on Google Maps that is not a formally listed location. A pin will pop up and if you scroll down you can select “measure distance,” then drag to measure from that point. We will mention that Apple Maps has superior rail visualization, and occasionally more accurate timetables, so it is useful for certain game aspects. When we play, we use Apple Maps to see rail options and game out hypothetical routes, but Google Maps for everything else.

You’ll notice that many of our questions reference various categories of businesses or locations: parks, zoos, hospitals, museums, etc. We chose these carefully — almost all of them have their own special categorization in Google Maps and Apple Maps, with their own special little icon to help you easily see them. Amusement parks have a ferris wheel icon, libraries have a book, and so on. You should be able to easily see all the places that fall under a category by simply searching that category in your app and looking for those icons. Unfortunately, you’ll notice there are sometimes categorization errors. A random parking lot will be erroneously listed as an amusement park, for example. Determining what is an error and what is not is often subjective, but given the need for objective rules, here is our criteria:

If you are using Google Maps:

Anywhere with 5 or more Google Reviews is assumed to be legitimate, unless all players can agree otherwise. Anywhere with fewer than 5 Google Reviews is assumed to be illegitimate, unless all players can agree otherwise.

If you are using Apple Maps, or another mapping app:

Everywhere is assumed to be legitimate, unless all players can agree otherwise.

Whatever app you choose, it’s very important that the hider and seekers are using the same maps app when searching in these categories. If the seekers and hiders search on different apps, they will often get different results, leading to confusion.

In general, it is the responsibility of the seekers to clarify any ambiguity in what they’re asking — for example, by sending a screenshot of everything they understand to qualify as an amusement park when asking if the hider is near one.