Carmen San Diego Mystery Heist Birthday Party

I hosted this party four years ago and figured I should document the clues and game play before I forget something. 

Supplies:

My Passport Sticker Books (12)

Cryptex

3 Digit Custom Combination Lock (1) 

Four Digit Custom Combination Lock (3)

World Party Favor Boxes (12)

Safari Around the World TOOB

Safari WorldLandmarks TOOB

International Travel Posters

 
Large Suitcase with Outer Pocket (Generic)

Backpack (Generic)

Ping Pong Eyeball or another "eye" object like an Egyptian Eye of Horus charm etc.

Object or picture depicting "Full" I crafted a fuel gauge with a 2 oz metal tin and a red tooth pick

Tow Truck Toy/Picture

Hershey Chocolate Bar (in half) only showing the letters HER

The Invitation

Back before I had two young kids.... Every bit of care was given to customizing the travel ticket, from the departure airport code to the arrival city. I picked Rome because I had reserved the party room at a pizza place since it fit the international theme.  The corners were rounded with a circle punch and I even switched out my regular scoring blade for a perforated one to make it truly a tear off ticket. In the present day...  I would feel pretty proud of myself if I remember to tell my husband what I want for my birthday in time for him to order it from Amazon Prime and have it delivered by my actual birth date. 

Blank for your own use! 

Passport books:

Each page was meticulously thought out and I took special care to match the pictures and clues with the stickers. The clues must be placed in order. In hindsight, I needed to make the capital letters more pronounced as it was not clear that the capital letters spell out a message. Also, it is best to try to make sure each book is identical so guests don’t think that the differences are clues. The passport books were placed on each chair 

This was the message inside the front cover. Why does ermine frosting matter? It doesn’t, it's only my personal favorite. 

I removed the sticker insert from the middle of the book and glued in a second message:

Tip #1: The passport book scripts say:  WEST TO EAST, but this wasn't obvious how I originally printed them with just the capital letters in bold, so if I did it again, I would use the larger capital font version below: 

·      Walked through the largest museum in the world

·      Explored the world’s deepest blue hole 

·      St. Paul's cathedral

·      Took a trip up the Yangtze river and visited the Terracotta Warriors

·      There’s a caribou on the quarter and beaver on the nickel 

·      Over half of the world’s cork is produced here 

·      Europe’s most populated city is Moscow 

·      Ancient Theater of Epidaurus 

·      Saw the Neuschwanstein Castle and Bradenburg Gate 

·      Three vertical stripes and a picture of an eagle eating a snake on their flag

Next, I taped the cipher below to the back of the Pisa/Italy poster with a corner of the cipher visibly poking out as a clue.  The other posters were taped up for decorations. 

Tip #2 Use cardstock with a pattern or picture to make it easier to know which direction faces up, not solid black. 

Tip #3 : For personal use, cut out the " 's  and not the "i" in the space for the name. 

The cipher reveals the message:  the weight is the answer. 

The landmark figurine Buddha of Lantau/The Big Buddha was placed in the outer pocket of the suitcase. The suitcase was locked with the smaller three digit combination lock.  The figurine is goldish so it was a little confusing because some of the guests were mistaking it for the Golden Buddha in Bangkok. They eventually figured out the mix up. 

weight is 250 Tons

The weight ( #250)  is the code which opens the three-digit lock on suitcase. Inside the suitcase I had the backpack (more on what's in it later), the dozen world boxes, and this clue:

Sometimes when you’re puzzled it’s best to retrace your steps from the beginning.

(This was a hint for them to go back through their passports and to decipher the message WEST TO EAST.)

World Boxes

Landmarks have color-coded numbers.

Each box had a map that fit in the bottom of the box identifying the famous landmark. (I did not use all of the landmarks, only the ones listed below.)  On the back of each map, I wrote the latitude and longitude of the landmark for faster reference.

 Originally, I had the boxes numbered on the bottom, but these were easy to mix up once the maps were removed. If I did it again, I would number the landmarks (as pictured) instead of the bottom of the box. 

Sample numeric code from West to East: 201703182021

2 Easter Island: 27.1130 S, 109.3496 W

0  Mount Rushmore: 43.8791 N, 103.4591 W

1  Temple of the Inscriptions: 17.4836 N, 92.0470 W

7  Statue of Liberty: 40.6892 N, 74.0445 W

0  Stonehenge: 51.1789 N, 1.8262 W

3  Big Ben: 51.5007 N, 0.1246 W

1  Arc de Triomphe: 48.8738 N, 2.2950 E

8  Leaning Tower of Pisa: 43.7230, 10.3966 E

2  Colosseum: 41.8902 N, 12.4922 E

0  Parthenon: 37.9715 N, 23.7267 E

2  Great Sphinx of Giza:  29.9753 N, 31.1376 E

1  Great Wall of China:  40.4319 N, 116.5704 E

The more random the code the better, especially if they're color-coded as this makes it easier for the guests to group the numbers in fours and guess the code instead of figure it out. It's okay to do all black numbers but then it might be hard to know which code goes with which lock. 

The Backpack

The backpack had the three, four-digit combination locks on the zipper to keep it closed. If I had more lockable containers, I suppose I could have done a box within a box within a box etc... When the backpack was opened, inside was the Hershey bar, tow truck, eye ball, fuel gauge, and cryptex. 

The elements together represented the words “Eye-Full/Fuel-Tow-Her” (Eiffel Tower) obeying a loose phonetic similarity scheme.

As an alternate, one of my guests guessed THIEF (Tow-Hershey-I/Eye- Empty/Full) following a pattern where each object represented one letter. 

The word PARIS opens the Cryptex and reveals the message: 

 

ask for the “czech” 

The deal I made with the server was to bring out the cake when I asked for the check. This ended up being better than I expected as  one of my guests was really into the mystery and asked the server to bring out the to-go boxes and checks with a super heavy Russian accent.  I'm not sure it could have been better if I'd made the key phrase something ridiculous like, "Bring me your biggest meatball on your smallest plate." As a backup plan,  I could have locked the cake in the car if  they didn't allow outside food and drink in their serving areas and used a license plate number as the next clue. 

Final note on the cake box said:

Let’s be honest, who has room for cake after a pizza buffet—especially Brick Oven’s super delicious dessert pizza? Good job, detectives, until next time

  Carmen Sandiego

Breakfast at Tiffany's Game

While I admittedly enjoy perusing Pinterest for ideas, I often feel guilty because it’s easier to copy someone else’s idea rather than to come up with something new.  Then, even when I do think of something new, I lack the photography skills to make a pinnable post.  Or I start fretting over fair use and copyright laws.

Still, I'd like to give something back, so here's an original game I created for my “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” themed birthday party from a few years ago.  If you want to fill in your name at the top in a photo editing program, I used the various fonts: 

Arabic typesetting

Kunstler script

Monotype Corsiva

Lucida Console

Gemstone images from https://www.jewelry-secrets.com/Blog/diamond-shapes/

Answer Sheet

Answer Key

I modified two bridal shower games from Etsy, which both no longer seem to be available, to create the templates.

 The first was a scattergories game  by TrishaDesignCreation. The second was a purse-scavenger hunt game from ShameronStudios.

I picked 30 out of the 100 different diamond cuts on the website because I was turning thirty. I probably could have stopped at 8 in hindsight because most of my friends couldn't name any cuts besides the basic shapes (square, round, heart, triangle, rectangle.) We still had fun going over the answers together at least.

It Really Sucks!

My vacuum cleaner, I mean, not my birthday which has been more than AWESOME!

I turned 27 today. Nothing special about the number really. At 25 my insurance company lowered my premium. Apparently even though I've held a commercial driver's license since I turned 19 and actually got paid to drive a 40 foot vehicle loaded with children in it, I'm still a higher insurance risk than a 21- year-old married man.So sexist and unfair.

So, my husband has this thing about giving me birthday and Christmas gifts—which is that they should be mostly impractical.

Last Christmas, I told him I wanted a new vacuum cleaner. He scoffed, “I’ll buy you a new vacuum cleaner on a Tuesday.” 

I replied, “What if it’s the Dyson DC25 All Floors Ball vacuum, and it costs 400  dollars?” 

We went out and bought the vacuum, on a Wednesday. Then “for Christmas” he ordered a bunch of books from my Amazon wishlist.

 For my birthday, any gift has to be *especially* frivolous. It took some thought since I really do like getting practical gifts, especially books,  but I know its less exciting for him to give them. Luckily,  I managed to come up with the perfect gift. 

There’s a store in the mall that always sells beautiful clothes, but I’ve never allowed myself to spend money there because they’re really expensive. (Five times what I usually spend on any clothing article.)

Now, he’s not foolish enough to go buy me something off the rack and hope I’ll like it, so he went with me to the store and sat in the waiting room while I tried on a bunch of skirts and tops. 

The thing I might now love most about White House| Black Market is not the clothes, but how the sales representative treats you like a celebrity in the fitting rooms. 

It never gets tiring having them tell me how great my sense of style is and how everything I pick up looks fabulous on me. 

The other thing I *really* love  is that in their size range, I’m an XXS. Yes, do go see if you have anything smaller than a “0” please.

 

He ended up getting  me a knit maxi skirt and a silk shirt. I am now 27 and this is the first silk shirt I own. These may very well be the only clothes I own that I will actually bother to dry clean.

I feel like such a dork, especially when this is the other item I really wanted for my birthday:

Han Solo silicon ice cube tray

  

So, if you were me, what frivolous gift would you ask for?