Puzzles and mysteries can be fantastic tools for communicating information. It’s a lot easier to remember a detail you had to work for than to simply memorize a fact or detail. Recently, the Arlington Heights Historical Society’s Mystery at the Museum did an excellent job reaffirming that point.
The concept for the game was quite simple- the game master provides a riddle that points to a specific object somewhere on the museum’s campus. Finding the object is easier said than done, with five different buildings containing items spanning the town’s nearly 150 year history. When you find the answer, you bring a photo of the item back to the game master and get the next riddle. Once you collect all the riddles, you flip them over to assemble a final riddle for one last item hidden somewhere on campus. As a prize, participants get a specialty soda from the on-site historical soda factory.
The game had two options for difficulty- for easy mode, players are told which building each item is in. For hard mode, players don’t get that information and need to search the whole museum for every item. We chose hard mode.
Multiple teams played simultaneously. Clues were given out in a different order per team, reducing the risk of multiple teams scouring the same site for clues at the same time.
The design for the event was brilliant. When looking for the first few items, we were still compelled to observe even the irrelevant items, knowing that at some point, those might come into play. The result was that we seared each location into memory, remembering every unusual / historic item we encountered.
Sometimes our progress was quick after encountering a clue, when we remembered the exact item and where it was; my favorite was when a hint about the Greek god of love pointed me back to the menu from a favorite now-closed ice cream shop near Arlington Heights downtown. I knew exactly where that one was! Other times, we needed to use logic to figure where to search, e.g. intuiting that the desired object might be within a collection of dolls in one of the buildings, or amongst school items in another.
Several times, we picked the wrong item. In those moments, reassessing the clues and choosing our next best option was a fun exercise. When we picked the wrong item, it added to the thrill when we finally got the right solution.
Even now, several weeks later, I feel that I have quite a strong map of the Arlington Heights Historical Society in my head. When a game forces you to quickly recall what item you saw where, you find yourself committing unexpected details to memory. Which building had a stove? What about a phone? Which exhibit would make the most sense to have items related to past presidents?
There are other experiences similar to this, and in every instance, I’m sure I could navigate the venue again with minimal effort. Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry has been putting on an “Escape the Museum” event with a similar approach, and Wizard Quest in Wisconsin Dells is a permanent attraction based around the concept of remembering fine details about a large, intricate space. Especially when communicating information, forcing participants to think and recall details in the moment is a wonderful way to convert details into long term memory.
I really look forward to the next time the Arlington Heights Historical Society puts on a similar event. What a unique and cool way to explore history!
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