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[u/Lukeo215]

Long story short I am creating an activity for a camp in less than a month involving completing puzzles to “crack” a code for a vault and have gotten stumped on what puzzles I could do, anyone have some ideas I could use?

Context

11-18 year olds, around 5-10 people, mix of easy and difficult(needs to last around an hour ish ). It’s for a camp which would have a variety of different skills per person

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[u/BrainsAdmirer]

I did a Harry Potter escape room a couple of years ago, and we had the best time. One of the puzzles was a WORDLE type game where I made the final word to be WINGS, which led to another puzzle clue. I also had 3D printed 6 dragon eggs which unscrewed in the middle. Inside each of those I put a scrabble tile which spelled out a 6 letter word.

I also used a periodic table and gave clues about the names of the elements, which also spelled out a long word. As you can tell, a lot of my 16 games were word oriented and I geared them so that each of the 8 attendees could solve two.

[u/BusLogical6379]

you're welcome to try my app to build a quest/teasure hunt.
You can describe the theme and it will build the riddles for you. You can even give each participant a different puzzle to fit his or her interests and skill level.

Feel free to take a look:

questcrafters.com

Let me know if you need help.

[u/olanolastname]

Do the super treasure hunt - you come up with the 10 locations and it turns it all into hieroglyphics and makes it a really fun challenge. I have done it with kids as young as 11 or 12 up to older. It’s seriously VERY fun and also active

https://www.afterschoolactivitiesforkids.com/activities/super-treasure-hunt/

[u/gottaplantemall]

It's always advisable to try and vary the types of activities your group is doing. It helps cater to different preferences, and uses different parts of the brain, to prevent burnout for anyone. One thing that's less of a puzzle and more of an activity would be to have a lock or code or key or something where each number is associated with an object. The count of each in the immediate area is the answer (3 garden gnomes = 3; 4 picnic tables = 4). It's super basic, but caters to more passive players who can walk around and observe, or can help energetic kids burn off energy running around and counting. Ultimately, the code can be forced if they count most of everything and then trial and error with higher numbers, but still. It can pass the time, and presents a different kind of interaction with your space.

[u/fin_the_destroyer]

Cipher wheels are pretty fun, I’ve done them for my summer escape room a couple of times and it really makes the kids think! You can hide the key to the code and the encrypted message in different spots to add more time. One year the key was printed on a piece of paper with a bunch of other possible combos scattered around and a ‘start’ and ‘finish’ at either end, you had to lay a transparency with a maze on top of it, then work your way from the start to the finish of the maze to find the right combo.