‘It was a really hot day, the hottest day of the year. I’m prone to heat exhaustion, so during my shift I had my mug of water with me at all times, even when I was briefing. Everyone at clueQuest gets their own mug with their name on it, but I love unicorns, so when my mug was ordered, the team made sure there was a picture of a unicorn on it instead! It’s my favourite.
That day I had a family come in to play a mission, a mum, dad and their kids. The youngest was a little girl - about seven, I think. While I was settling them in and then briefing them, I was taking sips from my mug. When I got to the part of the briefing where I introduce Mr Q (the mouse who runs clueQuest and its operations), the little girl interrupted me. She said, ‘is that the unicorn?’ I was like, ‘...what unicorn?’ She insisted that Mr Q must be a unicorn, and she was so adorable that I couldn’t tell her that she was wrong. Eventually I told her that there was a unicorn involved in the mission, but she would have to find it herself!
As we walked to the room, she kept asking questions about the unicorn. What colour was it? Where did it live? That sort of thing. I was trying so hard not to laugh, but her family had been giggling the entire time - I think they liked that I wasn’t ruining her unicorn dreams!
Once they were inside the room, whenever they came across a puzzle that required an answer in words she would think it was ‘unicorn’. Getting it wrong didn’t stop her, she just kept searching and trying - she was very determined!
Once they had completed their mission, I went in to debrief them. PLAN52, the mission that they had played, is all about trying to uncover a double agent in clueQuest. I asked them, ‘agents, did you discover the identity of the double agent?’ The little girl screamed out the answer! Then an idea finally came to me. ‘Well done, agents,’ I said, ‘I’m going to send our top agent, Agent Sparkle, to track the double agent down!’ She was so happy, she was jumping up and down!
After I’d taken their picture and was about to say goodbye, the little girl said to me, ‘tell the unicorn I said hi!’ I promised her that I would.'
When Zeynep isn’t running games at clueQuest, she can be found teaching secondary school students and shopping online for unicorn costumes for her cats. You can book one of our four missions, including PLAN52, here.