Pirate Treasure Quest

What Happens

Captain Redbeard paid his crew in ten gold coins, and every one of them dropped theirs somewhere about your house. That is the whole setup, and for a six year old it is plenty.

They hunt down all ten. Then the Captain's Ledger tells them that only the coins marked with a star point to the treasure, and they have to find those among the ten and tell you the numbers. Get them right and the map appears, from behind your back, like it was there all along.

You are the Escape Master. There are no padlocks in this and nothing to buy, because you are the lock. When they solve something, you hand over what it unlocks. That is what makes an escape room work for children this age: a real padlock needs reading and patience and small fingers, and a grown-up saying "you did it" needs none of those and lands harder.

Everything is printed and cut with scissors. Plain paper is fine. Yellow or gold paper is better and nobody has ever complained about white.

The Escape Master's pages tell you what to say, when to hand things over, and what to do when it stalls: how to rescue the search for the last coin before anybody cries, how to make the stars obvious without pointing at them, and how to give the quiet child a real job that does not require being fastest.

There are two blank spare coins, because one always goes into the garden for good, and a seagull bringing it back has never once been questioned.