Linda Holman’s job title will probably make you jealous. She’s the “Director of Adventure” at Shinteki, a puzzle hunt company she co-founded in 2001 with five friends. In addition to thinking up puzzles, Holman works as a location scout, staking out interesting, quirky locations for Shinteki's clients.
"Anytime I go anywhere, I’m always looking for cool little locations and offbeat hidden information on the walls," she told us.
Shinteki’s main focus is corporate team-building events, but last year, it began creating self-guided puzzle hunts players can access through the ClueKeeper app. The latest creation from Holman, a Sunset resident, is the Sunset Pub Crawl, which leads teams on a scavenger hunt through five neighborhood bars that's part trivia game, part mental gymnasium.
Holman has been a fan of scavenger hunts since she was a kid, but her passion for puzzle hunts really took off during her undergraduate years at Stanford University. There, she played The Game, an annual marathon puzzle hunt and road rally where teams typically drive 250 miles and undergo stunts as unusual as climbing into a coffin to find clues.
"It usually lasts 24 hours, so it goes all night, and we did that quite a bit in college," said Holman. "When I got out, five friends and I decided to start a company doing that as a job." Shinteki is a Japanese word that means mental, physical, or psychological, depending on the context. In Holman's case, it means all three.
A team at Pacific Catch, a stop on the Sunset Pub Crawl. (Photo: Courtesy of Linda Holman)
Over the past year, Shinteki has begun developing self-guided hunts throughout San Francisco, Stanford and Las Vegas, where they're hoping to expand. Holman created one for Dolores Park, called Hipster Bingo, and another for kids at the San Francisco Zoo. She chose the Inner Sunset for her pub-crawl game for two reasons: "One, because I live here, so I like it, and two, because it seems like a lot of people come out here and then don't know what to do. They come to Golden Gate Park, and then they’re standing on the corner Yelping what to do or where to eat."
"I thought it would be fun to have a pub crawl that introduces you to some of the pubs in the neighborhood," she continued. "Then you can sound like an expert later, and say, 'Oh, I went out there, and my favorite was this pub.' "
Holman made sure all the bars on the crawl, which include Blackthorn Tavern and The Little Shamrock, were within a block of the 9th and Irving Muni stop. "I wanted everything to be stumbling distance from there, so you can take the train, go to your pubs, and then climb back on the train."
Players can download the game ($14.99 per team) from ClueKeeper, then follow simple maps to each bar after reading a bit of local history. Shinteki recommends forming teams of two to five people. The game instructs teams to find one or more items inside each bar, then solve a puzzle based on their findings (an anagram, for example). After that, teams are given five trivia questions, all linked by a theme related to the bar.
Holman says she tries to make the trivia questions challenging. "I like to encourage the bargument. I like when people don't know the answer right away, and they want to talk to their friends and figure it out."
She said the game can be played in two hours, but some teams stretch it out over three or more. Afterward, teams can sign into the ClueKeeper website to see how they stack up on the leaderboard.
Trisha's Team leads in points, while There's Always Puzzles in the Banana Stand vies for best team name. (Image: Courtesy of Linda Holman)
Holman's tip for improving your score? "I've heard that the fifth puzzle is really hard if you have a beer at every bar. So if you want to be really good at the puzzles, maybe have one non-alcoholic beverage along the way."
If you'd like to play the Sunset Pub Crawl or other location-based clue hunts, you can find them on ClueKeeper's website. You can also download the ClueKeeper app via Google Play or iTunes.
