Editor’s Note: In addition to serving as a resource for all things family in NYC, we hope that our Ultimate Guide also helps readers discover the city anew. With that goal in mind, we turned to Watson Adventures, which offers fun, clever scavenger hunts in seven cities across the country, to provide a hunt that would keep the whole family engaged. As these ten clues take your family to four boroughs, you’ll make many new discoveries—and have lots of fun—along the way. (Answers are below.)
1. At the Bronx Zoo, visit one of the newer exhibits, which shares a name with an island and a popular animated movie series. In the first forest, find a lemur that sounds like he might talk like a sailor. What does he get when he reaches with his middle finger?
2. In Brooklyn Heights stand above the BQE, with your back to Clark. As you admire the view, what tall feature can you see today that you could also see in 1776 but not in 1880 or 1935?
3. Visit the Brooklyn Museum. Find and go inside the big red Jan M. Schenck House. Why would you bring a bit of the beach into the kitchen?
4. At the Queens Museum, visit the New York Panorama and “fly” over Queens. Find a sign that lists the building you’re standing in. What letter does it get?
5. In Manhattan visit Battery Park. Between a giant eagle and the stone fort, and between the water and a round kiosk, stand on pebbly sand near trees. Get musical feet on a grid (leaves and twigs might muffle your tune). What might you think are the last three numbers in Alfons’ phone number?
6. In Greenwich Village, on LaGuardia Place between Bleecker Street and West 3rd Street, find a clapper. Where can you see the signature of his maker?
7. In Central Park, visit the Shakespeare Garden. Find a metal circle that can’t help you at night. How many feathers are in the triangle?
8. In Midtown, visit West 52nd Street between 5th and 6th Avenues. Find Number 21, with an army of elf-sized men outside. What nursery-rhyme star appears on a shirt here?
9. In the American Museum of Natural History, visit the Hall of Biodiversity. Enter a rainforest and find the dreaded strangler fig. Now pull out your smartphone and aim a light into the forest to the left of the strangler: What animal stares back at you from the darkness?
10. Visit St. John the Divine. On the façade, near a skyline, what instrument might be playing the soundtrack for what looks like a scene out of a disaster movie?
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Answers:
- The Aye-Aye lemur uses its long, middle finger to reach grubs inside tree hollows, according to info in the Madagascar exhibit.
- Tall ships, as seen in different historical views in the pavement on the Promenade near Clark Street.
- Sand was used to scrub the floors.
- The Queens Museum is listed as H or B, depending on which sign or key you’re looking at.
- Nine hundred eighty, seen on nine panels in the ground that make different bell sounds when you step on them.
- On the pants cuff of a statue of LaGuardia.
- Two, engraved on a sundial.
- Outside the 21 Club, a lawn jockey’s shirt features an image of Humpty Dumpty.
- A gorilla.
- At St. John the Divine, someone plays a piano in a column that shows a bus falling off of a broken bridge.
