I’ll be first to admit I have a really weird job. Every night I sit at my desk and play around with story ideas, throwing in vampires and pirates and ghosts and ghouls and seeing what sticks. The goal is to find an idea that excites me enough to write it all the way through to the end — and hopefully excite a publishing team as well.
Normally I write spooky fairy tales, or grand pirate adventures: high-stakes narrative fictions that aim to get kids hooked on reading. But early on in 2022, probably while pining for the travel opportunities I’d missed during the pandemic years, I decided to do something completely different.
“I know a lot of travel games,” I thought to myself. “And I know a lot of great trivia questions too. What if I wrote them all down?”
So I did. It was exciting. When I finally sent it away, the publishing team at Hardie Grant Explore got excited by it too. And now it’s a book!
As mentioned in the Insta post above, I really like games. My favourite social occasions are the ones spent shuffling cards or deducing hidden identities; if you ever ask me who my personal heroes are, I’ll enthusiastically tell you about a German man named Reiner Knizia who has designed over 700 games, including what I believe are some of the greatest games of all time. (The Quest for El Dorado is my #1 — but let’s not get distracted.)
I love games so much that I never want to be caught without one, which is how I came to know so many travel games: more than 60 of them, in fact! My definition of a travel game is one that requires no components whatsoever: all you need are the rules in your head, so you can start playing them whenever and wherever you like. Bored in the backseat of a car? Feeling weary on the last leg of a long hike? Searching for an activity at home that doesn’t involve screen time? Look no further than a travel game!
I’m also so, so proud of the trivia section at the back of the book. My favourite sort of quiz question is one where the answer is surely somewhere in my head, and so the challenge is to sort through and find it — like, which three countries begin with the letter V? Family Road Trip Games contains over 200 questions just like that, designed to be savoured and mulled over by a group on the move. Keep an eye on my Instagram if you want to sample some more questions for free, as I’ll be posting some more of them there soon.
Anyway: this book is on sale NOW! Buy a copy for your glove box to add some spice to your next road trip, and then come back here and let me know which game you liked best. I also think it’s a pretty nifty gift book, as getting bored in transit is a fairly universal experience — so please feel free to buy a copy for your friends and family as well!
And that’s all for now. Happy reading, and bon voyage!
JACK HENSELEIT 
I’m stuck at the Treasure Hunt! We think the answer to the first riddle is ‘tricks’ but we can’t be sure. Hints accepted!
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G’day Holden! I’m so glad to hear that someone is taking on the Treasure Hunt. In retrospect I think the clues are actually very difficult, so I am more than happy to offer up some hints.
The opening riddle does require you to identify a six letter word, but it isn’t “tricks” — but you do have the T and the C correct. For letters two, three, five, and six, you’ll need to be thinking of an exclamation, a pronoun, a playing card, and a compass point, respectively. Maybe that’s still too cryptic, but I hope it leads you in the right direction.
And after that you’ll have to find the secret picture and the secret message… and then answer the secret questions… and then find and solve the secret code… and then finally locate the secret diamond! Phew!
Best of luck Holden — I’d love to know that someone made it all the way to the end!
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