Freshers Hunt
A scavenger hunt across IIT Delhi for the Northeast society’s freshers, and the web app that ran it, designed and built in one night.
Designed and built alone in one night for the Northeast society at IIT Delhi. The hunt ran on Sunday 11 October 2026.
A web app with a team view, an organiser view and a live leaderboard, running on a Cloudflare Worker with a D1 database. The motion is GSAP.
Teams signed up on a phone with a team name and one phone number. A team selfie on the Bio Tech lawn started each team’s clock. From there each clue pointed to a place on campus, and a selfie of the whole team at that place opened the next clue. After four campus stops the last clue led off campus to the fort ruins at Deer Park, where the society waited with music and snacks.
The fastest total time won. A hint opened ten minutes after its clue and added twenty minutes to the team’s time. A leaderboard page showed every team’s progress and each selfie as it arrived.
The film above was made in code from the app’s own screens, and replays the afternoon from the real check in times and photographs.
Four decisions
The app had one night to be built and one afternoon to work, with a handful of organisers and no second chance. Each decision removes a point where the hunt could stall.
- The selfie is the check in
- No organiser approves a photo. The upload itself opens the next clue, because any approval step would have become a queue at every stop. The photos are kept, so a doubtful check in can be reviewed later, and the organiser view can advance a team by hand.
- Routes rotate
- The four campus stops form one walking loop. Each new team begins at whichever stop the fewest teams begin at, so teams do not trail one another and no stop is crowded at once.
- Hints cost time
- A hint is always available after ten minutes, but it adds twenty minutes to the team’s time, more than most stops took to find. Asking stays possible and rarely pays. No team used one.
- The server holds the route
- The phone only ever receives the current clue, so the stops ahead cannot be read from the page. A team rejoins by its name alone, so it can change phones in the middle of the route.
The afternoon
Five teams signed up, and four set off and finished, fourteen players in all. ABC were ahead of Green Lantern after every campus stop. Green Lantern were faster on the long walk to Deer Park and finished twenty four seconds ahead.
| Team | Hints | Time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Green Lantern | 0 | 00:43:40 |
| 2 | ABC | 0 | 00:44:04 |
| 3 | Smoked Pork | 0 | 01:08:28 |
| 4 | Highlanders | 0 | 01:16:29 |
