Sniff

A competitive treasure hunt race through a blind maze.

Find the opponent’s treasure before they find yours.

SET UP

Place four 6x6 modular boards arranged in a square pattern with space between them.
Use four sets of Vitaminz A1 to F6 to mark and identify the navigational rows and columns on each board.
Place an eye shield between 2 of the boards, so that each player can only view 3 of the boards.
A stone is placed by each player to mark the position of their treasure chest on their respective hidden board.
Side sized sticks are used to create walls in a maze. The entry points from ‘Off the board’ to a cell in Column A can be blocked as well.
On their hidden board, each player creates a maze of confusion so that there is at least one path from a cell in the A column to the hidden treasure.
4 Pawns are used to identify the player’s Sniff characters.
Boards are paired: each player controls the two boards closest to them.
The player to move first is randomly selected.

Taking alternating turns, navigate thru the blind maze until one player finds the opponent’s hidden treasure.

Pawns can move adjacently.
On your turn, call out the targeted coordinates of your planned movement, starting from ‘off the board’ to a cell in the A column. For example, a starting move might be, “From off the board, can I enter at A2?”
The opposing player is obligated to provide feedback of a ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
If you run into a wall, your turn in over.
Use the pawns to track your current position on the visible map, and another to track your opponents position on your hidden map.
Use bottlecaps to track your steps, and sticks to track walls found on your visible board. (this allows your opponent to also track play for correctness.)
Alternating turns continue until one player finds the other’s elusive treasure chest/s.

Sniff was originally released by F.X. Schmid in 1974 .
Milton Bradley released the plastic game published under the name Pathfinder in 1977.

This is a classic old school competitive treasure hunt, thru a blind maze, which make it a guessing game too.
This game is found on The Sticks and Stones Series, The Code Breaker Academy, The Predators Tract, and the Head Games shelves in my vast library.
It is also fun to build a diabolical maze filled with dead ends, booby traps, and long zig zag random paths. Just remember the maze must be solvable from at least one entry point on the A column.