Are you finding yourself sitting around over the holidays just wishing that somewhere out there, some cool librarian had put together a Fun and Friendly yet also Dastardly and Nefarious set of challenges and activities to help you distract yourself from the ever-present ennui of the holidays?

Well in case you missed our last blog post, we have!

Our April holiday Wellington City SPYbraries online challenge is well underway, and some of you out there are already arduously working away, honing your spy-skills, performing dastardly and deceptive deeds, and completing case assignments in imaginative ways.

If you’re aged 12-19, it’s not too late to register and start your Super Sleuth journey! If you haven’t already headed over to our WCL Beanstack site to check out the challenge or register, why not click the button below and register right now?!

Click here to sign up for Wellington City SPYbraries!

To entice you to sign up, I thought I’d share some of the Interesting and Elusive case assignments that we have created to keep y’all occupied. While we have created a wide selection of case assignments for the challenge, you only have to complete four of them to earn the achievement – and for some assignments, you don’t even have to leave your house!

You can of course progress through the challenge by logging books you’ve read and writing book reviews – and there is the chance of winning a ✨spot prize✨ if you write a particularly good review! – but we think the case assignments are pretty neat. And you can also win ✨spot prizes✨ for completing these assignments in Impressive and Imaginative ways too!

Anyway, let’s get into it:

Create a paper trail

Sometimes, it is useful to have evidence that you were in a certain place at a certain time so if asked you can say “Why of course I wasn’t breaking into Te Papa as part of a well-oiled heist team with the goal of stealing the Giant Squid at 10pm last Tuesday, clearly this submission shows I was busy writing a heartfelt poem on the subject of Tūmanako, so I couldn’t possibly have been involved”.

For this assignment you are required to lay a digital-paper-trail by submitting a poem to our WCL poetry journal Tūhono. Our blog post will give you all the information about Tūhono, this year’s theme and prompt, and how to submit your poem.

Infiltrate and Ameliorate

For this assignment, you are challenged to visit a library that is unknown to you and help the librarians in their never-ending mission against their most deadly enemy, the Patron Who Puts Books Back On The Wrong Shelf. Infiltrate the library location and scan the shelves to find an item in the wrong place, then ameliorate this error and return the book its rightful location on the shelf.

*And yeah, we may be using you to do our shelf-checking for us.*

Dis-orienteering

It may happen that sometime in the future your nemesis manages to capture you, then abandons you dazed and confused in the middle of nowhere. This assignment is designed to give you practice at finding your way home from an unknown location. Get some fellow investigators together and ask a trustworthy driver to drop you in an unknown location that is within walking distance of your home or base of operations. Then find your way home.

Extra for experts: Can you find your way home without using Google Maps?

Master of disguise

You never know WHO will recognise you right at the very moment you need secrecy and privacy. For this assignment you are challenged to create a disguise that hides your recognisable features. Will you create and take on a whole new identity, or change your appearance just enough that you blend in with the crowds as you follow your foe through the crowds? Or, like our friend in the picture here, will you go with a much simpler approach?

Hide the evidence

In the spirit of the phrase “to kill two stones with one bird” (we are pro-bird, anti-stone here), our aim in giving you this assignment is twofold: to allow you practice at hiding important evidence in plain sight, and to help train future crime scene investigators.

To complete this assignment, you are required to submit two photos. One, a photo of an object that you will be hiding. The other, a photo of the crime scene where your object is hidden (think I spy or Where’s Wally?). Your object should be hard to find, but not impossible. If you allow it, we will publish your puzzle on our WCL Instagram page for other investigators to practice on.

There are more assignments, but to find out what they are you’ll have to head on over and sign up for the challenge! Happy Sleuthing!