Team building – murder mystery activities

We’re often asked what sorts of other “team building” activities can be bolted into murder mystery games to encourage team work during a corporate team building day.  It’s important to understand that a murder mystery is team building in and of itself (details about that are on another blog post… just look under the “team building” category for a full list of team building ideas).  However, we bow to the request… and so, we’ve included some other mystery themed suggestions which are easy to add into team building days.

Team building activities – with a murder mystery theme

Many of the following activities require prior planning and setting up before the event.

Find the fingerprints:

Fingerprint the team to discover at least 1 whorl, 1 arch and 1 loop and one other “interesting feature” as detailed in the investigation sheet.

Blood splatter analysis:

Hand out a series of blood splatters (ink blots) to the team. They need to either:

1. Draw an animal on the ink blot and then put it back into the pile – and everyone has to decide who drew what.
2. Try to convince everyone else in the room that we see what they see in their ink blot.

Evidence gathering:

You create a list of evidence you want the candidates to gather e.g. a left shoe, a shoe lace, a sock, a necklace, a watch etc (create a long list of possible items). They have to find and get the item to you under 5 seconds, or work through the list of 20 items within 1-2 minutes to qualify for a clue.

Draw the victim

Everyone has to draw the deceased from a description presented to them by one of the team at the front of the room. He/she has to describe the photograph in front of him/her, to see if anyone gets a similar likeness when drawing.

Draw the crime scene

Create a crime scene at your venue and allow the guests a set time limit to review the crime scene – after which they must try to provide an accurate drawing of the room, location of all the objects in relation to each other.

They can work as a team and have someone drawing on white board, while the others describe the room.

You can then check it with a photo taken of the real scene.

Name the clues

Like a memory game, only this time the group has to list every clue object within the crime scene room after they’ve visited. The more clues they accurately remember the more information they get before their next suspect.

Cuff me

Like the traditional untying game where everyone stands in a circle and holds hands with someone across from them, and they have to untangle themselves. But you can do it with 10 pairs of handcuffs to add the criminal dimension if you want to!

Handcuffs can be a bit tight but they give you a little more wriggle room between people, and no one has to hold hands!

Draw round me

Pair up and each pair draws around the other person on the floor. Each “body outline” is then labelled with the appropriate person’s name and tacked to the wall and people take it in turns to write something complimentary on the outline e.g. I admire the way you handle difficult customers.” “I like your hair” etc – it’s a really good way for positive affirmation within the group.

OR

After drawing around everyone, pick up the outlines and everyone has to guess who’s belongs to who.

OR

If you know the teams in advance, then use a head shot to create a silhouette, and have “guess the head” for each team.

Group decoding

Set them all on with a decoding task. It should be a message in code, with NO decryption information, but one that’s possible to solve.

Leave a little guidance on how to crack codes e.g. E is the most common letter in the alphabet. “The” is the most common word. Etc. – there are details on the internet of how to crack cyphers and you can print these out in advance to give them more hints.

Famous detective pairs (Who am I?)

Give the teams pairs of names e.g. Barnaby and Jones; Sherlock and Watson, Hercule and Hastings and see if they can find their matching pair by only answering “yes” or “no” to questions they are asked. (works best if the stickers are on their forehead so they can’t see their own name).

Don’t contaminate the crime scene.

Everyone has to get from one side of the room to the other contaminating it as little as possible e.g. with the minimum amount of feet on the floor. (this will involve some carrying etc).

OR

You can have someone be a “corpse” and they have to get the corpse from one end of the room to the other over and around obstacles, e.g. you can segment the room, and whoever stands on the floor in that space can’t cross a certain line – so the fewer who “stand” on that floor with their feet the more of the team will reach the finish line.