GISHWHES stands for the Greatest International Scavenger Hunt the World Has Ever Seen. Teams of 15 have one week to complete a list of 200 difficult, charitable, or hilarious tasks. They prove they’ve completed each item by submitting a photo or video of it; their $20 entry fees go to a charity, and the winning team gets a trip to an exotic location.

This is Part 4 of our five-part series.

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 • Part 5

Part 4: How to Win GISHWHES

In the early years of the world’s largest scavenger hunt, when you signed up to enter, you’d have to answer only one question: Have you put together your own team of 15 people? Or would you like us to add you to a team?

But sometimes, the team-building system failed—because people came in with different expectations.

Florida State University students Nat Jones and Kira Sullivan, for example, had a rough ride during their first years competing. “In our first years of the hunt, we were on teams that weren’t as competitive as the one we’re on now [Team Raised from Perdition],” Kira says.

“We were in it to win it, but no one else on our team was,” Nat adds. “They saw us as too competitive: ‘Why are you guys so obsessed with GISHWHES?’”

(Lots of people join just for the hilarity of it, without any intention of completing all 175 items. Some, for example, choose to execute only a few, but in spectacular fashion. GISHWHES offers two showcases for such masterpieces: an online Hall of Fame, and a hardbound coffee-table book that’s published after each year’s hunt.)

That’s why, nowadays, when you sign up to enter, the site asks which kind of team you’re interested in. Do you intend to play competitively, or are you joining just for fun?

Tips from the Pros

If you do intend to enter GISHWHES competitively, Team Raised from Perdition—a runner-up last year, and the team we’ve been following in this miniseries—offers some tips.

• “Fill the team with a variety of backgrounds and experiences. Spend some time bonding before the hunt.” —Suzanne Simpson

• “You can’t win if everyone’s not 100% committed. I’m talking, no work for the whole week, no school for the whole week, no anything but GISHWHES for the whole week.” —Nina Mostepan, Co-Captain

• “Another really essential skill to have in GISHWHES is the ability to not sleep for long periods of time. This year, I went for three and a half days on less than four hours of sleep.” —Christine Gervais

• “A lot of teams struggle with keeping communications going. We talk to our team all the time [using a system like Slack or Google Hangouts]. Even all year long, we talk to them. We do a lot of practices, too.” —Shiane Gaylie

• “Strategize in advance. You can look at past years’ item lists, and items created by top teams, for inspiration.” —Suzanne Simpson

• “A good strategy is to have more than one person in a town. You have to have someone modeling, and someone taking the pictures. And someone to bounce ideas off of, or talk in the car on the way to the place you’re going to.” —Nat Jones

• “Recruit a friend or family. Gishing is very social, so it’s always more fun if you have someone to do it with.” —Kira Sullivan

• “We have a spreadsheet [a Google Docs sheet] full of all our items, and we claim them on the spreadsheet, so that everyone on the team knows who’s doing what.” —Shiane Gaylie

• “We make up a laminated list of the items. So when we’re talking to someone about helping us with one of the challenges, we start by handing them the list, show them which item we need help with. It has explanations of everything that’s going on. A lot of the time, they’re like, ‘Hold on, I need five minutes to read this.’ (Laminated versus not laminated makes a miraculous difference. You don’t want to hand someone a piece of paper that’s floppy and has stains on it.)”—Rob Fitz-James

• “We’re fortunate that we have a good camera, but some of our team members just use their phones. If you pay attention to composition and lighting, the results can be just as good.” —Kira Sullivan