Need help with WanderClue? Email mat.enrique.galicia@gmail.com and I'll get back to you.
A stop unlocks within about 60 metres, and WanderClue allows extra slack when your phone reports weak GPS — but in a street with tall buildings the signal can still wander. Give it a few seconds to settle, and check that location is allowed in iOS Settings → Privacy → Location Services → WanderClue. The screen stays awake while you play so location keeps updating. If it still won't unlock, use "Reveal without walking" — you'll lose the on-foot bonus for that stop, nothing else.
Answers ignore capitals, accents, punctuation and words like "the," so those aren't the problem. Try just the key word on its own rather than a sentence (for a street, "Madero" works as well as "Avenida Madero"). If you're still stuck, take a hint — and after a hint or two wrong tries, "Show me the answer" lets you move on without that puzzle's points. Please email me the quest and the stop so I can look at it.
It shouldn't any more. Food & drink is switched off by default when you build a quest, and even when you switch it on, no single category is allowed to take over the route. If you're still seeing it, check which activity types are selected on the "Build a quest" screen.
The distance is a target the app tries to fill, not a promise. If there aren't enough places of the kinds you picked within reach of your starting point, it builds the best shorter walk it can rather than padding the route with somewhere you didn't ask for. Try selecting more activity types, or a busier starting point.
Yes. On the "Build a quest" screen, under "Places you already want to see," search for it and add it. Anywhere you pin is always in the quest — it ignores the activity filters and the distance limit, because you asked for it by name. If you pin more places than the number of stops you chose, the quest simply gets longer.
Where it can be. The app asks Apple Maps for a real walking route between stops, and the quest brief tells you which you're looking at: a measured walking route, or a straight-line estimate when the route couldn't be fetched. A straight-line estimate is always shorter than the real walk.
When WanderClue builds a quest around you and no AI writer is available, it makes simple observation puzzles instead of writing a story — "what street is this on?", "which word on the sign starts with M?". Those quests are labelled Template so you always know which kind you have. Turn on Apple Intelligence on a supported iPhone, or add your own OpenAI key in Settings, to get story-written ones.
No. On an iPhone with Apple Intelligence, quests are story-written on the phone itself, for free. The two built-in quests need nothing at all. A key is only for people who prefer OpenAI's writing, or whose phone can't run Apple Intelligence. WanderClue never ships with a developer key, so anything you generate that way is on your own account and your own terms.
No — that's the one thing WanderClue never leaves to the AI. Before any story is written, the app picks each stop's answer from Apple Maps data it knows is physically there: the street on the corner sign, a word from the place's own name, or the kind of place it is. The AI only writes the riddle that leads to it. A riddle can still be dull; the answer can't be invented.
Every quest mixes them so no two stops feel the same: riddles, scrambled words, letter-shift ciphers, words with missing letters and padlock codes (all solved by finding the real word out on the street), a compass bearing and a distance guess to the next stop, shaking your phone, freezing like a statue, and photo dares. Some walks between stops are timed "dashes" — beat the clock with a brisk walk for bonus points. Never run into traffic; there's no penalty for missing a dash.
Built quests hide a secret word. Each stop you clear hands you one of its letters, in a scrambled order. After the last stop, put them together to open the final lock for a big bonus.
Every shake and freeze challenge has a tap or press-and-hold alternative right underneath, and every challenge can be skipped. You'll miss that stop's points, nothing else — you still get its codeword letter.
Try a different story world on the "Build a quest" screen, or leave it on "Surprise me." Each build draws a new cast, a new mix of challenges and a new codeword, and avoids the places in your last few quests when there are others nearby.
Each cleared stop is worth 100 points, plus 50 if you reached it on foot and 25 if you got it first time without a hint. A hint costs 30, each wrong try 10 (at most 30). Beating a timed dash earns 60, and cracking the codeword at the end earns 150 (100 with its hint). After most stops, the compass bonus asks you to face the next stop without looking at the map — within 30° earns 40 more. Stars compare your score with a perfect run.
Open the quest and tap the share button (or long-press it in the list) and choose "Send this quest." It travels as a small .wanderclue file by AirDrop, Messages or Mail; when your friend opens it, the quest appears in their WanderClue, ready to play.
If you're signed in to Game Center, your lifetime points and stops walked on foot are posted after each quest. Open them from the trophy in the Journal, or from the finish screen.
Your quests and journal live only on your device. If you use iCloud backup for your phone, they're included in that backup like any other app's data. WanderClue itself has no cloud server.
You're walking in a real street. Watch traffic, keep the phone down between stops, and don't climb, trespass, or enter anywhere private — every answer in this app can be found from a public footpath. Play with someone else after dark.
Email a description of what happened (and a screenshot if you can) to mat.enrique.galicia@gmail.com — include your iOS version and the app version (Settings).