SMITASIN/HIDE&SEEK-PARIS

We Played Hide and Seek in Paris, France


(Reading Time: ~12.5mins)



I’ve been watching Jet Lag: The Game (YouTube|Nebula) for several years now, so I was thrilled to see them come out with a physical game version that I could play myself: Jet Lag: The Game - Hide and Seek. I ordered this back in December knowing that my partner and I would be going to France in April, and our 1 month stay in Paris would be a perfect time to play. In short - it absolutely was. We had a blast playing it, though we did a shortened version (2 hour time limit per run), and only played the last couple of days before we left Paris. This was kind of a mixed result - on one hand, having spent nearly a month in Paris gave us more knowledge of the Metro (subway), neighborhoods, and landmarks than we’d had if we played earlier on in the trip. On the other hand, we wish we had more time to play it, and could have played it more before leaving Paris (the rest of our trip was smaller cities/towns, and we’d be even more pressed for time in each location).

Below is my best recollection of how the game went, plus some thoughts about what we’d do differently next time.

Setup


We rolled dice to decide who would hide first and I won. It was after my 5PM workday and we didn’t want to be out super late, so imposed a 2 hour time limit per person (incl. 30 min head start for the hider), thinking we’d finish by 9PM or so (still before sunset in Paris). Thinking there’d be no way someone gets caught by then, we figured we’d just go by whoever gets physically closest to the hider by the end of the 2 hours. We also removed a few curses from the deck so we wouldn’t have to spend money (like buying food or eating in restaurants). We talked about starting the game from a central area, like Saint-Michel / Notre Dame, but ultimately decided to just leave from our apartment in Les Gobelins to save travel time before starting play.





Round 1: Michael Hides, Clarisa Seeks



Before the timer starts, the hider has 10 minutes to plan their hiding location, which has to be within ¼ mile of a transit station (we decided to use Metro stations since we were more familiar with it than the RER or bus system), and they have to be able to get there during the 30 mins head start period. I picked my location but knew it would be tight getting there, and made my first mistake - not understanding which entrance to the Place d’Italie Metro station I needed to enter to get to the train I wanted to be on. I ended up wasting several minutes going through the station to get to my train, but eventually made it to the hiding “zone” (the ¼ mile within my final transit station) and was debating between two parks to hide in for my end-game stop (when the seeker reaches the hider’s station, the hider is frozen in their spot so they want this to be a good hiding spot).

Then my 30 min head start was over, and Clarisa sent her first question a few minutes later:

“Send a photo of the widest street”

To which I responded:



I was rushing to get this photo to her and not have it give away too much information, not realizing until after I sent it that it included an expansion joint that I thought would give away that it was a bridge, but she didn’t realize that.

We also debated whether the question meant the widest street within the hiding zone (1/4mi from your train station) or widest street near you currently, with me interpreting the latter and Clarisa interpreting it as the former. In the end, it didn’t make a difference but was something we’d want to be on the same page about next time.

Clarisa’s next question was:

“Send a photo of any building visible from the station entrance”

This required me to walk all the way back to the station (I was on the edge of the 1/4mi radius) to take that photo. The game rules say the hider should make a best effort to complete this within 5 minutes of it being asked, which is a pretty short amount of time.

Feeling rushed again, I sent this photo, thinking it was a fairly generic building that could be anywhere in Paris:


Catch my mistake? I didn’t until Clarisa found me and told me. I didn’t realize that I included a street sign (the small blue sign at the bottom of the photo, next to the 3rd window from the right) which says “Square Alboni”. Clarisa looked that up (rules allow) and figured out that my train station was the Passy station on the other side of the Pont de Bir-Hakim:




She started heading my way and asked her third question:

“Compared to me are you closer or farther from a body of water?”

At the time, she was at the Les Gobelins Metro station:



But since I was literally standing next to a body of water, it was an obvious “Closer”.

I didn’t mention before, but each question asked by the Seeker allows the Hider to draw cards from a deck - these include time bonuses (since whoever hides the longest wins normally) and curses (things that can slow down or disrupt the Seeker). And this question got me my first curse, which I immediately played:



And proceeded to film a pigeon in a tree for 1m27s, though the video isn’t very interesting so I won’t upload it here. It would take Clarisa 28m to record her video and send it to me, but interestingly, she ended up going to the other park that I had originally thought about going to at the beginning. I was watching her tracker on my phone so I could see she was very nearby but never caught a glimpse of her in person.

Her next question was:

“Send a selfie”



And my answer sealed my fate (I couldn’t stop laughing because I knew I was cooked). Clarisa found me a few minutes later on L'île aux Cygnes, just in the middle of the Pont de Bir-Hakim:





Michael’s total hiding time: 1 hour, 26 minutes

As it was starting to get dark, we decided to postpone Clarisa’s round for the next day.


Round 2: Clarisa Hides, Michael Seeks



We started again from our apartment in Les Gobelins to make things fair, and after the 30 minute head start, I sent my first question:

“Send a photo of the tallest structure in your sightline”

Clarisa responded with:



I think she was being pretty intentional with that angle, to try to hide any features that might give it away, and I didn’t find this very helpful. The buildings are more modern than most of what you’d find in the central core of Paris (around the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, etc), so I suspected it might be in the more peripheral areas, but that was the most I could gather.

So next I asked:

“Is your closest aquarium the same as mine? Aquarium de Paris”

The Aquarium de Paris is located in the Jardins du Trocadero, just across the Seine from the Eiffel Tower, and there’s only one other aquarium within our play area - the Aquarium Tropical, and since they were on opposite sides of the city, it would effectively split the city in half:



Clarisa’s answer was: “We have the same aquarium” so I knew she was in the western side of the city.

So then I did a 1 mile radar - this basically just asks if they are within 1 mile of your location. At this point, I was at the Catelet Metro station, because it’s central and has lots of Metro lines running through it, making it a good place to start from as the seeker:



Unfortunately, it was a MISS so she wasn’t within 1 mile of me.

Next, I started a ½ mile thermometer from Chatelet to Reaumur - Sebastopol. Thermometers basically tell you if you get hot or cold after moving a certain distance on public transit (½ mile in this case). So as I headed north on the #4 Metro, I was trying to see if that was getting closer to Clarisa or further away:



Her answer: Hotter. So I started to draw out a map on my phone:



Which editing out the areas I knew she couldn’t be in, left me with this:



But that was still about 1/4 of the entire city of Paris, so still plenty of places she could be hiding. My next question was:

“Send a photo of the widest street”

Which she responded with:



That wasn’t immediately helpful - there were lots of places where two roads met like that in the quadrant of the city I knew she was in. Unfortunately, Clarisa drew a curse and sent it over to me:



This actually ended up not being too bad - I believe Categories # 5 and # 6 weren’t relevant to our “short” game anyway, so anytime I rolled one of those it was a “gimme”.

I rolled a #1 which meant the “Matching” category was disabled. So then I asked:

“Compared to me, are you closer or further from Montmartre?”

This is because Montmartre is technically a mountain (has a mountain symbol on Google maps, our agreed upon authoritative map), and “closer or further from this mountain” is a question.

Clarisa’s answer was “I am closer”.

I followed up with:

“Is your arrondissement (neighborhood/district) the same as mine (the 18th arrondissement)?”

Her answer was No and that let me narrow the map even more - since the 18th arrondissement was the furthest from the city center and was adjacent to the Boulevard Peripherique (the edge of our play area). (Pro-tip: If you’re in Paris and trying to figure out which arrondissement something is in, the last 2 digits of the postal code indicates the arrondissement, for example: 75013 is the 13th arrondissement, and 75018 is the 18th arrondissement.)



At this point, I was feeling pretty good, but I only had 23 minutes left to find Clarisa. So I asked:

“Send a photo of any building visible from your train station”

And finally I got a break! Clarisa’s photo included a sign for a restaurant “BAZE”:



I looked this up on Google Maps and found an “Asian food by BAZE Paris” next to the Gare de l’Est train station:



Unfortunately, she hit me with a curse:



But this wasn’t so bad, as she only had one attempt and only got 2 rocks high, which I was able to reproduce fairly quickly with some small rocks in a tree planter across from the train station:



At this point though, we were basically at the end of the 2 hour time limit, so Clarisa had won, but we decided to keep playing since it was nice out and we had time left in the day. I sent her a request for a selfie and she was allowed to draw one card, but unfortunately, her selfie didn’t reveal any clues (I responded “BS!”):



So next up I asked for a photo of the sky, and again she could draw 1 card:



This was a more helpful photo - I knew she was in a green space, so I started looking at parks in the area. I also still had to roll a die to disable a category of question, but fortunately rolled a 5 again and just disabled tentacles.

My next question was: “Compared to me, are you closer or further from a body of water? (50ft)”. Her answer was “Farther” and Clarisa was able to draw 3 and pick 1.

I rolled a 1 to disable a category and Matching was disabled, so I did an 1/8th mile radar - just like my earlier 1 mile radar, Clarisa would have to tell me if she was within 1/8th of a mile of me or not:



Unfortunately, this was a miss, and Clarisa could draw 2 and pick 1. I was very confused about this, because I was pretty certain at this point that Clarisa was at one of those 5 green spaces on the map, and the 1/8th mile radar encompassed 3 of the 5. I started to doubt myself and would ask a series of questions that were probably a waste of time but I was trying to verify that she was at least in the general area I thought she was.

I rolled a 6 which disabled photos and asked “Is your nearest hospital the same as mine?” with my thinking being that there were 4 hospitals in the area and if we were closest to the same one, that would confirm my theory of where she was:



Indeed, her answer was “Yes” on Hopital Saint-Louis and she could draw 3 and pick 1. This did confirm to me I was in the right general area, but also made me more confused, because she wasn’t within 50 feet of the water, basically ruling out the green spaces directly on Canal Saint-Martin, and she wasn’t within an 1/8th mile radius of Jardin Villemin - Mahsa Jîna Amini (where the red marker is in the above map), so I started heading back toward Gare de l’Est. I also rolled a 6 again and disabled the Photos category.

I asked another question to double-check my thinking: “1/2 mile radar” centered on a corner outside Gare de l’Est:



And it was a Hit but just confirmed what I already knew. I wasn’t able to do this on the fly, but combining what I knew at the time:

This actually seems more obvious to me looking back at it now, she was somewhere within the lower-right quadrant of the larger circle, but that wasn’t something I could process at the time:



I also could swear that neither of the green spaces that are shown on Google Maps today were there back in May 2025, but that could just be an excuse.

I asked one last question: “Photo of a tree”:



But I was so confused at this point because I couldn’t imagine anything I saw on Google Maps matching this location, and so I sent:



This means “I surrender, I’m tired” - we were just about 3 hours since the start of the hiding period, an hour longer than the original time limit, and I didn’t think I was any closer to finding her. So I looked on Find My and found her hiding here, where the red star is:



What threw me off was this was labeled “Athletic Fields” in Google Maps, and I could swear, wasn’t marked as a green space back then, though if I had looked at the satellite image, it would have been more clear:



And this Google Streetview image of Clarisa’s hiding spot matches up perfectly with her selfie, though she did a really good job of disguising where she was:



Clarisa’s total hiding time: 3 hours, 3 minutes

(At least, until I gave up… it probably would have gone on another hour or so before I’d have found her on my own, maybe more!)

Conclusion



We had an amazing time playing Hide & Seek in Paris - it was both faster paced and harder than we expected, but so exciting and fun, and the perfect cap to our month in that beautiful city. If you get the chance to play Hide & Seek, or visit Paris, I highly recommend both.



2025-11-15