In high schools across the country, hide and seek is a fierce, round-the-clock competition that defines the success of everyone’s high school career. To help turn Northwood into a school known for both its amazing academics and prestigious hide-and-seek program, The Howler asked 14-year-old hide-and-seek Grand Champion Hai Dango Sik for assistance. Whether you’re an amateur playing your first round in the Bronze league or already near the top of the Champion league, here are Sik’s top 11 ideas to help you boost your ranking at Northwood.

1. Make your schedule unpredictable:

Why talk to friends outside and risk getting found when you can stay in the comfort of your teachers’ classes? Go to every class extra early and join a new club every day so that no one will be able to follow your tracks.

2. At the Media Center’s quiet study desks: Feel free to kill two birds with one stone and study while staying hidden from any Northwood faculty that might peek in (surely no self-respecting Northwood student would be studying in their free time, right?).

3. Take shelter in the science teachers’ prep rooms:

No one knows what they do in there anyway. We’ve never seen a kid go in there and come back out alive, but you might be the first!

4. Curl up really tight and pretend to be a computer in the Howler pod:

You’ll never be discovered. It’s not like we get any real work done in there anyway.

5. Crawl into an instrument locker in Room 501:

If you scoot far enough back, maybe your pursuers won’t be able to see through the grates, or perhaps they’ll just mistake you for a rather unusually-shaped tuba.

6. Perch yourself in the uppermost branches of the Oak:

Get up close and personal with some of the very large, very intimidating ravens that hang out around Northwood, and be sure to perfect your raven caw imitation beforehand so you can really blend in. You might even find yourself accompanied by a distraught juniors just looking to hide from their AP classes.

7. Lurk in the shadows backstage in the theater:

Just don’t stay there too long, or you might run into (or possibly through) Dimitri, Northwood’s very own theater ghost.

8. Conceal yourself in the special stairwell:

We won’t tell you where this is, but you’ll know it once you see it. The working theory is that if you use a timberwolf hat to knock on the part of the wall three feet up and two feet to the right of the second step, an entrance will open to a randomly selected location in the midst of the avocado groves surrounding Northwood—explains why some students who go up this dark and shadowy stairwell are never seen again.

9. Grab a friend and dress up as English teacher Cameron Wroe:

You’ll have to stand one on top of the other to successfully mimic his prodigious height, but no one will be able to find you as you enjoy your cup(s) of coffee in the teacher’s lounge.

10. Blend in with a crowd of seniors:

Roll straight out of bed, grab your favorite college merch and ditch your textbooks before coming to school, and with any luck maybe other freshmen will be asking you for help finding their classes.

11. Become Dr. Roach:

If blending in with seniors isn’t your thing and you want to take it a tier higher, dress up as principal Leslie Roach and go into the office to instigate some rules making hide-and-seek against the Timberwolf Code of Conduct, thus ending the game and ensuring your victory. The key to this one is confidence—walk in there like you know what you’re doing, say “Don’t do it, people!” whenever hide and seek is mentioned, and no one will dare question you.