So going into it, we see that this room has a 12% success rate. That's fairly daunting.
We had 11 people, including one family of 7 and a couple that showed up late.
This room was much larger than the ones I had done in Denver. There they had a max of 8 and we escaped one with just 5 of us. We all go in and watch a cheesy short video from the character behind this escape room. Honestly, when we walked into this one it looked like there was nothing to do. In previous rooms there were 5 or 6 various types of locks. And my strategy for Niraj was study the locks first so you know what types of answers you're looking for. Well, here they were no locks. So much for that. I start searching through a cabinet and I find a clock.
As it turns out there were 8 puzzles that we had all the information to solve that in the end revealed one answer. And there was one puzzle that we couldn't solve yet, but we didn't know that. It happened to be the one that Niraj spent the most time on.
But the rest of the 8 varied immensely in type and time required. They were labeled A through G. A was a giant crossword on the floor with 15 clues scattered throughout the room. Some we only found after we assembled the whole thing. The clues were simple but assembling it was a different matter. I worked on it and got lucky that everything that I guessed at where it might go, turned out to be right. And then I saw the answer written diagonally well before we realized there was an arrow showing us where to start reading the answer. This one took at least 10 minutes and we had multiple people working on it at various points. I mistakenly thought "Louisiana marsh" was going to be "bog" and was stuck when there was no g. We were looking for "bayou."
Me and a kid worked on B and it only took 1 minute once had all the clocks to put them in the outlines on wall and read their hands.
C involved standing with hands and feet against a wall in marked spots to spell out letters. I didn't work on this one at all.
D was a pattern puzzle written on the wall that looked impossible to me but someone else eventually solved it.
E involved finding a word in a book. I don't think it was too hard but didn't touch it.
F was a complicated one. You had to assemble a maze puzzle made of bins, then figure out which ones the maze route didn't go through, then convert the numbered answer into letters using codes hidden around the room. Of course when you walk in and see 3 = w, you don't even know what to do with that. Didn't work on this one either.
G...I don't remember at all.
H was a literal 50-piece puzzle that you had to put together first. The kids took 20 minutes just to put this together. Then it revealed a math equation that wasn't easy and then convert that to letters as well.
So these A through H all lead to one answer. We had it figured out about halfway though but it didn't make sense. And then once we finally got the complete answer about 35 minutes in, it still didn't make sense. We had 11 puzzle-solving people in the room and no one could figure it out. About five minutes go by and the room people finally give us our first hint. 20 seconds letter I flipped one thing over and it was super easy. That ended Phase One.
The room people gave us a new card that involved the puzzle Niraj had spent so much time on. Now we had everything we needed and Niraj knew where everything went so it went quick. I shouted "Hit the Lights" a good two minutes before we needed to. Once we had everything in place, I shouted out the answer that ended Phase Two.
This opened a brand new area of the room. We had about 10-15 minutes left at this point I think. Yikes. We finally see our first lock, with four letters needed to solve it. We start looking for letters. All of a sudden people find three of them. I accidentally pull something apart and say whoops. And start putting it back on. A room guy comes over and says to me, "Sir you need to be careful with those supplies, they are very fragile." I immediately apologize out of habit and then two seconds later process that it's a hint and start pulling them all apart. Niraj comes over and finds the letter in a piece I had pulled apart but left behind. That was the missing part to solve the lock and Phase Three.
That revealed a question that was a callback to the video that we watched when we entered the room. I had absolutely no idea. Thank goodness for kids who paid close attention. One of them knew the answer right away. This revealed the final puzzle.
We only had about 1 minute left at this point. We had to assemble an arrow. It took a little bit to figure it out. The arrow pointed to the key that opens the door. We got the key give it to a kid who runs over to the lock. And...
In other words it took us 99.64% of our possible time to escape.
I love the whole thing. Genuinely thrilling.
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