Escape rooms are big money these days - that's rooms you pay to escape from by unravelling clues and solving puzzles. Perhaps you've been. I have now been to an escape room because BestMate invited me because the rest of his family were going and there was a space. We arrived late due to navigational errors, which isn't ideal when you're about to be tested on your perspicacity, but thankfully there were no conflicting bookings so the event progressed as anticipated.
Lockers are provided for dropping off stuff which would only get in the way, and be sure to use the toilet before you get locked in. Half our entourage were locked in one room and the other half in another, differently themed. They don't tell you much in advance, apart from to search carefully, and not to move anything with force, and not to take any photos, and that you've got exactly an hour, and where the clock is, and which screen to wave at if you get really really stuck.
It's a bit like the Crystal Maze except there are several challenges running simultaneously and no crystals. You might have crystals in your escape room, but there were none in ours. Instead we had cards and bottles and wooden cubes and mirrors and (spoiler) writing that's only visible using ultra-violet light. There were also a lot of keys and locks, which took some time to match up, plus annoyingly they didn't always emerge in the correct order.
The padlocks with numbered codes were the worst, partly because there were so many of them but mainly because they allowed whoever devised the puzzles to be really devious. Different digits could be hidden in different places, and then you had to get the order right, and even then it might not be the right padlock at all. On the positive side even if you were missing one of the digits you could usually get the padlock to open by cycling through a single rotation.
It was just as well we were a big group because this meant some of us could focus on one thing and some of us on another. I still have no idea how the thing with the books worked, whereas I was the only person who spotted the perspex numbers in the vases without which they'd never have opened the chest. Also a bigger group meant a greater chance of thinking obliquely, so I have no idea why anyone would enter in a group of two, other than to save money.
If you've done enough escape rooms I think you get wise to some of the more normal tricks, like hiding messages in text by using capital letters or colours. Never take an entirely colour-blind team into an escape room, because it may not be fully accessible. Also if your eyesight's substandard in low light you may be seriously disadvantaged so take a torch, or a teenager, whichever's easiest. And always listen to what others have found, because a lot of the challenge comes from linking up seemingly unconnected information.
We escaped in fifty-eight minutes, which we were very chuffed about. The record for the room was apparently half that, but I don't believe anyone could have unravelled all the numerous challenges in that time without a shedload of hints. We only needed two hints, which the organisers said was really good, but perhaps they say that to everyone. Our other group escaped slightly faster but with more help, although they never told us quite how much.
I felt for the two staff who had to sit there while we launched into endless anecdotes about what we'd just experienced in our respective rooms - they must have heard it all before. They also had the job of going back into the rooms and resetting them for the next contestants, putting precisely the right clues in precisely the right places to ensure everything would unravel in the correct order. They never escape. Perhaps you just might.
