Friday night was scheduled fortnightly games night, but the wife of one of our team hijacked it for a special birthday surprise for her husband. She organised an evening for the group beginning with an escape room followed by dinner at a nearby pub. The rest of us arrived at the escape room early, and then the birthday boy showed up, blindfolded, having being driven there by his wife and kids. He had no idea where he was, so it was a good surprise.
We had a team of 7, and we did the hardest room that the company had. The (slightly contrived) premise was that we’d committed a murder. The police had begun investigating, but had gone on lunch break for one hour, and so we had returned to the scene of the crime to retrieve a crucial piece of evidence, before the police find it. So we had an hour to enter the room and find the evidence before leaving.
What followed was a series of three connecting rooms, with an array of puzzles and tricks to navigate. We had to find the combinations of several locks, which opened to give us access to further clues. At one point we realised we needed a battery to power a certain item, and so we had to search the rooms for something that had a battery in it and remove it to use it. There was a computer which we had to break into by finding the password, and once in we had to print a file on the attached printer… but there were no sheets of paper! So we had had to search the rooms and unlock something else to find a sheet of paper. We culminated in figuring out the combination of a safe, which opened to reveal a bloody glove – which was the evidence we needed to retrieve. We completed the challenge in a little over 45 minutes, and it was very satisfying and a lot of fun.
I’d never done an escape room before (I think only two in our group had), but being keen puzzle creators and solvers we never really felt lost at any point, and our teamwork was really good. Everyone contributed, in ideas, in spotting clues that we needed, and in various physical manipulations that we had to do with equipment. It was a really great experience.
A few others joined us at the pub afterwards for dinner, and overall it was a great evening. Thanks to birthday boy’s wife for organising it!
Apart from that, really the inly thing I did earlier in the day was work on my slides for the Human Vision class I’m preparing for Monday. I’m nearly done, but still want to add a couple more.
New content today:
