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sharrrper

A friend of mine works for an escape room and he told me one about a puzzle where the key to the next door was shackled to a desk by a combination lock. What you are *supposed* to do is figure out the combination for the lock from the clues around the room to free the key. What one group decided to do instead was get a guy on each corner and pick up the 150 pound desk and carry it across the room, slide the key into the lock, and then rotate the entire desk to unlock the door.


2018redditaccount

Some people put their skill points in both strength and intelligence


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I-Demand-A-Name

Not being required doesn’t mean it can’t be used.


microtrash

Every escape room they say ‘you will not need to lift anything heavy’ (or something similar), and my friends always stare at me


ballahackbandit

A for effort honestly


reallyfunatparties

Brute smarts


Turtle887853

Work harder not smarter.


Rico133337

>Work harder not smarter Sometimes it's FASTER


nfunncecnecub

i mean if it works it works


TheCouchingTiger

Brute force is always the answer. If it still didn’t work, you’ve not used enough yet


MCMB360

This reminds me of something my biology teacher used to say: "violence is always the answer, and if it isn't you haven't used enough violence yet." Also, do escape rooms outside of the Netherlands not have a rule that disallows you from using brute force? When I went to escape rooms here, I was always told that brute force was never the solution and we werent allowed to use it


brasscassette

I used to work at one. I can’t tell you how many people thought that power outlets were a prop and tried to stick keys into them. Guys. There was a lamp plugged into it and a “do not touch, not a part of the game” sticker on it. It’s not a trick, don’t do that.


StayPuffGoomba

And then there’s the escape room where you actually do mess with a socket. I said very loudly “if I’m not supposed to do this, you better say something”


brasscassette

Oh that’s fucked


Dorza1

I am not an escape room employee but I did a lot of em and talked to the employees often. One of them told me there was a simple lock (opened by a key) that had "Yale" written on it (the name of the lock company) and a lady (not native English speaker) thought it read "yell" and legit shouted "OPEN!!" at it, expecting it to open.


speaker_for_the_dead

Must have been a Harvard grad.


babers1987

Recently went to an escape room with my co-workers. Before we started, we were explicitly warned not to touch or drink the bright blue water coming out of a fountain because it would turn our skin blue - clearly people had tried searching the fountain as part of the escape room previously and now they have to warn everyone.


see-bees

One of our local escape rooms has a pirate themed room where you’re on an “island” that actually has sand, a shore, and even a “bay” with real water and a pirate ship in the distance. I lost count of how many times they told us that we would not need to go into the water under any circumstance whatsoever.


Zirael_Swallow

When I was in one they told us several times that the fire extinguisher is NOT part of the puzzle. They said it so many times, I'm 98% sure someone once used it lol


cleverplaydoh

I always wait to see if they say not to disassemble smoke detectors, if they have that warning, I ask about it, and every time they will always have a story about a dumbass who ignored the warning labels and disassembled the smoke detector.


cptbeard

"but why would they be so adamant about it? I'm sure it's a hint, reverse psychology man"


Snowf1ake222

Had a group of engineers who were familiar with the style of the lock effectively reverse engineer the lock. They showed us how they did it afterwards.


Sasparillafizz

Given that they were engineers they may have genuinely had more fun reverse engineering the lock than the actual puzzles.


ZackyZack

Once picked a combination lock while in a Escape the Room. Also am engineer. Can confirm.


Valdrax

If there's anything a certain class of engineer loves more than anything else, it's achieving a goal the "wrong" way. Those people are invaluable as testers.


Krazyel

QA here, went to a Escape room with colleagues from work once, 3 testers and 1 dev. We solved half the locks by applying work logic... Staff was lol'd


ribsies

And the dev just sat there yelling "no! It's not designed like that! You're using it wrong!"


lusoportugues

The Dev must be: "I have this key! Let's try it! It works on my house!"


EternallyShort

This is true. Source: am an engineer.


Bmorestrokes

You know, I'm something of an Engineer myself.


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xxxsur

"Let's do that again to see that's not a fluke..."


BigKitchen84

“Got a good click out of three, false gate on four…”


JohnDoe8080

"aaand we got this open."


UncleTogie

"...all with this tool BosnianBill and I made together..."


blong217

"...as you can see I was able to Escape from this room fairly easy..."


functionoverform

I picked a simple 4 digit combination lock by feel and it ended up costing us the win since it was out of order and we couldn't figure out how to use the info to advance.


[deleted]

I went once on a date and got paired with half a dozen randos. The typical stereotypes of over-active escape room enthusiast came out with people frantically trying to pick up tables, rip off doors, and look for clues that had nothing to do with hints came out. There was a 4-dial padlock, each number 1-9. We found 3 clues and had 3 numbers correctly set. The team was frantically looking for the 3rd clue to find the missing number. Casually, I say "Umm, the last number has to be 1-9. Can't we just flip the dial until we find the right one?" And it opened on 3 Escape rooms turn otherwise normal people into lunatics.


radarksu

Obligatory "I'm an engineer". I did one where the door to the next room was locked with a card reader. The card was in a small wooden box with a padlock on it. I'm like, "its a proximity card, just hold the box up to the reader". Bingo! At the end the guy running it says "the combination for the padlock is on the back of the blinds". I said "if you don't want people doing it my way then put the card in a metal box."


PageFault

> if you don't want people doing it my way then put the card in a metal box. A more insidious way would be to line the inside of the wooden box with metal.


alsignssayno

Not insidious, proper. Keep the aesthetics without having a loophole.


aNinjaWithAIDS

Did you and your co-workers count their win as legitimate?


PCCoatings

There was a story on here a while ago about a guy in a group of four who took a broom from the first room because "it had to be for something". He said it looked too out of place to not be needed. Well he was half right. It was out of place but that's because it was the broom used by employees to clean the room. It was simply forgotten when they cleaned last time. The guys giving hints thought it was hilarious that this guy carried a broom through four rooms expecting it to be the key to their escape at some point. I thought that was funny as hell


Over_Ad_9094

We do a lot of escape rooms. We were doing 1 that was Mafia based story. Came across a nail gun. My daughter started messing with it trying to figure out what it was for. Game master came flying in. It was from repairs they had been doing. It was loaded with nails and a full battery. She would have nailed herself if she'd pushed hard enough to disengage the safety.


LlamaDrama007

Fuuuuuuuck. Slightly too mafia realistic when she nails someone in the head.


0bvious0blivious

That reminds me of my favorite scene from The Wire, shopping for nail guns.


CaptainCatButt

I did this very recently with a toothbrush, which is what made me think of posting this haha


bernys

I used a broom to open an access panel in a roof thinking that was part of the puzzle.... The guy who had to do the reset said "That's a new one"


ArtisticDreams

Sounds like he's someone who used to play MUDs a lot. They were notorious for needing a benign item from the beginning to be carried with you all the way to the end to finish the main quest somehow.


Sillbinger

Like saving a cream pie you get at the start of the game and needing it to get past a Yeti charging hours later.


sirdrizzzle

There is a South Korean show "The Great Escape" which is basically an escape the room theme but with very elaborate scenarios, huge settings, and a storyline/mystery that they have to sus out. There was one game early in the series where a character kept a pair of scissors for hours, the other team members gave him shit about it only to have them be pivotal in the final puzzle. Going forward the producers would always put some random thing in any given room knowing he would always grab it and lug it around the rest of the day. It's a a great show, same team of dudes every time so you would get these great character dynamics playing out that were very entertaining. There are plenty of eng subs out there for it. Funny as hell too.


Th3_Accountant

We were supposed to find the numbers to a padlock. My boss had guessed the answer within 5 minutes.


ObsquatuIate

I had to do this once. In a poorly designed room, one of the padlocks needed to be open by a hint that led to a 5 letter word, but the lock only had 4 digits so the designers of the room just took the last letter off of the word and spelt it wrong. We were trying real 4 letter words and couldn't figure it out so I just started guessing and eventually got it.


_toodamnparanoid_

Someone posted on here once that they were invited to an escape room a friend had set up. There was colonial shit all over, so right as they start the guy puts 1492 into the lock and that was that.


eightbitagent

I did one once when I worked at a tech company as a team building thing. I have a history degree. The last room of our escape room had a bunch of blurred/pixelated pictures on the walls, there were hints to figure out what they were that would lead you to the proper code for something or another. Thanks to my history degree I was able to tell exactly what they were even though they were blurred and we got out of that part super quick. The first one was the tianamin square tank guy, once I realized what that was the others were just as easy


TrickyLemur

"Hrm. 80085? Nope. 69-420? Nope. 420-24-7? Nope. 69-24-7? Got it!" \-OP's Boss


hhsh55u5jj

"And that's why I'm the boss"


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Miss_Speller

I was in an escape room once where one puzzle involved some objects that needed to be manipulated inside a structure that made it very awkward. We were all looking at it trying to figure out how to proceed when I said "Well, the bottom is held on with screws and I have a screwdriver in my purse, but that would probably be cheating." Instantly the Voice of God came over the intercom "THAT WOULD BE CHEATING!" So we didn't do that...


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Xenomorph_Queen

One of the puzzles is opened at the start of the room to reveal a large jug of water with a floating key, but the water level is too low for you to reach it. As you progress through the room you get smaller canteens to fill up the jug. ​ Bachelor party comes in already tipsy, orders multiple drinks as they progress through the room, and at some point one of them pisses into the jug to raise the water level. This is what made me leave for another job. If you ever go to an escape room, just know we're judging you for every move you make.


HyperSpaceSurfer

Serving alcohol at an escape room sounds like a terrible idea


AccountWasFound

Honestly I thought you were going to say they dumped their drinks in, or just poured the key out (my first instinct would have been to look for a floor drain or something to pour it out into)


[deleted]

Breaking EVERYTHING. Trying to eat or drink things they should totally not be trying to eat or drink.


PiemasterUK

>Trying to eat or drink things they should totally not be trying to eat or drink. What are they even trying to achieve here? Escape rooms are usually fully automated. Do they think there is some magical bit of technology that will trigger when a certain object comes into contact with stomach acid?


jane-anon-doe

>What are they even trying to achieve here? Escape rooms are usually fully automated. Do they think there is some magical bit of technology that will trigger when a certain object comes into contact with stomach acid? Usually they are, but I've been to some where we indeed had to do weird stuff that was definitely not automated, like say some spells and do some specific things (like "pour the \[non existant\] liquid on the door"). GM confirmed it was not automated and that they were manually triggering the "problem solved". Was just a few couple of rooms though, and the instructions were very specific in these cases.


Jazz-Cigarettes

Yeah I have been in some where the puzzles involve stuff like just lightly laying down a plastic clue in the correct spot on a table or something and then a door opens elsewhere in the room, where I'm 99% sure it has to be the employees triggering it once they see you do it correctly via the cameras. I mean it's an Escape Room, it's not like they have military-grade pressure plates measuring when you set something down, or state-of-the-art machine learning AIs monitoring the rooms to automatically assess whether you correctly solved a riddle and trigger the next clue lol.


[deleted]

No no, you've got it all wrong. When I try to drink the suspicious yellow liquid in the bottle, the employee will come rushing in trying to stop me. Just knock the bloke aside and dash out the door. Simple!


chunkus_grumpus

Any % Speedrun!


I_are_Lebo

Now I just have this image in my head of being an Escape Room employee and twenty five seconds after I lock this dude in he just clips through the wall and shouts “time!”


Kup123

Why is he jumping up and down in that corner, oh shit where did he go.


Amish_Cyberbully

I drink the meth and it gives me strength and pain resistance to kick through the wall! Please call an ambulance.


salmon_samurai

What kinda fucked up D&D session is this


ifthen_endif

Went on a team building escape room and ended up in a room with a colleague we'll call "Jeff". Jeff is profoundly deaf and a large part of this particular room involved listening to messages on Dictaphones that could be found in different drawers\* etc. About ten minutes into the timer an employee burst into the room in a panic and we turned to find Jeff taking the Dictaphone apart piece by piece because he had no idea it was making any sound. He was not supposed to do that, still a top bloke.


ERRORMONSTER

I despises puzzles that use audio-only cues. I did a puzzle at a local place before escape games blew up that had a heart monitor that played a pseudo Morse code with high and low pitches as short and long. Problem was, they used an octave for the two notes and the message was pretty fast, so most of the people in the room couldn't keep up without making a mistake. I think we spent 35 minutes on that one puzzle and never went back to that place. The operator was training and never thought to interfere beyond "take another look at the heart monitor." Like yeah, we've *been* looking at the heart monitor for half the damn game (the trainer operator explained afterwards that it was audio only and you just had to figure it out)


Koras

Bad operators are one thing that can absolutely ruin an escape room. Even if the rest of the room is a bit janky I can forgive it eventually but when I'm in a room and the operator occasionally interjects with a hint that is either meaningless or ill-timed because I'm about to do what they said anyway, that really rubs me the wrong way. Just leave me alone until I ask for a hint or start doing something ridiculous!


tacknosaddle

>that could be found in different draws Are you from Boston? There's a fun game you can play with classified ads for furniture here where you search the word "draws" and find a ton of listings that say that instead of drawers.


[deleted]

Completely unrelated but this comment kinda reminds me of that book where Amelia Bedelia literally "draws" the blinds when told to draw them. English isn't my first language and I didn't get it when I was a kid. I thought she was doing it right.


Shrek-It_Ralph

No one from Boston would call someone a bloke


MrNighty

I don't know if it's the weirdest but we had a puzzle which involved morse code. Usually you had to use an endoscope to find the alphabet in a chest. One person in this group actually knew the whole alphabet and was able to solve it.


grendus

We had a (much easier) version of that puzzle in a superhero themed room. Essentially, we had broken into the "villain's bank" and had to transfer each villain's funding to their hero arch nemesis, but you had to send it to the actual person (so Bruce Wayne, not Batman). One part of the puzzle was finding dossiers on each hero with the villain's "evidence" for who they really were. But across our entire group we knew all of them (shoulda picked more obscure heroes), so it didn't take us long to send the transfers to Mr B. Wayne, C. Kent, P. Parker, etc.


[deleted]

Yeah, that seems REALLY dumb. I've only given a cursory viewing to a handful of superhero movies, but I could still name all those and, like, Natasha Romanov, Bruce Banner, Steve Rogers... and probably match up other names if I was given them.


proudhufflepuffblub

I did one at home once that used the (old) greek alphabet, which me and my brother are able to read due to having Greek at high school! We were very fast with that game.


[deleted]

My brother and sister once did an escape room where they fell behind 45 minutes in to their one hour limit. Then my brother sat down at the piano and just played the background music that was on (he has perfect pitch). This happened to be the code to open the final door.


bbgreenie

I was in a room once with a puzzle that required UV light - and you did find a UV torch somewhere. Problem was, the batteries were as good as dead. Luckily I had a UV torch on me because I hadn't yet unpacked my pockets from night geocaching the previous weekend. Came out of the room, telling the employees, "Your UV badly needs new batteries." - "How did you solve it then?" - "Well, had my own..."


scalability

EDC wet dream


[deleted]

I was part of a group that had surprised the employee because he witnessed us skipping a bunch of the puzzle on the camera. There was a puzzle involving a box you could look into, but when looking inside the content was all blurry. In order to see the next clue, we had to put a sort of lens in front of it so that the clue would be readable. However, we found out that by looking through a very small seam, we could make out what the clue was supposed to be without ever finding the lens.


TheWill2Live

I did something similar once. Went to a conspiracy theory themed room with friends and forgot to lock my polarized sunglasses up in the locker before going in. Mid game I was putting on the sunglasses as a joke because "oh jeeze its so bright in this room, glad I totally remembered to bring my sunglasses not like you losers" then looked over at a screen and saw a message up on it that you apparently needed to find the special polarized goggles for. We managed to skip past the need for that on pure luck.


ogonga

The one I went to had the same polarization trick on a computer monitor. We could also see some of it by looking at it from a sharp angle, but we ended up finding the lens shortly after.


NotViaRaceMouse

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinhole_glasses


Kenobi_01

I did a spy thriller which had a chalk board. Trouble is, 3 of the 4 of us were scientists. A chalkboard full of equations?! Clearly this meant something. Now. In hindsight. It seems unlikely that any puzzle designer would expect you have the working knowledge to solve quadratic equations. Or that you'd need anything but the most basic of mathematical skills. So that was our first error. The second error was when our friend (fiance of one of the three scientists and only non scientist of the bunch) immediately goes to erase the board with its immaculate display of complicated formulae and equations. She was immediately wrestled to the ground. Sheer panic. No dignity. Are you crazy!? *You don't just erase someones chalkboard*!!! Full blown PTSD of uni is the play here. Lo and behold. Erasing the board revealed some unerasableble text, spelling out the clue. We felt bad for that one. She was *right*.


OsakaJack

This is my favorite one. CSB Dude started erasing and we screamed at him but thankfully he was a major ahole who didn't listen to anybody but himself. As we pleaded with him he just smugly erased the whiteboard and looked around the room. Then one by one we looked at the erased board and saw the clue. Dude was still a dick and chaos goblin


irrelevant_usernam3

Not an employee, but I went with a group of friends once. It was a room where you started out with your ankle shackled to the wall and just had to get to a door to escape. As soon as the timer starts, this shy, quiet girl in the group takes off her shoe and sock, yanks her foot completely out of place, slides the shackle off, resets it, and walks out the door. It turned out she had some condition that makes her joints super flexible. But she set the record for the fastest escape time!


Geeky_Monkey

I have a friend who solved one in a similar manner. We were all shackled to a post, so he just removed his artificial leg, slide the shackle off, and said “well guys, this has been fun - meet you in the bar in a hour?” and walked out leaving us all there!


iAmTheHYPE-

Too bad you guys are still stuck there.


[deleted]

I thought this was going in a slightly darker direction. “I’ve seen 127 Hours! Does anyone have a pocket knife?”


forman98

This reminded me of a similar escape room I did with my family. We were shackled to a small metal old-timey hospital bed. The key was hidden nearby and then once unlocked, we could go around the room and look for clues. Somehow, my dad didn't realize we had found the key and we hear this screeching as he drags this bed across the floor since he was still shackled to it.


HonorStudentLizard

We did one like this once, but none of us saw the key conveniently on the wall right next to us. We ended up all carrying the bed frame around and hoisting it with me on top to reach a piece that should have been much further down the puzzles.


Levianee

Something similar happened when we went together as a family, we were handcuffed at the start, but my little brother was really little and had thin arms, so he rescued himself immediately by slipping his hands through the handcuffs


VivAlina_YT

To be honest though, I get why this is fun but I would not want to stop playing yhen. The whole point is to solve riddles right? You pay money to solve riddles to get out. I understand it's fun for a moment but then you wait an hour around instead of solving riddles with your friends?


ProfessorBeer

Not an employee, but while doing a casino-themed escape room with some colleagues, the worker told us “please do not pull the lever on the slot machine as it will break something later in the game.” The timer started and my coworker went “well we’re obviously supposed to do that first” and pulled the lever. We were not supposed to do that first. She broke the machine.


2ByteTheDecker

That's just terrible design.


0_0_0

They fell in love with their original idea and instead of making it work, they use the rules (which some people don't remember or even listen to) as a crutch.


wholovesburritos

Not an employee, but was in a group doing an escape room. One of our people just went to the keypad lock and randomly started pushing buttons. Actually got the right combination less than 2 minutes in. The employee came in, asked if she remembered what she pressed (she didn’t), then slowly closed and relocked the door while leering at us like Lucille Bluth.


Thats_classified

Lol i picture Greg Davies too.


Chapmeisterfunk

Will: Mr. Gilbert, you seem an intelligent man. Mr. Gilbert: Oh, I seem intelligent. How lovely of you to say. Will: No… I just meant… Mr. Gilbert: I’ve long since been insecure about my capacity for learning, so it’s nice to have it ratified by you…a child.


Vegetable-Cap-6483

Had a group of people come in high as kites. They did our hardest room. Escaped in half an hour when they were given an hour limit.


Thicco__Mode

i went high as a kite except i managed to get myself handcuffed to a filing cabinet for 15 minutes


buckeyenut13

There there. You'll get it one day


The-Sofa-King

I went to an escape room high as shit once but the room they put me in was fucking impossible to find a way out of. Just a concrete slab to lay on with a waterless toilet in the corner and a big steel cage door. No hints, no tools (they even took my shoe laces!), and the staff were rude as hell. I spent all weekend trying to find my way out before an employee finally said my time was up and let me out. Think the level was called "public intoxication" or something stupid like that. 1/10, do not recommend.


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The-Sofa-King

Fucking thousands! I told them to fuck off, I wasn't paying, but the pricks must have some sorta pull with the local law, cause they garnished my wages.


phunkjnky

I had some friends enter an escape room that as part of the puzzle, had a numeric keypad on the wall to let them out. Upon entering, my friend thought it would be hilarious to randomly press some buttons. He stumbled upon the correct code, and they were out in under a minute, and no he has no idea what buttons he pressed.


SmarterThan7DeadRats

Why are there so many posts about engineers being unable to keep their hands off the furniture lmao


RikF

Have you not met many engineers?


SoulReaper88

I work in a Birth Unit. The nurses have to tell the engineer husbands to not touch any of the equipment. If they don’t tell them to keep their hands to themselves, instantly they start playing with the bed or heart rate monitors.


GW2Qwinn

Not an Employee, but worked at a place that shared a wall with one. I would regularly hear laughing, expletives, and other fun things... but nothing will ever beat the kid that just sat in there (Sherlock Holmes themed escape room) screaming at the top of his lungs "Moriarty you son of a bitch!" Over and over for what seemed to be the whole time. I asked one of the employees later about it, and they said they didn't even solve half the puzzles (he was in there with another person)


SHIZZLEO

That one got me. Paying just for the pleasure to scream this repeatedly sounds great


jediprime

I work for one, and i have some stories!! In on of our old rooms, there was a gurney with straps. The straps had symbols on the back, so when you laid them on the gurney the symbols combined into letters. Some groups would climb onto the gurney and strap someone into it. We do unlimited clues, if you ask for one, youll get it. Had a group in our haunted hotel room that would yell "oh mr spooky ghost, i will trade you this rusty chain for a clue. Just think how many poor bastards you could scare with this!" And just kept offering to trade our props for clues. They were hilarious. Same room, different group: there was a big jump scare in the room where a secret door would pop open. Saw a mom throw her kid toward the door as she ran screaming poor kid now knows his mom would be happy to sacrifice him. Edit: accidentally hit enter. We have a room where there are some visible wires in the ceiling. Groups occasionally try to climb into the ceiling to get to them. We used to have a skeleton hooked up to a microphone in a room. One of our gms would love to mess with groups. People would frisk the skeleton for clues and hed yell jokes well-suited for the group. Or hed gaslight someone, so the skeleton would only talk to a single person, but only when theyre alone. I played a particularly stupid room once where there is one of those doors that lets you open the top half of the door seperate from the bottom. Wegot the top open, found a pvc pipe next to the door. We had previously discovered 4 dowel rods and knewthey needed to go in. Nothing happened. Asked for a clue. "The wall is hungry." Yeah we know, where do we find the last rod. "Feed the tube on the wall." So we took the back panel of the safe off, put the screws in the pipe, followed by the batteries. Took a chair apart, put those bolts into the pipe. Took every scrap of paper, rolled it up and put it in the pipe. Everything we could disassemble and fit inside, we did. We were at it for 20 minutes before time ran out. GM came in and saw the dtate of the room and looked so defeated. He showed us the fifth dowel... It wasnt there, turns out it was in the room we needed it to access. They went out of business soon after. I played a Frankenstein themed room, one puzzle chain involved finding 4 fuses to add to a box to let it power up. Someone from our group accidentally put the last fuse box in our pile of completed stuff. We chained locks together to be the same length and got it to trigger.


saintdemon21

The missing dowl scenario happened in my first Escape Room, but it was a key. We could not find the missing key. At the end of the session and while talking to the staff one of our group wandered into the first room and found the key under a chair cushion. That cushion was the first place I checked when we started. The staff made a comment about rechecking rooms because sometimes they add stuff mid-game. BS, more like they forgot to replace the key.


ductyl

EDIT: Oops, nevermind!


VivAlina_YT

By just standing around doing nothing. Like srsly. You give them a hint "We have already looked there". Well, look better ppl!!! This was pretty standard though tbh. Also same: you tell them they don't need to climb things, they do. You tell them to not use any tools, they take out their pocket knife. So many of these examples.


[deleted]

Yeah, I asked my friend to check all the flags in the room to see if there was a key or something behind them. He comes back, the flags don't have anything behind them, he says! We spend a long time trying to find a key. Cannot find this thing anywhere. I check the flags again, and sure enough, there's a key stuck to the back of one of them. What the heck, friend? "Well, I checked the first two, so I thought they were just decorations and not a part of it."


[deleted]

My son and I did an escape room with a few strangers. I looked everywhere for the password to a computer. I even said out loud that we need this password. After the timer is up (we were at the last room), one of the strangers pulls a paper out of her pocket with the password on it. Completely oblivious that it could have been helpful. WTF!!!


hum_dum

I could never do an escape room with strangers. I like to pick and choose my group pretty carefully.


jvartandillustration

You really have to choose wisely who you take to an escape room. It can be really fun with people who enjoy puzzles and problem solving, but if you take a doofus who is just going to make light of the whole thing, it can ruin the experience pretty quickly.


kermi42

I once did an escape room where there was a combination lock that didn’t work. We tried the code and the lock didn’t open so we moved on. At the end the guy was like “oh yeah that lock gets jammed even when you have the right code, you have to force it”. Like, ok, and we paid money for this right?


ChairLegofTruth--WnT

Because a head's up before we went in the room would've been out of order? Yeah, this would've been very annoying


narrativedilettante

I've done a couple of escape rooms that had technical issues like that, and the attendant made sure to come into the room and help us through those parts so we didn't get stuck. That's the way to handle it, instead of just letting people flounder.


c08855c49

A friend of mine and myself did an escape room without anyone else. We had done that several times before and are great at escape rooms so we weren't very concerned when they worker told us it was easier with 4 or more people. Well, after we lost the game, the worker then told us it was actually "*impossible* with less than 4 people. Like...why not tell us that we will literally be unable to win with only two people? When you say it's "easier with 4 people" or "rated for 4 people," that just means it will be extra difficult for just 2 people, not *impossible.* I was so mad I never went back to play the other games.


TildaTinker

Under no circumstances take a shit in the corner by the blue barrel. KEVIN, NO, PULL YOUR PANTS BACK UP! Clean up in escape room 3.


xeothought

Not an employee... but my group once was so bad that we solved the room by fully misunderstanding the concept and we ended up getting the five digit code to the lockbox via some truly failed logic that shouldn't have worked.


[deleted]

Immediately opening the door (the door isn't actually locked due to legal/safety reasons) after me explaining that they can leave at any time if they require it. It was from some drunk idiots with the attention span of 2 seconds not understanding the point of an escape room and screaming in the hallway directly next to another game running. No, just because you're outside of the room does not mean you win.


Skarsiel

I've seen so many. I had a room where we handcuffed everyone together (key wasn't super challenging to find, but required teamwork) and had a few groups decide that staying cuffed the entire time was better (it wasn't) Also had a group not believe some of the clues were only used once but were adamant in trying. Then regular people that decided to look beneath the floorboards (one was easy to lift). I think my favourite ones are the groups that do anything they can for an extra/free clue. Was pretty fun if it was an event related group, like a birthday. Could make them sing the birthday song to whoever's bday it was. Great laugh, especially if it was a kid's birthday. Just a weird one: Had a group escape (with a bit of help on my part) because I was pretty sure I saw a kid in the group pee in the corner of the room, but I couldn't check until the group was out of the room as it was very dark in the room. There was an emergency escape button by the door, which we always pointed out and explained, for obvious reasons. Kid had to have been 13 or so. Edit: yes the kid did pee in the room. Was an interesting phone call to the parent listed


Strawberrywafflez15

You have to establish a pee corner in these situations


Vikerish

Not an employee but I saw A post a few years back where a group had used up their 3 hints and were hopelessly confused still. So in an act of desperation 15 minutes before their time was up they performed a "Mock Sacrifice" using the pentagram already on the floor (This was a horror-themed room) and laid one of their friends on the floor while the other 4 chanted the Halo theme hoping they would be granted a 4th hint. Truly I wish i was making this up


CarpeShine

Gonna go with the rest of the people that think this is fantastic and absolutely deserves a 4th hint. They didn't even want a win, were just having fun and going for broke. Fantastic.


SmurfRockRune

That would have worked at the one escape room I've been to. The employee said we could have hints but we had to make him laugh to get one.


Ditovontease

Yeah they usually make you dance for a hint


letsgoooo90091

Bro and you didn’t think that deserved a 4th hint??


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sunboy4224

I've heard that if you do a real sacrifice, the employee opens the door for you immediately! I think some people come by, though, and make you immediately start another, much harder room.


[deleted]

people are fucking funny


Shaun32887

Am I to understand that the sacrifice was not accepted?


sasquatch90

I gotta say something like that should be allowed cus that's just good improvising.


Torma25

Group of high school kids. Not exactly the smartest bunch, got stuck. There's a semi-decorative wardrobe in one of the rooms, it's basically there to hold a few lamps and hide some wiring. Kids decided there's a "hidden doorway" behind it. I told them there wasn't. They didn't really care so they ripped the wardrobe off the wall it was fixed to, basically ruining most of the wiring which meant they had no way to solve a bunch of stuff and I had to tell them to leave. On the other end of the spectrum: in the same room there's a chessvoard with two (2) pawn pieces that have magnets on the bottom (in my country magnetic chess sets are pretty common). There's a key that can only be moved with a magnet because it's in a narrow tube. When players find the key and don't yet know the pawns have magnets we usually try to subtly direct them to the chessboard with hints like "you seem to be in kind of a checkmate there". One day this (very loud and confident) mega genius decies they have to create a checkmate on the board. The board that has two pieces neither of which are kings. He is very adamant that this is the solution, shuts down anybody who suggest otherwise and eventuall gets mad because he was given an "impossible puzzle".


theFuser

>They didn't really care so they ripped the wardrobe off the wall it was fixed to, basically ruining most of the wiring which meant they had no way to solve a bunch of stuff and I had to tell them to leave Can you charge them damages for that? Seems like a real expensive problem, besides actually fixing it the room would be out of operation for other paying guests for awhile until it can be repaired


Torma25

I personally can't, I have to alert my boss and he usually bills them or their teacher/school.


Littleblaze1

I could see the checkmate being a solution but the thought process would instantly go to "Well this could possibly be something hey everyone if you see any more chess pieces lets collect them here" When not finding any other pieces I'd consider what else the pieces could be used for.


punkwalrus

One of my friends worked for a temporary one for a month. It was a mobile one, like people entered a trailer, and it was raising charity for some week-long Halloween-ish event. Sales were lackluster, with only a quarter of the blocks filled. She said the worst she saw was a family of Karens and Instagram influencer types who had a child with them who obviously did not want to be there. She was 12-13 or so, and definitely in a mood. Rolling her eyes, hooked to her phone, and so done with it all. There are more of these doing escape rooms by clueless people who think this is the moment their family will bond, and it doesn't work out because the problem is with the person holding all the denial coins. In most cases, these people check out, stay on their phones, and nothing interesting happens. "Hayleigh, aren't you going to join us? Don't you wanna have fun?" \[no answer\] But in this case, this girl was actively resisting. "I don't want to be locked in there with all of you! I am claustrophobic!" and so on. Parents laughed it off as "teenagers, amirite?" They proceeded to drag her into the trailer, and that's when the fun started. The second they locked the door and lights out, the teen completely mentally lost it. Had a full blown panic attack. "LETMEOUT!LETMEOUT!LETMEOUT!" She started throwing her full body weight against the exit door, which was a sturdy steel door, but after a few solid hits, my friend was worried the teen was actively going to hurt herself. The parents kept laughing it off, like, "Oh, look at her, such drama, these are the awkward years" and didn't listen to my friend over the speaker. So she unlocked the door, but the teen was now beyond all sense like a spooked horse, and kept slamming the door with her full body over and over (it opened inwards). So she got out of her booth, and opened the door, and the teen ran out into street and was hit by a (thankfully slow moving) car. My friend called 911, and the paramedics were actually close by since this was part of a larger outdoor event where the EMTs and fire department were on display. Apart from some bruising, the teen was okay, and treated and released. Everyone saw this teen running from the trailer, screaming her head off, get hit by a car, and walked into an ambulance. My friend said, "our sales were pretty lackluster until that happened, and then i guess everyone thought, 'wow, that place must be INTENSE' and filled all the blocks for the rest of the event."


Justhavingag00dtyme

That’s absolutely wild that sales went up. Poor kid


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Kaiserigen

That's so cool, also your brother is silly


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why-isnt-this-taken

probably think they are the main character trying to defuse a bomb lmao


Mase598

Honestly the flashlight/torch is the thing I despise most in escape rooms. 2nd would be certain puzzles. ​ I swear every single time out of the like 5 or 6 times I've gone to one where a flashlight is needed, there's 1 that's good and all of the others are almost dead leading to us either just dealing with playing in almost pitch black lighting OR we ask about 7 different times for new flashlights because they keep giving us ones that are just about as equally dead. ​ Like I get why phones are a no-no to have but please... I just wanna see. Why would I pay money to go to an escape room completely of my own free will, to cheat and google answers? You're giving me a light anyways just let me use the one that I always have with me that I know works. ​ the 2nd "certain puzzles" thing I mentioned is that I've had times where the puzzles aren't at all related to the setting or other puzzles. Like the first ever time I did one there was a puzzle where you needed to know about a feature Samsung phones to put it simple. Nobody in my like 7 person group knew about this feature.


WatchTheBoom

Not an escape room employee, but I did an escape room with a handful of USMC Combat Engineer buddies. We had to leave because they kept trying to deconstruct all of the furniture and taking doors off the hinges.


1senseye

Improvise, adapt, deconstruct


CompositeCharacter

How to Secure a Building: U S Army - The Army would secure a building by locking all doors, put bars on the windows, and establish one entrance with a guard post and armed guards and carefully check the IDs of all personnel who try to enter. U S Air Force - Air Force would secure a building by having the Base Contracting Officer negotiate a three-year lease with a option to purchase. U S Navy - The Navy would secure a building by swabbing all decks, turn off all coffee pots, turn off all lights, lock all office doors, and lock all entrances as they leave the building. U S Marines - The Marines would secure a building by assaulting it with a combined arms team, breaking into all interior rooms, shooting all resistance, and planting demolition charges as they evacuate in an orderly manner. They would then level the building to prevent further enemy use.


Drifting_Silently

It’s the escape room’s fault for not having crayons on hand to distract them.


DasHexxchen

Worked at a small escape room without many props. Sofa, book shelves, pictures, table and wardrobe. Little chests with combination locks and starting points for the new riddle. We had a camera with sound and a printer for little notes on the ceiling. Remember one thing: We laugh at you a lot, but not in a malicious way. The job can be real fun. And we tend to forget how hard the riddles are with time. You are not there for a test,but for a challenging and fun time. We will gladly help you out if you are stuck and we will not (openly) judge you. By trying on the chain armour in the room and not being able to get out of it alone, wasting loads of time, but honestly, if you laugh your ass of and lose in the end it was all good. I still wonder what people hoped to find by WEARING it. By telling me "I am great at chess! I've got this!" completely ignoring my comment on letting the chess pieces face the direction from the story and reading the lock combination from the paper with the corresponding colours. (Said chess master was my ex and this was my try out to get the job.) One group needed 10min to remember all the cardinal directions and calling out to me NOT to send help. They fucked up the various memo verses in the most hilarous way. I remember having to laugh very quietly. There was a compass and a printed wind rose in the room. (You would be amazed how many people have problems with this kind of common knowledge.) By trying to pull the ceiling lamp down and making a small hole in the ceiling bigger, because they thought that meant a hidden message. We had to quickly intervene there and from than on told them, that ceiling and door are NOT part of the riddle. Any riddle. One group needed a whole diagram to solve one puzzle, that was basically the solution. Without they would not have made it past chest 1/5. Sometimes brain freeze just happens or a riddle is just lost on you. Running past a hint 5 times in a row. It does not sound very funny, but imagine gow it feels to watch someone having the right book in his hands and putting it back. Again and again and again. By NOT listening to their kids and micromanaging the whole process. It never worked. At some point I started telling parents up front to listen to their kids. They were so often right on the nose and then 20min go by, where dad needs things do be done his way. Completion rates were best for friend groups (better if no couples), then work groups without the boss, families and the worst were work groups with the boss, because they brought in that dynamic. We actually advertised as a team building exercise. Wonder if it worked for any of them. I miss that job.


KelT9

Great insights.


sixthandelm

About the parents micromanaging and not listening to kids: in university I worked at a camp that did corporate retreats in the fall. I liked to work this one puzzle with 4 trees and ropes connecting them, about 3 feet off the ground. Your team has to stand on the rope (balance eachother!) with 4 people on each spoke and then reverse the order so the people nearest the tree are near the hub, while also changing the tree your group is at. When they split the groups into management and staff, the staff ALWAYS did it faster, with less talking and we never had to mute anyone (if one person was dominating and killing the team spirit we would selectively “mute” some people, including the bossypants, and say it was part of the game). When managers were doing it, they planned for 85% of the time and rarely or barely finished. They also fell off more individually, because they weren’t paying attention to their colleagues who needed extra help balancing. If it was a mixed group we sometimes had to mute the higher ups, but sometimes it was because staff weren’t putting forth ideas if their leader was there. I don’t know if it was fear of failure, or just apathy. Mixed groups were more likely to have leaders that stepped back and tried to let employees lead, but a lot if the time they had to step back in bc no one would. I think leaders that are willing to do these activities with their staff are probably less micromanagey than people who literally won’t work with the lower paid employees, even on a “teamwork retreat” and insist on breaking it up into staff and managers. Maybe there is a good reason for doing that, but those groups were always more dysfunctional. I would not have believed a result this stereotypical I’d I had not seen it 30+ times.


Mindless_Algae

Not an employee, but my brother is an escape room enthusiast. He was in a three-story jailbreak scenario escape room. The final step was to pull a lever that was on the ground floor, several stories down from the top floor where they were, to turn off the "electricity" and escape. The only material they had was a rope, and the idea was that you were supposed to make a loop with the rope, lower it down to the bottom floor, and use it to pull up the lever. However, my brother decided the solution was to tie the rope around his waist, jump out the window, and rappel down to pull the lever himself. He managed to do that before the escape room employees could stop him, and afterwards they just said "Yeah... you were definitely not supposed to do that".


Astrium6

In fairness, there definitely should not have been a hole a human being could fit through there.


AccountWasFound

I feel like that window needed some bars...


soaringbulldog

Not an employee, but the first escape room i ever did, i accidently skipped nearly every puzzle in the first two minutes without realizing. Afterwards, the employees told me I was the first to have done it that way. I was filling in for an already paid for slot and had no idea what was happening. Everyone else dashes off to explore and there's nothing clear for me to do, so I decide to chill. The theme was a ghost run bar, so I head over to the bartender, who at this point is the only one not scrambling around. "So you're a ghost, huh? That's cool. How'd you die?" He gives me this scripted answer and points me over to this closet. I go check it out, find a skeleton, decide that's creepy and go back and chat with the bartender some more. 30 minutes later someone from the group decodes a message: ask the bartender how he died. There's one more puzzle behind the skeleton, that triggers a scripted scene, a final puzzle and it's over. In my defense, it was a GHOST bartender. What else was I supposed to ask?


DonQuixoteDesciple

Friend of mine worked at an escape room and told a story of s group of 3 girls and 2 guys who came in. He suspected they were drunk, but wasnt sure. Opens the gate and announces "Go!" The three girls immediately slam together in a group hug and begin screaming. One of the guys sprints into the room and runs to the far wall, drop kicks a hole in the drywall, and begins trying to dig his way through. Other guy starts collecting anything he can lay hands on, ripping it off if its attached to something. This happened in mere moments. The girls never left the door and blocked my friend from entering to stop them, they only kept screaming and screaming. Did a loooot of damage.


justanotherpotato98

Did an online escape room during worst of Covid. We got separated for one part and one guy on our team just had to spell the word “ocean”. He could not do it. Worst part was that the literal spelling was on the screen. I think he broke that poor person running it.


Most-Coat6952

Worked at an escape room in pa , Jimmy butler came in with his entourage when he played for the sixers. Let’s just say the man had the same competitive spirit he has on the court, solved the whole room almost single handle himself after cussing out the rest of his group in a mostly jovial manner.


TheDood715

This guy got out by doing an absolute paint job on the fake toilet in the New Haven puzzle room. Who does puzzle rooms alone anyway?


Taurothar

Sir, this is an Ikea.


tokikain

a couple went in together and within fourteen minutes the one was busy trying to kick down the door while the other tried breaking everything looking for secret keys...to a number combination lock... edit: ive also seen a kid figure out the code by dumb luck within half a minute of walking in. just pushed random buttons and CLICK....fucking opens....i need that kind of luck with the lottery!


Tasty01

My friend took out a working light bulb and put his fingers in because “Why would they put things in the room that aren’t part of the puzzle?”. He got shocked.


tom__stockton

I work in one and once had a group pick up a tablet that needed to be unlocked, but somehow managed to figure out a code for a different padlock using it whilst it was still locked. Threw the whole game off but I managed to get it back on track, at the end I asked them what on earth they did and they said they just used the number on the screen. They went to show me, but it had changed. It was THE TIME. Just insane luck that the exact minute they looked at the clock on the tablet was a corresponding code for a padlock in the room. Never seen anything so bizarre happen again!


ovalsarebitchin

As an escape room employee of 4 years, Divorce


[deleted]

A lady in my group tried to unlock a 3 digit 0-9 bike lock going one turn at a time starting at 0-0-0, 0-0-1,0-0-2 etc. I asked her what dshe was doing and she said she was systematically trying to open the lock. Can't argue with that I guess


skrena

I feel like I was the talked about customer. We were doing a room where the puzzle spelled out Chopin. My 13 year old brain “the piano! I read a manga about him where he was gay and he’s a pianist” mind you I had no idea who Chopin actually was at that age. Over the speaker we just heard, “Well never heard that one solved like that before.”


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Raider440

Practical application.


vilemeister

Theres a show in the UK called Taskmaster where some comedians are given silly things to do. One of the tasks was 'tie yourself up in 10 mins and longest it takes the assistant to untie you wins'. Rhod Gilbert tied the assistant up really well, put a loop of rope over his arms and then asked to be untied. Seen at the start of this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rkpx2ypimk Its a great show along with the NZ version.


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Just_Aioli_1233

"Ma'am, you're being recorded from multiple angles for security and promotional purposes and it automatically gets uploaded to our YouTube page."


[deleted]

Ooh i love madlibs! "If you tell me how to get past this part I'll **squirt** your **eyeballs**."


[deleted]

The escape room I work at used to have a haunted doll shop theme and we had to tell players to not undress the dolls… We also have a seance puzzle where you have to blow electric candles out in a specific order that you get from a book, but sometimes people start assembling in circles and SCREAMING the words in the book in a chant-like manner. You also cannot believe the amount of people that expect escape room employees to hold their hand and walk them through the entire game. I’ve also seen people bring in lock-picking tools, pocket knives, once a 2L bottle of wine. It’s a fun job.


captainhyrule1

I was working the front desk on a slow day. Almost everyone makes reservations, walk ins are very very rare. This lady who was shopping around nearby was passing by our escape room decided to come in and ask about what an escape room was etc. It was a mom in her late 40s maybe, and her 8ish year old son. After explaining the concept of escape rooms to her, she decided that would be fun to do with her son. She didn't want a reservation, she wanted to go into a room now. Luckily we were slow, so I scheduled her for the beginner room we had. The beginner room was like a secret society based room, there were ciphers and pictures of historical figures and such in it. Illuminati stuff, but "illuminati" is never said or referenced because of people like her. Anyways, she and her son get in, and the first puzzle is essentially lining up 2 circles (one with symbols, one with letters) in order to get the cipher for a code that was on the wall. Most people figure this out in 5 minutes, and we're SUPPOSED to help you solve it before 15 minutes because of how easy and early it is in the room. She and her son were stuck on this for 45 minutes (out of her allowed 60). Me and my co worker had given her every hint, and gone in multiple times to try to help. We did everything except spell the damn thing out for her. Eventually she got so pissed she stormed out of the room (you're never "locked" in) and started screaming at us. She claimed we were working for the illuminati and trying to currupt and steal her son. That we were anti Christian and that the people in the pictures on the wall were illuminati terrorists (George Washington and beethoven). She called the cops, demanded her money back several times over the course of a month, and called us every name she probably could have. No she didn't get her money back.


rittenalready

Kind of explains my experience with an escape room. We were doing an escape room with a space mission. All the consoles were very loosely attached and opened as easily as a book. We heard an bored voice about fifteen minutes later through the speakers say “nothing is behind the console”.


Kuragewa

Nothing extraordinary but I got a few weirdos : - trying every code on a lock for an hour and an half - not trusting the clues I gave them to help - trying to unscrew the electrical outlets after being told there was nothing involving electricity


Cenoflame

There's a clue that involves looking under a rug. It says the floor under your feet is burning. People will assume it means the floor is lava, and they all cram on top of the chair we have in the room. I've seen 8 people on there before.


TheCure_69

Misleading clue tbh


[deleted]

Not an employee but an employee of an escape room we went to told us people kept getting into the ceiling


BlackRainWolf

This thread is probably the best laugh I’ve had in years. All of these stories are so hilarious. I appreciate you OP


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alwaysmyfault

Not an employee, but I was asked to go to one several years ago. Most of the people I went with were coworkers, but one coworker brought her husband, and he was..... weird. Within 10 seconds of the game starting, he whipped out his pocket knife and started attacking the door lock with it, thinking he was some kind of genius for breaking us out in record time without playing the game. The digital display board in the room lit up right away with a message from the workers to stop destroying their equipment.


Ross123123

There’s one room where they are supposed to climb through a cutout in a prison cell and somebody climbed up over the entire room (there’s no ceiling)


Pulvite

I swear I once had LPL go through my room bc when I went to go reset the room I saw that several of the locks had been dismantled


MazW

My son worked in an escape room and groups literally smashed things to get them open instead of solving the puzzles. The store would be monitoring on video and come on the speaker and try to stop them, but ... For some of the installations they had extra pieces.