I recently visited a place called Trapt Bar. They specialise in escape rooms. I personally love the idea of a few friends and I putting our heads together to solve multiple puzzles to ear our escape. The service and staff of Trapt were lovely. Once we were there, we were immediately greeted and given tablets to watch and learn about the rules and restrictions of being in an escape room. We were taught about safety in the room and also about our ability to ask for clues, which would pop up in the form of a riddle. Once we were set to go, we were given the scenario. We were gang members during the time of prohibition. One of our fellow gang members has ratted us out and we need to escape before the police arrive.
In our first room we were met with a prison. Two holding cells and a locked door. We found two notes and a key. One note showed a symbol and some directions. The other told us to knock to the numbers located in the cell. We used the key to unlock the cell and found a deep jar with a note inside, the name Jimmy with numbers scribbled underneath and a bunch of letters on the wall corresponding with strange shapes. As it turns out, they were a part of a different puzzle. Embarrassingly, we got caught on this for quite some time. We were supposed to find a magnet hidden inside a jar, which we used to pull the note out. There, our code could be found. Knock twice, then thrice, then twice again. We did this a few times, it seems hat the staff didn’t realize we were doing it for a while until they unlocked the door. Unfortunately, it broke the fourth wall a little.
Soon, we were back in the game with a handful of new puzzles to solve. This time we were given two locked drawers, playing cards on the wall with strange shapes on them, another note and a rotary phone. The note had another symbol and directions. We used the rotary phone to call Jimmy whose number was left in the previous room. He told us the code to the drawer beside the phone. We opened it and found one note with a symbol and directions and another with a specific order of playing cards. We soon discovered that the order of playing cards would spell a word using the shapes ion the first room. It spelled out ‘Lenny’, which we used on the padlock to unlock the last drawer. In it, we were told that Lenny was the snitch who ratted us out. We were also given a fourth note with a symbol and directions on it and a key. We used this key on a keyhole in the wall, which opened up the final room.
In this room, we had to solve what seemed like a simple puzzle. We had a large map on the wall with a symbol in each corner representing north, south, east and west. The map came with legend to tell us that a single line meant a road, two thin lines meant an underground road and a dotted line meant a secret road. Each road had a letter along it. It was evident we had to use all four notes to spell out the words using the directions written on them. We had just discovered the words, however they were anagrams and we needed to spell them out properly. Each spelled out a number. First, Second, Third, Fourth. We then saw the padlock on the door leading to our exit with four letters on it. We needed to put north, south, east and west in order. South was first, east was second, north was third and west was last. The code being SENW. These led us to the exit and we were victorious.
I would highly recommend doing an escape room with some friends to test your skills or with some newer friends to bond with them. I find escape rooms to be a great test of knowledge and problem solving, making this a great experience in my book. Trapt Bar was a great place to start my addiction of escape rooms.
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