A tip for finding things an “average” person would know instead of going down rabbit holes: If the knowledge you have had to do with your profession, or is something that only certain groups of people would know, then it’s probably not the answer.
Lol, why should most people know this? I’m googling it and most people will never run into a situation where this knowledge is necessary (outside of such a unique subset of puzzles where esoteric knowledge can be put into practice in ways you never would have naturally, lol)
I'll agree with this one only insofar as it seems unlikely that the "average" person has read the entire collections of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe - - In the rooms I've tackled, information from that body of knowledge helped a lot.
Well... I once did the room where we needed to use the Archimed's law. I get that the most people SHOULD know this, but honestly - it's due to pure coincidence that one of us actually guessed it :D
As someone who works at an escape room, I can confirm that all of these tips are valid and EXTREMELY helpful! I already tell customers some of these, but I'll definitely be telling them the rest now! Another tip I use is to not be afraid to ask for hints. At my job, we give unlimited, so people are usually more willing to ask for help. But even if you're limited and you're really stuck, some times one clue is all you need to continue the room.
1 slight amendment if ur gonna go do an escape room. For #2 when he said start searching immediately, beware, yes do search, but carefully and without messing things up as best as possible. We failed our room because there was a dart board and the first thing someone did was pull out the darts to look at them, and behind the board. Turned out the whole room revolved around knowing which initial positions those darts were in! So we lost! The point is, SEARCH CAREFULLY!
@Kyle Stroud yep any buttons on knobs or levers get tested immediately, also everything loose is beeing carried around, not to mention the times people want to look through entire books in 1 hour...
bad room design + it sounds like nobody was watching you play cuz a worker should've been able to tell you the initial positions so you can continue playing and have fun
struggle for a while with a coloured wall puzzle, then I took a step back and saw that it just showed you then numbers if you just focused on one colour
I went to an escape room. Found a key and it broke inside the lock. I sat there for 10 minutes before the staff came in and asked me why I wasn't doing anything. They had to get a lock cutter for me to get through to the next part. It was fun
@Ozzwozz _Ozzwozz nope many puzzles can be solved parallel were i work at + some puzzles need 2 people to solve so playing alone is not even an option not to mention that its super easy to get stuck if you're alone cuz you dont have any other input from people except occasionally the worker
Didn’t you have a piece of paper or cameras? They instructed us to hold up a special Card in front of the camera that was on the table when something was defect so they would get in to fix it. They can also hear what you are saying so saying the key broke in the lock I need help would Mby also work.
Thanks to these tips, me and my friends were able to do far better than the majority of beginners in their first escape rooms… By finishing 1 minute over the time limit! We’re definitely going to pass the next escape room! Thanks for your advice dude! EDIT: Also, it was just three of us, and the owner was very impressed!
Looking back, I'm so glad I came across this video. My escape room record thus far is 2-1, I barely didn't escape my first room even with the tips but I'm sure w/o them we wouldn't have made it far. Using the tips again and knowing more of what to look for, I and my group were able to break out of 2 rooms. This is a great guide for any newbie who wants to start playing escape rooms with their friends and families and makes the experience really fun.
My boyfriend and I watched this video this morning before we did a 30 minute escape room this afternoon. We made it out with 8 minutes to spare! These tips really helped us divide and conquer
I'm the Head Trainer at my goal, we hit one of our goals and I took my team of trainers to an escape. None of us had EVER done one before and it was a 7.5. We made it to the very last room and tried to get super complicated on the puzzles. The guy came in after the hour was up and said "yea all you had to do was match the animal symbols to the wall and put a little of bit of pressure against the plate". So that "Think Simple" tip goes a LONG way. Haha we're doing our 2nd escape room this weekend.
@Cygnus Mutai I am a dad, and I lockpicked a scape room with my daughter. Incredibly simply waffer lock that jiggled open with a random key. It was... hilarious.
@Nic S. "The one I work in doesn't lock the people in at all" I've never been to an escape room, but I just assumed that's how it would always be, just for people's safety. If there's a fire, or someone's having an emergency, the last thing you'd want is to have to wait for an employee to come and unlock the door for you. If they wanted to symbolize opening the door with a lock, just have the lock attached to the door on a separate piece of metal that doesn't keep the door shut. Simple.
Final solve for an escape room I did was a number lock. To get the number, we had to solve a math equation, which we found by turning off the lights to the room and shining two different laser pointers at specific angles from two different spots in the room, and the various mirrors create the said math equation. Finding the laser pointers, where to put them, what angle to put them at, all required separate series of puzzles on their own.
I've done a fair bit of escape rooms and some of them back these up while others disprove these For instance, most escape rooms I've done have had a discard draw for used keys and locks, both to further enforce you don't need them anymore and so that the people who reset the room have all the pieces in a convenient location Other rooms I've done though have had pretty obtuse solutions. One involved knowledge of Cthulhu and how to pronounce the words they offer, one involved requiring knowledge of paintings, and one involved having to do long addition Oh and one required looking under a mannquins skirt. That's really neither here nor there but I thought it was funny
At the one that I work at we have some dolls and an employee wrote "pervert" under all their skirts (before I worked there), yeah he quit shortly after and the manager didn't find it until after he quit. I had to rub it off with my coworker lol
I would say that everyone working working on one puzzle can be counter intuitive at times. For example, there may be two different puzzles that have clues scattered around. So if you immediately hone in on one, you may miss clues for the second. In addition, its better to have everyone working on different ones instead of one singular, since then you can come up with solutions for all three in that time instead of one.
I work at an escape room and can not tell you the number of times people fail and get frustrated buy not following those tips. This video is 100% true, accurate and helpful!
Yes! I was the only person who had ever done an escape room in my group of 6 last week. They were all obsessed with going suuuuuper deep doing math and periodic table things (it was biohazard theme). I had to keep telling them they would never make puzzles that hard requiring writing out math or remberjng a 20 digit code 😂
A friend and I did a cool Escape Room which was 3 separate rooms and Sci-Fi themed. One of the clues involved a star chart, the other was arranging weapons a certain way on a weapons rack and so fourth. You had time limit to get to the final room which was set up like a bridge of a space ship and you had stop it ship from crashing into a planet.
Ok I just did two of my first escape rooms after all of us watching your video before each one and we escaped both! What great memories!!! Thank you for this video and the great tips!
I went to an escape room for the first time with my D&D group, and we actually work pretty well together. We did most of these things kind of automatically and we would've beat it If we had 30 more seconds. The key was IN THE LOCK!
My family lost an escape room yesterday because we got stuck on a combination lock that the answer to a riddle was the lock code and even clues weren't helping us. Turns out we technically had the correct answer the very first time to the riddle but where we are from a different spelling of the word is used. So we lost all that time trying to figure out that code.
The last lock box you showed is easily pickable through feel. I used them for work and proved to my boss I could figure out any code he chose. We found a different style lock box lol
A fun thing I've learned about escape rooms: if the staff specifically tells you not to do something, it probably means someone has tried before. My favorites include attempting to disassemble an outlet (more than once), ripping several feet of microphone wire from off a wall, and entering the ceiling by removing the tiles.
My wife and I did an escape room for our anniversary. I showed her this video before we went in. All these tips came in handy and we escaped with 2 seconds to spare. The room even had a few red herrings. Huge fan of all your videos. Keep up the great work 👍
5:02 - The escape room we did the other night we lost a lot of time because I was certain that the giant clock on the wall that was stuck at 1444 had to be a clue. We made it to the very last puzzle when time ran out.
@Death It was a giant analog clock, and the time on it was 2:44, I just assumed since it wasn't moving that it was a clue, and that 2:44 in military time was 1444 so that had to be a code. Turns out it was just a clock and the battery had died at 2:44
A giant digital clock stuck on a time? A time with 4 numbers (which is a common amount of numbers to unlock something), yeah that's a bit of a mean red herring to put in. You had reason to believe that could have been a clue.
This video is great! My older brother loves your videos and told me to watch this video before doing the escape room I was going to do later that day. But, I forgot, and totally failed the escape room. I wish I had watched this video before the escape room, but I hope these tips help if I do another one. Also, I know what you mean about red herrings; 58 was written on a box, and we thought it meant something. But, after we lost and a staff member came in, he said the numbers didn't mean anything lol.
I just went to an escape room with some friends and we went to the hardest difficulty room, i thought we wouldnt make it out because we had been there before on a lower difficulty and barely made it out with a lot of clues. But we got out of this one with 5mins spare and i followed these tips, thanks for the tips :D
I only ever did one escape room. We finished it at 59:37 (1 hour limit). I will definitely go again because that was really climactic and we had a blast. Apart from one silly clue... to puzzlemakers: please don't really on people's sense of smell. We knew exactly what we had to do but just couldn't tell apart the smells of many fruit juices.
Using this video me and some coworkers managed to finish a room in 35 minutes with no clues. Despite wasting a lot of time on a couple of red herring clues. We did sorta brute force the last lock though
Our family just got back from Myrtle Beach and did an escape room there were 8 of us and it was hard to communicate, we were on the last clue and finally figured it out but the time expired before we could finish. We all agreed it would be easier with about 4 people.
as an escape room lover, facts. i've done 12 escape rooms and used those tips without even knowing, i always finish before the time with the maximum of 2 tips. if you want to solve an escape room quickly use them.
I work in an escape room haha. For those of you who get frustrated about the red herrings, the thing is, they might not actually be red herrings. We are trained to make you escape the room so that you are proud of your achievement so sometimes when players take too long to solve some enigmas, we unblock others so that you move along to the end faster so that you are able to finish on time. In the escape room I work at, the rooms are designed not to have any red herrings but if players are not going fast enough, we can skip steps in the game so that they get the satisfaction of having escaped :)
Many of the escape rooms I've been to have been in very low light, small rooms and blindfolded upon entry, I've really been wanting to try a few that aren't horror themed lol
I went to a escape room with friends before and had a idea to get something it was the thing we needed to do but everybody thought I was wrong and we ended up not escaping because of that but it was still tons of fun!
I did an escape room with my scout troop of 12 people in a 13 person room and we barely made it out but I still wish there was less people cus I didn’t get to do anything and was just wondering around trying to help.
I went to an escape room that looked like a prison, and I was so convinced that behind the toilet there was a secret room so I spent 20 minutes unscrewing the screws using my hands. Eventually it worked, and after we escaped we realised we skipped the actual puzzle to open the secret door. Long story short, if brain power doesn’t work, use brawn 😂💪🏼
My friends & I did an escape room (we escaped with 15 min to spare). We used all our hints but they could've all been avoided. -One clue involved finding a combination through a simple math problem on a calculator. Couldn't figure it out until I turned it upside down -We didn't dig throughly enough through a bag & nearly missed the last clue -One clue we had the combination to a but it was in its sleeve & we didn't realize it 😅
I did an escape room with the max number of people allowed once (12) and it started with us split into two teams in two rooms, but once we got into the main room it was too small for everyone to be in there and one of the kids got put into time out for being mean to his sister (he was 11 at the time smh) so less people is always better
My mother in law owns an escape room company, I have run over 1000 rooms at this point. This assessment is correct We also won't let you struggle on a puzzle for like 20 minutes. It is no fun to do nothing for that long
I was doing an escape room and we were trying to find the key for something but then after 20 mins we realised that my dad was holding the key the whole time i was so mad lol 😂
My problem in escape rooms is I think not in terms of solving puzzles but my brain jumps to how do I most rationally get through here if I was actually trapped. Like the one i did had a tiny little nut holding the chain onto the door, so I thought to grab my multi tool and unthread it, til I realized they didn’t let me bring it in lol
One time we went to an escape room with my sister when she was 7 and she brought in her stuffed cow with doll clothes on. We didn't know she had a magnet in between the cow and the clothes. She was dragging the cow across the walls and the wall opened up leading to another room. She didn't plan that or anything, it was completely random that she had a magnet with her. 😂😂😂
2 years ago, we were planning on going to an escape room, me and my 4 other friends. But the pandemic hit and unfortunately to this day, my local escape room remains closed. Still bummed about it.
I went to an escape room where they went through the rules, one of which was “don’t anything in holes in the wall and don’t pull anything out” One of the puzzles literally involved putting your hand in a hole in the wall and pulling out a wooden plank, which we were stuck on for like 15 mins because we were told not to.
As an escape room employee, it gets so hard to know what specific word choices to say because moving furniture is a general no-no inside our rooms. However, one puzzle you have to flip over some mattresses in order to get the right numbers. I've resorted to saying "don't move any heavy furniture" and I make it my job to push my groups into letting them know that the mattresses are the only furniture objects that they should be moving. Honestly, it's really the game master's job to be aware of what you guys were thinking and it sounds like it was just a bad worker tbh. It's literally apart of my job description to not let groups struggle too too much on one thing for like 10 minutes or so, that's not fun for anyone.
Jinkstack S Yeah, I went to an escape room and they said no breaking anything and we didn’t escape because there was a key in a balloon which we didn’t know we could break or pop
I remember one escape room where we had to solve the last clue. With the light to see something at the power box on wall, how we have to put the lever. Yea... We didn't even knew that we missed that suit, because we just looked at the Color of the cables which where different and we just put the lever with the red cables on. And so we looked the door. 😅🤣 Afterwards the worker told us that we missed two quizes and solved it in a way which wasn't planed. :'D
Honestly I knew most of these things except the roles. It blows my mind to think that one person doesn’t have to do any solving but still that person is the most important person to have.
You were definitely one of my favorite KZcliprs and after the video of your son you're definitely one of my favorite fathers. You may not realize it but sometimes people give up and your videos may have just saved somebody's life. I am forever grateful thank you.
I've done only one escape room with a bunch of very smart and successful people who were about 5-10 years older than me. The problem was that I was plowing through the puzzles so fast that a couple people got offended and wouldn't listen to me anymore. I was being a bit cocky about it, but they decided it was better to assuage those people's egos and lose, rather than have them suck it up and let us win. I'm not without fault here either. They told me to quit doing so well, so I sulked quite a bit.
I accidentally used a red herring as a guide and opened a motion lock in the one escape room I've tried and afterwards the person running it goes "I've never seen anyone come close to doing what you did to solve that"
at one of my birthday parties my dad made a sort of puzzle for all the teams and he just threw in a lock with the keys attacked to it. this lock didn't lead to anything but we all thought we had to find a way to open it. after i found out that there was no point to it i was laughing so hard i was crying.
A tip I found very important (loosely related to tip 10) - if you suspect something's broken, make sure to ask the guide. For example, if a flashlight gives very little light don't assume that's part of the challenge and instead ask if it's right and if they could replace the batteries. As Mark said, the point is for you to enjoy, so if there's a problem like that - don't hesitate to ask!
During my first and only escape room to date, the audio clues kept unintentionally cutting in and out and blinking lights would just stop working. The staff did confirm that it was a technical malfunction, and not a part of the puzzle. While we were searching the room for clues, one of my team members who hadn't paid any attention to our guide, opened the "I give up" clue box containing the solution leading to the next segment, and even that was wrong because the staff had failed to update the box when they updated the solutions and clues. It was the most bewilderingly esoteric experience of my life.
I am a guide for an escape room company and at the beginning I always say to the people, that they can talk with me all the time, if they are not sure if they are allowed to do something. Sometimes a keypad gets stuck, most of them are not intended to open and close 200 times a day, so we have to replace them quite often and usually a group finds a malfunction before we do 😅
Also, two of the people were veterans with escape rooms so I don't think I really did much. In essence, it was a bad match of people for me with a poorly designed room.
I work at an escape room and I see so many people get hung up on little things and overthinking and while it is interesting to see peoples thoughts proses my biggest tip is just that sometimes things are just there for decoration the color of the walls probably don’t matter and the things that say do not touch mean don’t touch them (that last one is just my experience)
I see why my group did great on our very first escape room lol. We had the fastest time they ever had and with the best ending as there was a story going on with a lot of drama
I'm a laurier brantford student, Scott is my professor, he's the real deal. He makes us watch this video for the escape rooms class. Im a long time fan of his channel and finding out that you know my prof and have literally been in my classroom is awesome! This literally made my day.
I have done a few escape rooms and went to one with a couple friends. They decided to take it easy because there was just one room, surely there can't have that many puzzles, right? Well, as I suggested early on, turns out the bookshelf was hiding a second room. We only had 15 minutes left when it opened
Ben Glaser That happens to me and my friends once, but the after that, there was ANOTHER room. The door ended up not being locked by accident, so we just used force to open it. We got out with about a minute to spare. 😂
I’ve been to the Nashville and mission to Mars Nashville had 3 rooms and mission had 3 rooms both were upper level. I don’t know if the lower level ones only have 2 or less rooms but we almost got out of each one by nearly solving the last puzzle so frustrating. Mission to Mars we almost lost by pressing a self destruct button (never hit the red button!!) lol red herring but that was a level 8 with Morse code, hieroglyphs color combos with shapes number codes in multiple areas it was insane. Had like 6 or 7 people.
True story first escape room I ever done I beat it with drum roll please 30 seconds remaining basically they complete the escape room you have to open the last box but I couldn’t get the key in it was very Jenkee I also didn’t use one of the tips and I forgot which key it was when I said it down so I had to try every single key and it had to be the last key that I tried😂
(Capacity stuff) honestly yeah an escape room I had could have like 8 people. Me and 2 of my friends did it (A.) very quickly and (B.) while having a great time.
I always think of how many arguments and major fallouts these escape rooms must cause with everyone saying and thinking different things and people wanting to do things different etc
![Kodak Black - Maui Woop [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/IZAvLz-OQz4/mqdefault.jpg)
i heard that you can escape in less than 1 minute by having a panic attack in the corner.
Funny but no
Did that in sixth grade field trip. The other kids laughed and the teachers didn’t do anything lol
Nice
My strat is to call my friends in the Taliban and call for a plane
i never heard of that method i might try it
I had one room that had a difficult (to me) math problem that I couldn’t get. The room master said “PEMDAS!”. I screamed, “I LITERALLY FAILED MATH”
@endoverlord423 lol yeah
@Alanna Dumaran oh so its just really really weird bedmas
Brackets, Exponents, Division, Multiplication, Addition, Subtraction
@endoverlord423 parentheses, exponents, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction
WTH is pemdas
i have never heard of it before, tho it sounds kinda similar to bedmas
@Fil Cernoch that's exactly was I was finna say
A tip for finding things an “average” person would know instead of going down rabbit holes: If the knowledge you have had to do with your profession, or is something that only certain groups of people would know, then it’s probably not the answer.
Lol, why should most people know this? I’m googling it and most people will never run into a situation where this knowledge is necessary (outside of such a unique subset of puzzles where esoteric knowledge can be put into practice in ways you never would have naturally, lol)
I'll agree with this one only insofar as it seems unlikely that the "average" person has read the entire collections of Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe - - In the rooms I've tackled, information from that body of knowledge helped a lot.
we had to know weird stuff for mine like the ionizations of the periodic table and some other tricky stuff
Meh, ok, so knowing the enthalpy of titanium halides won't help solve the puzzles? Bummer.
Well... I once did the room where we needed to use the Archimed's law. I get that the most people SHOULD know this, but honestly - it's due to pure coincidence that one of us actually guessed it :D
Tip 1: Bring LockPickingLawyer
Tip 2: Escape through unlocked door
wide pepo brain
"Nothing on 1, 2 is binding..." :)
@Lu Cheng LPL can bypass electromagnetic locks.
Designer: They will never beat my new escape room
From behind a door: click out of one...two is binding...
@Rainbow same
Play the zero escape series. It's an amazing story along with great puzzles.
As someone who works at an escape room, I can confirm that all of these tips are valid and EXTREMELY helpful! I already tell customers some of these, but I'll definitely be telling them the rest now!
Another tip I use is to not be afraid to ask for hints. At my job, we give unlimited, so people are usually more willing to ask for help. But even if you're limited and you're really stuck, some times one clue is all you need to continue the room.
1 slight amendment if ur gonna go do an escape room. For #2 when he said start searching immediately, beware, yes do search, but carefully and without messing things up as best as possible. We failed our room because there was a dart board and the first thing someone did was pull out the darts to look at them, and behind the board. Turned out the whole room revolved around knowing which initial positions those darts were in! So we lost! The point is, SEARCH CAREFULLY!
@Kyle Stroud yep any buttons on knobs or levers get tested immediately, also everything loose is beeing carried around, not to mention the times people want to look through entire books in 1 hour...
bad room design + it sounds like nobody was watching you play cuz a worker should've been able to tell you the initial positions so you can continue playing and have fun
Plot twist your friend failed the room before and made sure you had no way to win ❤
Sounds like that wouldn't be a fun room even for experts. If the primary clue was that poorly done, I can only imagine how bad the rest of it was.
Bad design
This should be the first video on any search for escape rooms tutorials.
struggle for a while with a coloured wall puzzle, then I took a step back and saw that it just showed you then numbers if you just focused on one colour
I went to an escape room. Found a key and it broke inside the lock. I sat there for 10 minutes before the staff came in and asked me why I wasn't doing anything. They had to get a lock cutter for me to get through to the next part. It was fun
@Ozzwozz _Ozzwozz nope many puzzles can be solved parallel were i work at + some puzzles need 2 people to solve so playing alone is not even an option not to mention that its super easy to get stuck if you're alone cuz you dont have any other input from people except occasionally the worker
@Leonardo Domonik They couldn’t do anything in escape rooms you can only do one thing at a time
Didn’t you have a piece of paper or cameras? They instructed us to hold up a special Card in front of the camera that was on the table when something was defect so they would get in to fix it. They can also hear what you are saying so saying the key broke in the lock I need help would Mby also work.
There was this cool magnet maze in an escape room I went to, and we spent like 10 minutes to realize that the key we were trying to get was stuck.
@TheCatCountry About 40% of regular internet users are extroverts.
Thanks to these tips, me and my friends were able to do far better than the majority of beginners in their first escape rooms…
By finishing 1 minute over the time limit!
We’re definitely going to pass the next escape room! Thanks for your advice dude!
EDIT: Also, it was just three of us, and the owner was very impressed!
My friends and I stunk lol... we had one more clue but used 2 clues and time ran out.
Looking back, I'm so glad I came across this video. My escape room record thus far is 2-1, I barely didn't escape my first room even with the tips but I'm sure w/o them we wouldn't have made it far. Using the tips again and knowing more of what to look for, I and my group were able to break out of 2 rooms. This is a great guide for any newbie who wants to start playing escape rooms with their friends and families and makes the experience really fun.
My boyfriend and I watched this video this morning before we did a 30 minute escape room this afternoon. We made it out with 8 minutes to spare! These tips really helped us divide and conquer
I'm the Head Trainer at my goal, we hit one of our goals and I took my team of trainers to an escape. None of us had EVER done one before and it was a 7.5. We made it to the very last room and tried to get super complicated on the puzzles. The guy came in after the hour was up and said "yea all you had to do was match the animal symbols to the wall and put a little of bit of pressure against the plate". So that "Think Simple" tip goes a LONG way. Haha we're doing our 2nd escape room this weekend.
i honestly wanna see the lockpicking lawyer do an escape room now, and just pick open every single lock and escape within 5 minutes.
@Cygnus Mutai I am a dad, and I lockpicked a scape room with my daughter. Incredibly simply waffer lock that jiggled open with a random key. It was... hilarious.
Nah the first 4 minutes will be "Hi, this is the lock picking lawyer. I'm here....." LoL
Lol
As long as he has months to study the lock before he turns the camera on
@Nic S. "The one I work in doesn't lock the people in at all"
I've never been to an escape room, but I just assumed that's how it would always be, just for people's safety. If there's a fire, or someone's having an emergency, the last thing you'd want is to have to wait for an employee to come and unlock the door for you. If they wanted to symbolize opening the door with a lock, just have the lock attached to the door on a separate piece of metal that doesn't keep the door shut. Simple.
You can win in less than 30 seconds by saying “i quit”
Final solve for an escape room I did was a number lock. To get the number, we had to solve a math equation, which we found by turning off the lights to the room and shining two different laser pointers at specific angles from two different spots in the room, and the various mirrors create the said math equation. Finding the laser pointers, where to put them, what angle to put them at, all required separate series of puzzles on their own.
Thats sounds really cool, love metapuzzles like that where the answers of the first puzzles feed into a bigger one.
I've done a fair bit of escape rooms and some of them back these up while others disprove these
For instance, most escape rooms I've done have had a discard draw for used keys and locks, both to further enforce you don't need them anymore and so that the people who reset the room have all the pieces in a convenient location
Other rooms I've done though have had pretty obtuse solutions. One involved knowledge of Cthulhu and how to pronounce the words they offer, one involved requiring knowledge of paintings, and one involved having to do long addition
Oh and one required looking under a mannquins skirt. That's really neither here nor there but I thought it was funny
At the one that I work at we have some dolls and an employee wrote "pervert" under all their skirts (before I worked there), yeah he quit shortly after and the manager didn't find it until after he quit. I had to rub it off with my coworker lol
I would say that everyone working working on one puzzle can be counter intuitive at times. For example, there may be two different puzzles that have clues scattered around. So if you immediately hone in on one, you may miss clues for the second. In addition, its better to have everyone working on different ones instead of one singular, since then you can come up with solutions for all three in that time instead of one.
I work at an escape room and can not tell you the number of times people fail and get frustrated buy not following those tips. This video is 100% true, accurate and helpful!
Omg that's so cool 🤩 I would love to work at am escape room
@eu it's probably a clue..
Escape room employee as well and I can agree, it's crazy how complex people can think with a puzzle
Yes! I was the only person who had ever done an escape room in my group of 6 last week. They were all obsessed with going suuuuuper deep doing math and periodic table things (it was biohazard theme). I had to keep telling them they would never make puzzles that hard requiring writing out math or remberjng a 20 digit code 😂
is this reverse psychology
A friend and I did a cool Escape Room which was 3 separate rooms and Sci-Fi themed.
One of the clues involved a star chart, the other was arranging weapons a certain way on a weapons rack and so fourth. You had time limit to get to the final room which was set up like a bridge of a space ship and you had stop it ship from crashing into a planet.
Great tips! We'd love to have you and your team test them out on our rooms one day 😎🤗
Ok I just did two of my first escape rooms after all of us watching your video before each one and we escaped both!
What great memories!!!
Thank you for this video and the great tips!
I went to an escape room for the first time with my D&D group, and we actually work pretty well together. We did most of these things kind of automatically and we would've beat it If we had 30 more seconds. The key was IN THE LOCK!
"Me and my buddies escaped in 38 minutes" Do you remember that he used to work for Nasa?
Here, take a badge 🏅😂😂😂😂 Did you have fun? thats all what matters. Escape Room creators is all what they made it for .
Cool!
@sgradone some are easier than other
Im the corporate events coordinator at my escape room and ive seen brilliant people not escape. Xp its not all about how smart you are.
Eric Figler MOSTLY MATH??? you must be sitting there on a chair trying to add up how are you gonna escape instead of trying to escape
My family lost an escape room yesterday because we got stuck on a combination lock that the answer to a riddle was the lock code and even clues weren't helping us. Turns out we technically had the correct answer the very first time to the riddle but where we are from a different spelling of the word is used. So we lost all that time trying to figure out that code.
The last lock box you showed is easily pickable through feel. I used them for work and proved to my boss I could figure out any code he chose. We found a different style lock box lol
This is great. I've completed a bit over 100 rooms with a 72% escape rate and these are great tips!
I tried a escape room, but apparently you need friends to do them.
@Spirit halloween fan more people, less organized, less people less perspectives.
I once tried a difficult one all by myself. I didn’t escape in time but I made it to the last room.
@Alisa Bryantseva I'll go with ya! Help ya with a life lol
I'd love to try one too but I don't have a life.
@N o t B a k a ?
Mark: "you wont find clues by disassemble ceiling lights"
People who make escape rooms after this video: *i outsmart your outsmarting.*
@Psychic Kumquat I always love the "do not take out the fire extinguisher" or "do not touch the power supply box" 😂
A fun thing I've learned about escape rooms: if the staff specifically tells you not to do something, it probably means someone has tried before. My favorites include attempting to disassemble an outlet (more than once), ripping several feet of microphone wire from off a wall, and entering the ceiling by removing the tiles.
Construction is just the reverse of destruction.
is this a jojo reference??
@P.Y.H FANCLUB is that a reference to a reference?
My wife and I did an escape room for our anniversary. I showed her this video before we went in. All these tips came in handy and we escaped with 2 seconds to spare. The room even had a few red herrings. Huge fan of all your videos. Keep up the great work 👍
5:02 - The escape room we did the other night we lost a lot of time because I was certain that the giant clock on the wall that was stuck at 1444 had to be a clue. We made it to the very last puzzle when time ran out.
@Death It was a giant analog clock, and the time on it was 2:44, I just assumed since it wasn't moving that it was a clue, and that 2:44 in military time was 1444 so that had to be a code. Turns out it was just a clock and the battery had died at 2:44
A giant digital clock stuck on a time? A time with 4 numbers (which is a common amount of numbers to unlock something), yeah that's a bit of a mean red herring to put in. You had reason to believe that could have been a clue.
This video is great! My older brother loves your videos and told me to watch this video before doing the escape room I was going to do later that day. But, I forgot, and totally failed the escape room. I wish I had watched this video before the escape room, but I hope these tips help if I do another one. Also, I know what you mean about red herrings; 58 was written on a box, and we thought it meant something. But, after we lost and a staff member came in, he said the numbers didn't mean anything lol.
Thanks Mark! I'm going to an escape room today, so these tips should definitely help!
I did an escape room with my cousin who is in the army. Instead of figuring out how to unlock the lock he just picked it and continued lol
NO!😂
Gamemasters hate when you do that
@MyRegardsToTheDodo Word
Still counts! Lol
work smarter not harder
I just went to an escape room with some friends and we went to the hardest difficulty room, i thought we wouldnt make it out because we had been there before on a lower difficulty and barely made it out with a lot of clues.
But we got out of this one with 5mins spare and i followed these tips, thanks for the tips :D
As thriller writer, this is very helpful. Thank you.
In science I have 4 job role’s Project manger, coordinator, reporter, and material’s manger
I only ever did one escape room. We finished it at 59:37 (1 hour limit). I will definitely go again because that was really climactic and we had a blast. Apart from one silly clue... to puzzlemakers: please don't really on people's sense of smell. We knew exactly what we had to do but just couldn't tell apart the smells of many fruit juices.
Using this video me and some coworkers managed to finish a room in 35 minutes with no clues. Despite wasting a lot of time on a couple of red herring clues.
We did sorta brute force the last lock though
Our family just got back from Myrtle Beach and did an escape room there were 8 of us and it was hard to communicate, we were on the last clue and finally figured it out but the time expired before we could finish. We all agreed it would be easier with about 4 people.
as an escape room lover, facts. i've done 12 escape rooms and used those tips without even knowing, i always finish before the time with the maximum of 2 tips. if you want to solve an escape room quickly use them.
Mark, we love your videos!! Your link to the 8 roles is not found and 2/3 of us are newbies to an Escape Room tomorrow! Thanks for the top ten helps!
I work in an escape room haha. For those of you who get frustrated about the red herrings, the thing is, they might not actually be red herrings. We are trained to make you escape the room so that you are proud of your achievement so sometimes when players take too long to solve some enigmas, we unblock others so that you move along to the end faster so that you are able to finish on time. In the escape room I work at, the rooms are designed not to have any red herrings but if players are not going fast enough, we can skip steps in the game so that they get the satisfaction of having escaped :)
*escapes and laughs looking like sloth from the goonies because every step got skipped*
I work in one as well and we dont have red herrings but people continually make some for themselves all the time like you wouldn't believe
Holly can escape my room any day!
In my country they just let you lose, and badly hahaha I got a 55% completion at my first escape room
@Joshi3b0i YAS
Many of the escape rooms I've been to have been in very low light, small rooms and blindfolded upon entry, I've really been wanting to try a few that aren't horror themed lol
I went to a escape room with friends before and had a idea to get something it was the thing we needed to do but everybody thought I was wrong and we ended up not escaping because of that but it was still tons of fun!
As a person who works at a escape room, this video is legit
I did an escape room with my scout troop of 12 people in a 13 person room and we barely made it out but I still wish there was less people cus I didn’t get to do anything and was just wondering around trying to help.
I went to an escape room that looked like a prison, and I was so convinced that behind the toilet there was a secret room so I spent 20 minutes unscrewing the screws using my hands. Eventually it worked, and after we escaped we realised we skipped the actual puzzle to open the secret door. Long story short, if brain power doesn’t work, use brawn 😂💪🏼
Why would they make it that hard?? 🤦🏻♀️😂
Zahra Onsori bruh
Zahra Onsori I went to a prison that looked like an escape room because I brought 2 glocks to the room and told the guide to tell me. He’s dead now
JESUS! Did you just HAPPEN to have a screwdriver with you?!?
Edit: Oh, you used your bare hands. Somehow, that's 10 times worse.
I'm about to escape from a submarine, so I appreciate these tips! Thanks Marky mark!
My friends & I did an escape room (we escaped with 15 min to spare). We used all our hints but they could've all been avoided.
-One clue involved finding a combination through a simple math problem on a calculator. Couldn't figure it out until I turned it upside down
-We didn't dig throughly enough through a bag & nearly missed the last clue
-One clue we had the combination to a but it was in its sleeve & we didn't realize it 😅
I did an escape room with the max number of people allowed once (12) and it started with us split into two teams in two rooms, but once we got into the main room it was too small for everyone to be in there and one of the kids got put into time out for being mean to his sister (he was 11 at the time smh) so less people is always better
My mother in law owns an escape room company, I have run over 1000 rooms at this point. This assessment is correct
We also won't let you struggle on a puzzle for like 20 minutes. It is no fun to do nothing for that long
I was doing an escape room and we were trying to find the key for something but then after 20 mins we realised that my dad was holding the key the whole time i was so mad lol 😂
My friend and I were literally fighting on who should open the chest with the key -_-
luckily i opened it😌😌
Just standing there holding the key out all smiling and blinking a lot like Benny Hill?
@bluestreak711 lmao
Same
Hahaha lol
Thank you so much Mark, I will use these tips because I have a school trip tomorrow to an escape room and I want to dominate every room
Did u happen to escape every room?
Hey I loved your video and it's made me want to do one. Thanks for the great tips.
My problem in escape rooms is I think not in terms of solving puzzles but my brain jumps to how do I most rationally get through here if I was actually trapped. Like the one i did had a tiny little nut holding the chain onto the door, so I thought to grab my multi tool and unthread it, til I realized they didn’t let me bring it in lol
I went on an escape room with my friends. We made it to the end but lost because we were arguing over who should open the door
And then the door clapped.
One time we went to an escape room with my sister when she was 7 and she brought in her stuffed cow with doll clothes on. We didn't know she had a magnet in between the cow and the clothes. She was dragging the cow across the walls and the wall opened up leading to another room. She didn't plan that or anything, it was completely random that she had a magnet with her. 😂😂😂
lol 190!!
LOL 189?
I thought you weren't allowed to being anything into the escape room specifically for this reason 😂
Lol ??? (There have been interruptions to many times)
lol 188
Scott’s KZclip channel got me into modern board gaming. What a legend
2 years ago, we were planning on going to an escape room, me and my 4 other friends. But the pandemic hit and unfortunately to this day, my local escape room remains closed.
Still bummed about it.
The cool part of the Escape room is the story line! Read all the instructions, and bring smart people with you :-)
Can we just appreciate how Genius Mark Rober is.
I went to an escape room where they went through the rules, one of which was “don’t anything in holes in the wall and don’t pull anything out”
One of the puzzles literally involved putting your hand in a hole in the wall and pulling out a wooden plank, which we were stuck on for like 15 mins because we were told not to.
3NITROUT break down the whole wall
Poor design. I'm sorry
As an escape room employee, it gets so hard to know what specific word choices to say because moving furniture is a general no-no inside our rooms. However, one puzzle you have to flip over some mattresses in order to get the right numbers. I've resorted to saying "don't move any heavy furniture" and I make it my job to push my groups into letting them know that the mattresses are the only furniture objects that they should be moving. Honestly, it's really the game master's job to be aware of what you guys were thinking and it sounds like it was just a bad worker tbh. It's literally apart of my job description to not let groups struggle too too much on one thing for like 10 minutes or so, that's not fun for anyone.
Jinkstack S Yeah, I went to an escape room and they said no breaking anything and we didn’t escape because there was a key in a balloon which we didn’t know we could break or pop
Rosaline Carissa Averina i
I remember one escape room where we had to solve the last clue. With the light to see something at the power box on wall, how we have to put the lever. Yea... We didn't even knew that we missed that suit, because we just looked at the Color of the cables which where different and we just put the lever with the red cables on. And so we looked the door. 😅🤣 Afterwards the worker told us that we missed two quizes and solved it in a way which wasn't planed. :'D
Once I did an escape room with my mates and I just started fiddling with one of the locks to the next room and the door popped open.
Honestly I knew most of these things except the roles. It blows my mind to think that one person doesn’t have to do any solving but still that person is the most important person to have.
I once did an escape room about the Lost Dutchman mine, and me and my group finished it with 18 minutes to spare.
The people in my escape room are still in there a year later. My basement is a tough one I suppose
Bwahaha!😄
ahaahahahhahahahaha
Can you teach me, the Mongolian children keep leaving
Sounds like you aren't giving them clues when they ask for them!
yo its actually kinda boring down here. let us out now?
You were definitely one of my favorite KZcliprs and after the video of your son you're definitely one of my favorite fathers. You may not realize it but sometimes people give up and your videos may have just saved somebody's life. I am forever grateful thank you.
I'm getting ready to try my first escape room!
Thanks for considering color blind people. You rock Mark!
Finally got to put this to use. We beat the escape room!
I've done only one escape room with a bunch of very smart and successful people who were about 5-10 years older than me. The problem was that I was plowing through the puzzles so fast that a couple people got offended and wouldn't listen to me anymore. I was being a bit cocky about it, but they decided it was better to assuage those people's egos and lose, rather than have them suck it up and let us win. I'm not without fault here either. They told me to quit doing so well, so I sulked quite a bit.
I accidentally used a red herring as a guide and opened a motion lock in the one escape room I've tried and afterwards the person running it goes "I've never seen anyone come close to doing what you did to solve that"
at one of my birthday parties my dad made a sort of puzzle for all the teams and he just threw in a lock with the keys attacked to it. this lock didn't lead to anything but we all thought we had to find a way to open it. after i found out that there was no point to it i was laughing so hard i was crying.
I'm a gamemaster and these tips work great for all 8 games available at the escape place
i work at.
A tip I found very important (loosely related to tip 10) - if you suspect something's broken, make sure to ask the guide. For example, if a flashlight gives very little light don't assume that's part of the challenge and instead ask if it's right and if they could replace the batteries. As Mark said, the point is for you to enjoy, so if there's a problem like that - don't hesitate to ask!
WD40 is not a good lubricant. Use some light oil.
WD40 now and then the lock
During my first and only escape room to date, the audio clues kept unintentionally cutting in and out and blinking lights would just stop working. The staff did confirm that it was a technical malfunction, and not a part of the puzzle. While we were searching the room for clues, one of my team members who hadn't paid any attention to our guide, opened the "I give up" clue box containing the solution leading to the next segment, and even that was wrong because the staff had failed to update the box when they updated the solutions and clues. It was the most bewilderingly esoteric experience of my life.
I am a guide for an escape room company and at the beginning I always say to the people, that they can talk with me all the time, if they are not sure if they are allowed to do something. Sometimes a keypad gets stuck, most of them are not intended to open and close 200 times a day, so we have to replace them quite often and usually a group finds a malfunction before we do 😅
Also, two of the people were veterans with escape rooms so I don't think I really did much.
In essence, it was a bad match of people for me with a poorly designed room.
“People tend to overanalyze and just go down a rabbit hole.”
MatPat: “I have no such weaknesses.”
I work at an escape room and I see so many people get hung up on little things and overthinking and while it is interesting to see peoples thoughts proses my biggest tip is just that sometimes things are just there for decoration the color of the walls probably don’t matter and the things that say do not touch mean don’t touch them (that last one is just my experience)
Thanks a lot, I am going to an escape room tomorrow with my friends and I'm pretty sure this video will help me and my friends a lot.
same haha
when I'm sad I watch mark Rober to cheer me up
*casually watches in quarantine with no chance of going to an escape room*
Are your sure your not in one now?
Yup
Escapes quarantine
only watching this to escape my room
A YEAR AGO WOW....
Thanks for this lol! I’m going to an escape room with my friend, my crush and my other friends, I don’t want to disappoint lol.
The best way to speed run an escape is to break enough stuff in the room till the staff kicks you out and threatens to call the cops
I see why my group did great on our very first escape room lol. We had the fastest time they ever had and with the best ending as there was a story going on with a lot of drama
I've found that writing the codes down when you can helps a ton. As you don't have to memorize them
I'm a laurier brantford student, Scott is my professor, he's the real deal. He makes us watch this video for the escape rooms class. Im a long time fan of his channel and finding out that you know my prof and have literally been in my classroom is awesome! This literally made my day.
Whats your program?
THERES AN ESCAPE ROOM CLASS?? If they don't end up having that at UT Austin I'm going to be VERY disappointed
Great tips! Should have watched your video before we did an Escape Room.
EXCELLENT, my friend is turning 60 and wants an escape room for his birthday!!! We will now ROCK!!! Thanks so much.
I’m doing my first ever escape room tomorrow so I care to look for tips on not being too crazy
Doing an escape room with my friends next week, gonna study this in the mean time
I have done a few escape rooms and went to one with a couple friends. They decided to take it easy because there was just one room, surely there can't have that many puzzles, right? Well, as I suggested early on, turns out the bookshelf was hiding a second room. We only had 15 minutes left when it opened
Ben Glaser That happens to me and my friends once, but the after that, there was ANOTHER room. The door ended up not being locked by accident, so we just used force to open it. We got out with about a minute to spare. 😂
Some escape rooms have majority of their puzzles in the first rooms :)
I did one that the fireplace opened up and we had to crawl into the next room, I love escape rooms ❤️
I’ve been to the Nashville and mission to Mars Nashville had 3 rooms and mission had 3 rooms both were upper level. I don’t know if the lower level ones only have 2 or less rooms but we almost got out of each one by nearly solving the last puzzle so frustrating. Mission to Mars we almost lost by pressing a self destruct button (never hit the red button!!) lol red herring but that was a level 8 with Morse code, hieroglyphs color combos with shapes number codes in multiple areas it was insane. Had like 6 or 7 people.
Ben Glaser Woah thats cool !
Thank you, it was very helpful! 👏👏😇
True story first escape room I ever done I beat it with drum roll please 30 seconds remaining basically they complete the escape room you have to open the last box but I couldn’t get the key in it was very Jenkee I also didn’t use one of the tips and I forgot which key it was when I said it down so I had to try every single key and it had to be the last key that I tried😂
(Capacity stuff) honestly yeah an escape room I had could have like 8 people. Me and 2 of my friends did it (A.) very quickly and (B.) while having a great time.
Watching this video confirms my intuition that I wouldnt find escape rooms fun.
* watches this alone in my room with no escape rooms even remotely near my area*
Relatable
So true
My state . . .has like 30 escape rooms
I'm in NY btw
Same
That's me
please do more of these videos!! they’re amazing
I always think of how many arguments and major fallouts these escape rooms must cause with everyone saying and thinking different things and people wanting to do things different etc