Glossary

Just a few words that we think we might need to explain.

Gamemaster – Usually a staff member or owner who is in charge of :
1) explaining the game
2) resetting/setting up the game
3) giving you hints

Lockboxes – Imagine a wooden box.  Add a hinge.  Put a lock through it.  An escape room pet-peeve of ours if its overused in a room.

Taobao.com – If you’re not already familiar with it, think of it as China’s answer to Amazon.com.  After encountering a number of similar specialty tech/locks, my brother-in-law (who was raised in Beijing) would say “they probably got it from Taobao.com”.

Too-much-info-not-enough-direction – Imagine this case: you have 3 different clues and 10 identical lockboxes.  None of them indicate which clue is for what box, but you need to solve this in order to move on.  Its frustrating because you don’t know what to do or where to go.

Red Herring – Any sort of additional clue or piece of info that would lead you away from finding the answer.

META Puzzle – Usually an end-of-game puzzle that requires you to put together hints or pieces of previous puzzles to finish it.

Task-Based Puzzle – A puzzle that requires you to complete a set of logical steps to arrive at an answer.  Like Sudoku’s (groan)

Linear Game – Where you progress through a number of puzzles one-by-one in a logical/linear fashion.  There is usually a starting puzzle which should provide you with enough direction where the next puzzle is (and so on until you finish).  Games that don’t provide enough direction are usually labelled with “Too-much-info-not-enough-direction”

Open Game – The opposite of the Linear where there is no real starting puzzle, however there usually is a clear finish.  Usually puzzles can be worked on simultaneously and these are great for large groups.    A good example of this is Real Escape Games (Escape from the Mysterious Room/Escape from the Time Travel Lab).