Licence to Escape

"Licence to Escape" poster logoFriday night saw the very exciting Licence to Escape pop-up event in the centre of London, as previewed a week and a half ago. The event was a huge success and people generally had tonnes of fun.

The event took place in the Supernatural Fitness event space, beneath the Supernatural juice bar very near one of the Paddington tube stations; this was remarkably well-suited for the event, featuring half a dozen alcoves, each perhaps ten feet square, which was a good size and shape for a tiny little one-room, five-minute exit game.

The event was organised by thinking bob and Yelp! UK, with extremely tasty cakes by Royal Rosey Cakes (both the red velvet and chocolate mint cakes come well and truly recommended) and half a dozen suppliers of alcoholic drinks and custom mixers. The event was played in teams of six; if your party had fewer than six members, you would be teamed up with other parties to make a full half-dozen.

The concept was based around an attempt to identify a traitor from a list of 24 in the training manual; each potential traitor had a selection of characteristics. There were six five-minute exit games to play, and a custom web page (with associated score-tracking system) that was used for scoring purposes – an impressive piece of tech for a one-night activity, unless the Thinking Bob team have plans to reuse the tech for some other such collection of mini-games down the line, or have adapted it from some previous event of theirs.

For each team in turn, the gamesmasters behind each room would start the countdown timer for their room for that team; hopefully the team would solve the puzzle in time and find the word associated with that room, with stopping the clock earning points from that room. Stopping the clock in a room would also give you a clue to some of the characteristics that did, or didn’t, apply to the traitor, so you could eliminate possibilities, Guess Who-style.

After the sixth room, you had another five minutes to enter the name of the traitor. If you’d solved enough rooms, only one candidate for the traitor would remain; with incomplete information, there would be several possibilities who you would have to try one at a time, being locked out for twenty seconds between attempts. (Additionally, there was an additional live action outdoor game, courtesy of Fire Hazard, where further points could be earnt by solving cryptic clues to find physical checkpoint stickers, within a few hundred yards, without being sighted by agents.)

In alphabetical order:

  • clueQuest‘s room was a precise but robustly constructed multi-stage physical puzzle, beautifully timed to provide close finishes when fitting into a five-minute slot.
  • Enigma Escape‘s room attractively but abstractly depicted a murder scene and hid a sequence puzzle to identify the next victim.
  • Enigma Quests‘s room may have been the most evocative, with beautiful props concealing a riddle and a classic physical puzzle concealing its answer.
  • Escape Rooms‘s room had a remarkable and delightful piece of kit to play with featuring a single very tough logic puzzle, which only a small number of teams were able to get the better of.
  • Lock’d‘s room offered a lot to enjoy: four mini-puzzles to identify agents’ identities and locations then place them on the map.
  • Mystery Cube‘s room had many different boxes to unlock, with a wide assortment of techniques used and considerable to-ing and fro-ing, in an intricate way that required excellent co-operation.

The juxtaposition of complex puzzles and potent potables gave people two radically different sorts of things to enjoy, though it will be interesting to see whether teams who had been enjoying the free bar for longer had the same degree of success at the puzzles as those who played at the start of the night! To tell the whole of the story, while it’s impossible to generalise, introverts may have enjoyed the evening less. In general, exit games can be environments in which introverts shine, and Thinking Bob do run events which are introvert-friendly; the combination on offer on the night was rather more loud and lairy than most exit game environments.

A tremendous night with a great deal of love and thought going into it. Many thanks to everyone involved.

Coming up in London on Friday 16th October: Licence to Escape

Thinking Bob logoOn the night of Friday 16th October, in the Supernatural juice bar at Sheldon Square near Paddington railway station in London, there will be an event called Licence to Escape. It sounds very exciting indeed!

Thinking Bob, Yelp and Supernatural are teaming up to present the ultimate Spy Adventure bringing together Six of London’s Best Escape Rooms: Clue Quest, Lady Chastity’s Reserve, Escape Plan, Escape Rooms, Enigma Escape & Enigma Quests.

An evening of fast paced puzzles solving undercover operations and villainous mastery. Of course you will need to blend in and enjoy a few drinks with your team at the same time. If you don’t already have 5 people in mind to form a team (teams of 6) we’ll sort that out for you when you arrive – after all thinking bob is about bringing people together.

This site has mentioned thinking bob in passing: it’s a social group who put on smart (and sometimes silly too!) events, and Yelp is well-known as a review aggregator. The line-up of exit games contributing to the mission (and there’s an optional City Dash outdoor mission as well) looks pretty spectacular as well.

It’s a free event, but tickets are limited. The event’s page has the details and also the place at which to RSVP; the deadline is unclear, but the suggestion that We only have a limited amount of spots though, so we’ll officially let you know if you’re in on 9 October points at there being only a couple of days left in which to reply. There have already been a few dozen applicants, quite possibly with plus ones (or more?) so fingers are firmly crossed and nothing is being taken for granted here. Now the world waits… and hopes!

Double treasure hunt weekend in London

Thinking Bob logoThis little chap is the logo of thinking bob, an organisation in London that organises social events that vary from the cerebral to the celebratory. They send groups to exit games on a regular basis and take advantage of the sheer number of them to very seldom repeat. They also have sent a lot of members to Puzzled Pint over the months, further affirmation that the members are probably your sort of people. You can join for £1 for the first month; continued subscription costs £15/month and covers attendance at many events, though some cost extra.

One such event is the “Game of Phones” treasure hunt coming up at 2pm this Saturday, starting from the Crystal Palace railway station. We’ll head to Crystal Palace park for our latest treasure hunt style game inspired by Game of Thrones. Teams will become houses, dinosaurs to dragons and a simple game could turn into a full blown war. You can expect an awesome clue solving team game taking elements from the show we love and mixing it with the great things Crystal Palace park has to offer – including life-size dinosaurs and maze. You will of course be using your phones for this one but you can expect an array of bonus challenges and suspect characters that make the perfect setting to discover a new part of the city and get to know some new people. Will you be nominated the king or queen of your house? Will you volunteer yourself for the ‘Dayswatch’ and go to the wall? And most importantly can you get the to Iron Phone first?

Although the game will be packed full of game of thrones references you don’t actually need to know the show to play – as long as you enjoy solving puzzles and riddles then this is still for you. The hunt will be followed by a drinking bob social giving you chance to get to know the other teams and see how you did. A few places still remain; tickets cost £8. There are other imaginative, intriguing-sounding thinking bob events coming up, not least a one-night tribute to The Krypton Factor as well.