A home escape room is only as good as its puzzles, and the best ones are rarely clever on paper. They are the ones where the players do something with their hands and the answer appears: a number glowing when the lights go off, a word in a mirror, a key sliding out of a block of melting ice.
Here are twenty, all made from paper and things already in the house or at a dollar store. Each one says the age it suits, and the mistake that most often breaks it. 7 Puzzle Types That Make Players Feel Smart explains why some of these feel better than others, and How to Build an Escape Room in Your Living Room shows how to chain three of them into a game.
Finding
- 1. Numbers in plain sight. Three digits written on the undersides of three objects, and a clue that says what order to read them in. Six and up. The mistake: an order nobody can work out. Smallest to largest, or by color, never the right order.
- 2. The close-up photograph. A photo of part of something in the house, taken so close it takes a moment to recognize: the corner of a pillow, a knob on the stove, a toothbrush from the side. The next clue is there. Five and up. The mistake: too close. If you cannot recognize it yourself the next morning, neither can they.
- 3. Count them. How many clocks are in the house? The count is one digit of the code. Six and up. The mistake: a count with an argument in it. Does the oven clock count? Say clocks with hands, and it does not.
Codes
- 4. The picture alphabet. Ten symbols on a key card, each standing for a letter, and a message written in them somewhere else. Six and up. The mistake: hiding the key and the message together. Finding the key is half the fun.
- 5. Numbers for letters. A is 1, B is 2, so 19 15 6 1 spells SOFA. Eight and up. The mistake: leaving out the alphabet strip. It is not cheating. It is the puzzle.
- 6. The decoder wheel. Two paper discs and a split pin, turned to the shift the clue gives. Nine and up. The mistake: a long message. Five or six letters is a puzzle; a sentence decoded one letter at a time is homework.
- 7. The phone keypad. Each digit stands for the letters on its key, so 7 4 6 3 could be SHOE, but it could also be PINE or RIND. The clue settles it: something you wear. Ten and up. The mistake: a number that spells two words and nothing to choose between them. Check yours against a keypad, and print a picture of one, because most children have never used a phone with letters on its keys.
- 8. The book cipher. Page, line, word: 12 4 2 is the second word on the fourth line of page twelve. Eleven and up. The mistake: any copy of the book. Different editions number their pages differently, so use the copy in the room.
- 9. Morse by flashlight. The Escape Master flashes a short word from the doorway, and a printed Morse chart does the rest. Ten and up. The mistake: flashing too fast. Go slower than feels natural, and repeat it until they say they have it.
Putting things in order
- 10. Sort it to open it. Four objects of different sizes, each marked with a digit. Smallest to largest gives the code. Six and up. The mistake: two objects nearly the same size. Make the differences obvious from across the room.
- 11. The rainbow. Colored cards with a digit on each, read in rainbow order. Five and up, with help. The mistake: indigo. Nobody agrees where blue stops and indigo starts, so use six colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, and print the order on the clue.
- 12. The first letters. A handful of events to put in order, from a diary, a timeline or a recipe, and the first letters in that order spell a word. Eleven and up. The mistake: an order that could go two ways. Every event needs a date, a time, or a clear before and after.
Light and sight
- 13. Mirror writing. A message that can only be read in a mirror. Eight and up. The mistake: typing it backwards. Typed backwards, it reads in the right order in a mirror with every letter the wrong way around. Flip the text in your word processor, or write on thin paper and trace it from the back.
- 14. Wax resist. A message in white crayon on white paper, invisible until they paint over it with watercolor. Five and up. The mistake: a light touch. Press hard, and go over every letter twice.
- 15. Invisible ink. A UV pen, the kind with a small light in the cap, costs a few dollars. The message shows only under the light. Eight and up. The mistake: a bright room. UV writing is faint, so give them a dark closet or a closed bathroom to read it in.
- 16. Glow in the dark. Glow stickers on a wall in the shape of a number, easy to miss until the lights go off. Six and up. The mistake: forgetting to charge them. Shine a flashlight on them for a minute just before.
- 17. The red filter. Write the message in blue, scribble all over it in red and pink, and hand them a piece of red cellophane. Through it, the scribble disappears and the message stays. Seven and up. The mistake: too little scribble. Without the filter it should look like nothing but a mess.
Building and freeing
- 18. The jigsaw. Write a code across a picture, cut it into eight pieces, and hide the pieces. Six and up. The mistake: cutting first. Write the code across the whole picture, so no single piece gives it away, and then cut.
- 19. The key in the ice. Freeze a key in a yogurt cup of water overnight, and give them a bowl of warm water. Five and up. The mistake: a big block. A small cupful frees the key in ten or fifteen minutes of warm water; a tub takes most of an hour.
- 20. Fishing for the key. A key at the bottom of a jar of dried beans, and a magnet on a string to fish it out. Six and up. The mistake: a brass key. Many house keys are brass, and a magnet will not touch them. Test yours, or tie the key to a steel washer. And use one big magnet, never small ones, around young children: swallowed magnets are dangerous.
Before anybody plays
Every one of these takes under fifteen minutes to make, which is the point: they are cheap enough to test. Try each one on somebody who has not seen it. You know the answer, so you cannot tell whether a puzzle gives it away at a glance or hides it forever, and ten minutes with a neighbor's child will tell you.
Spy Mission is built from two of these, numbers for letters and a mirror message, for eight and up, with the story and the Escape Master's script already written.
