Week 3: Kraków (Dark) Escape Room

September 25th, 2018

Monday

Following the Culture Shock lecture we went to an escape room at Ul. Henryka Siemiradzkiego 17/6.

We were given the story of two men searching for a woman, the woman being murdered, and a bomb being placed. Now, we were ready to start. However, we had already been knocked down to three people instead of four.

Our leader, Dillon, was locked in a closet. It had three chains on it. There were holes at the top of the short closet where the chains were threaded through the wood. On top of the closet there was a small box that held the keys for the lock on the front. From inside, Dillon had to arrange the chains in a specific way so that they covered three lists of numbers. The chains were a specific length and would only cover so much when pulled. He gave our RD the number after twenty minutes of confusion, and he was free.

While Piotr was working on getting Dillon out, Taylor and I found a cookbook with clues, and we found keys for the locks on the couch. The bottom part opened up and inside was a suitcase with two journals. The smaller bound book held the answer for turning on a light. Now we had one flashlight and small adjustable, but stationary, reading light.

Around a picture frame there were symbols with holes underneath them for nails to be inserted. The number five was important (there was a shoe that had size five and a jacket size five) so we turned to page five and found the symbols. The frame was hinged and when opened there was a light switch and a circle of circles. It corresponded to the circles on the mirror. On top of the closet (where the small box with keys had been) there was a clock. The back of it was open and inside there was a drawn circle of circles. One of the circles had five inside. Behind the frame two circles had numbers (5 and then 7).

We had a walki talki and the supervisor told us to point the reading light onto the mirror. This would reflect the circles onto the wall to the right of the closet where that was an array of numbers. The circles, counterclockwise, gave us the code for a safe. In the safe were instructions for another safe.

We checked the closet again and found that it had a back door. There was a cabinet with tools and dates. The larger journal had dates and the pages these were located made up the combination for the last safe. To open the cabinet we had to use a map, but we were stuck.

Our supervisor told us to move a doll's head. After three minutes we tried placing the baby doll’s head on its body. This lit the map with a black light and showed numbers that fell at specific coordinates. The placement of the numbers mattered since minor cordials would open the cabinet. Running longitude on the map there were numbers and latitude ABC's. The lit numbers were located in an interval (5->7 or 10->3) and the cordial direction was entered into the cabinet by a wooden dial for each of three coordinate placements.

Next we had to find the key for the first safe. There was another closet in the back room. You had to wrench open the door. Inside was half of a dummy victim. While two people from our group searched for the key, Piotr and I entered the combination into the first safe. All we needed was the key.

It was about five minutes until he bomb went off. We were stuck. The dummy had no key on her person. Evidently our supervisor had tried to contact us, to suggest taking the hand and matching it to one painted on the wall. Pressing that painted hand opened a small fuse box on the side of the AC to provide the key. One of us had accidentally changed the Walkie-Talkie's channel, or else we would have made it out. I think we took about two minutes to get the key once our helper came for us.