Escape Room -- The Board Game

A couple years ago, we had our first experience at an Escape Room. Each Christmas, we do some activity for the family as a gift -- very trendy! Mostly, it is live theater (Hamilton in Chicago this past year, AMAZING!), but we try to come up with something new and different occasionally. Thus, the Escape Room. I will confess that I was super excited about it, until about three minutes after we got locked into the first room, when I became convinced that we would never solve any of the clues and we'd be the first group ever to enter the room and never be seen again. I can be dramatic.

Being excellent puzzlers, we did manage to solve the mystery within the allotted time, with much hilarity and entertaining examples of previously unknown individual personality traits. Naturally, we had planned to go back and do another one, but busy schedules prevailed and we haven't had another opportunity. Now, here we are, all the free time but all the social distancing. What is a family of puzzlers to do?

Never fear, friends. Escape Room -- the Board Game. I am hardly surprised that we own it (thanks, Uncle Phil), more shocked that we have not yet played it. Apparently, even when the fun doesn't involve leaving the house, it can be tough to come together for an hour, and we would never want to leave anyone out. Caroline also takes some convincing, as anything with the words "board game" in the title is to be avoided at all costs. Nevertheless, our free time must be filled at least some evenings and here we are.

"I am reading the rules, I am the only calm one."
"What's this machine thing? Should I take it apart? It doesn't work!"
"Do NOT take it apart! Does it have a battery?"
"I don't know! How would I know?"
"Open the battery case."
"Yay! I DO get to take it apart!"
"What is this for? What do we do with these?"
"You people are too noisy, I am going outside to read the rules. DON'T TOUCH ANYTHING!!"

"I will be in charge of the hint cards."
"We need a hint, when do we get another hint?"
"Not for five more minutes, keep trying."
"Here's the next hint . . . oh, you already figured that out!"
"What? Give us another hint, then!"
"Nope! Five more minutes."
"Do we get a hint?"
"I read it to you five minutes ago. No one was listening."

"It can't be a Z U, there isn't one of those!"
"Look, a Z U!"
"Oh."

"3-5 11-6 7-5 14-8, 12 is next, how do we know the pair? Let's see, let me think."
"Six"
"What? How do you know?"
"I know"
"All you did was look at the list!"
"Yup. It's six."

"You gave us the wrong key!!"
"I did not!! You said the dot on the side!"
"Yeah, the other side!"
"It's symetrical!"
"You're looking at it upside down, you dork!"
"I'm not a dork!"
"Not you, she's a dork!"
"HEY!!"

"It's a parallelogram."
"What are you talking about, there's no parallelogram!"
"The next hint says, the picture is a parallelogram."
"I TOLD YOU!!"
"Yeah, we know, it's a parallelogram."
"What do you mean WE? I'm the only one who saw the parallelogram!"

"The last one is a two."
"Are you sure? Where do you see a two?"
"How do you not see a two?"

"We only have a minute left, put in the keys!!"
"If we're wrong, we'll get penalized! We'll run out of time! We'll lose!"
"If we're wrong, we lose anyway! PUT IN THE KEYS!!"
"Don't screw it up!!"

Whistles and Bells!! We win, with a minute to spare!

"What happens if we lose?"
"We're trapped in here forever, duh."
"We're trapped in here forever anyway!!"
"Good point."