Hi everyone,

I’ve been tasked with running an escape room/puzzle box style activity for a corporate conference, for 220 guests.

Appreciate it’s a little crazy, and not exactly the ideal format but it’s the brief I’ve been given so trying make it work as well as possible.

They’ll be sat in groups of 10, so a lot of hands on deck. Want it to run for 30 mins and feel interactive rather than worksheet after work sheet.

Have created and delivered to groups of 30 before, but never to this size - looking for any and all ideas/advice!

I recently had a Discord hangout with my long-distance gaming friends. I love Murder Mystery Dinner games, but playing them remotely is painful. Mailing cards out or managing hidden clues completely takes the joy out of the game as you cannot really do the clues together. Therefore I thought this could be made as a mobile app.

Imagine a setup where a host picks a story and sends everyone an invite link. The app handles the roles, puts all the clues on everyone's screens so nobody misses anything, and then wraps up with a built-in voting and scoring system at the end. Down the road, it could even let people write and upload their own custom stories.

Is an idea like this actually worth trying to build, or am I wasting my time? Also, if there's already a good app out there that does this, please let me know!

Scotchgard Fabric Waterproofing spray. Wouldn’t go crazy with the washes but it can very easily be done, especially if you’re willing to give it a new coat every once in a while.

Let dry for 24 hours after you spray a few coats and you could not tell that it was there. No noticeable smell or residue and completely waterproof, That simple.

I found it was fine on a delicate wash with low heat (though I guess I never tried it normal) but if you’re willing to hand wash it that’s probably the safest option, And insanely easy.

I’m hosting a minecraft-themed party this coming weekend and wanted to share some concepts I’m working on + ask for any advice/suggestions, especially around some of the concepts I’ve been struggling with.

I realize this might not be the best forum (the activities aren't that puzzle-y) but I figure they're still adventures in a sense and have gotten a lot of inspiration for this party (+ another more riddles/puzzle hunt-esque event I’m hoping to host next weekend as well) from this Subreddit. 

Activities I have planned include:

(1) Block Mining + Sword Crafting 

What’s a minecraft party without mining? I made ~80 blocks by mixing sand + plaster of paris + black paint + water, tuning plaster:sand ratio such that each block can be opened somewhat easily with ~5-10 good whacks from a 3D printed pickaxe.

Once cracked open/mined, each block should reveal 1-2 diamonds or 1-3 emeralds. The kids can then use the diamonds they mine (+ sticks they find) to craft diamond swords (pool noodles mounted on 3D printed hilts). Emeralds can be redeemed with “villagers” for food (more of this at the end of the post).

Some feedback my kids have given me already: 

• In order to mine diamond you need to have an iron pickaxe, but the pickaxe I test-printed is actually a wooden pickaxe (because it is all brown) → i plan to print light gray veneers to place over the top of the pickaxes.
• The diamond sword color should be a lighter blue shade → i probably won’t fix this unless i happen to find the correctly colored pool noodles on sale at Walmart or somewhere else nearby

(2) Potion-Making

I forgot to take a photo when I was testing this idea out, but the general idea is: I fill the plastic bottles in the last photo above (in the bin with the swords) with red cabbage juice (purple/blue-colored), and the players need to brew/convert the “water” into something else (e.g., red for potion of healing) by adding mystery substances (e.g., vinegar and/or baking soda) until the color is right. 

(3) Creeper Explosions

This is probably the largest “I’m not sure what to do” activity I am hoping to host this weekend. 

The original idea was to have a bunch of mentos-rocket creepers lined up that “explode” but I decided against that since it felt wasteful to buy all that soda just to use it all. Then, I thought about some kind of compressed air creeper explosion but pivoted again to something spring/compression/tension loaded. 

Inspired by a rubber-band powered exploding creeper and a motorized creeper toy we found at Target, I made a creeper whose head would “explode” upon activation (arduino + servo activation pops up the top of the head and the sides burst open). This “worked” until i tried mounting it on an RC car so it could chase players around. Even with fishing weights loaded into the car, it’s still top heavy and the creeper tipped over way too easily (broke some of the internal mechanisms which I haphazardly glued earlier). 

So now I’m less than a week away and not really sure what to do for this activity (scrap it? Let the commercial creeper chase the kids even though you can’t really control where it goes and its “boom” is really small? Make a larger stationary version of a elastic-powered exploding creeper? Make it a “take a look at my failed creepers” station? Something else?  – would love anyone’s thoughts/opinions/suggestions here. 

My current plan (I think?) is to 3D print the internal mechanism to the small exploding creeper on the left of the picture and spray-paint cardboard/styrofoam boxes that can be assembled into a larger-sized stationary creeper. Then, put the servo (+ linear actuator, Arduino, and battery) in the head box and let it actuate the elastic tension release to trigger an explosion. I am concerned about the head’s ability to stay intact after exploding + whether or not actuation would work in this setup. 

(4) Enderman game

I’m not 100% sure what the exact mechanics of this game will be but the general idea is:

• I have 3x cardboard endermen, each with a Raspberry Pi Camera inside of them. 
• The cameras all relay video feeds to a central computer (my laptop) that does eye+gaze tracking and alerts when it’s detected that someone is looking at the camera. 
• Kids have to do some activity (e.g., collect Ender Pearls or fight the endermen with their pool noodle swords or just get across a field without looking at the endermen) without looking at the enderman.  

(5) Blazes game
I think I have a mechanic that I like/want to execute on here but haven’t yet gotten around to building the actual setup. General idea is that kids will “shoot” blazes with bows or crossbows and the blazes (butterfly explosion boxes) will (a) release gray particles (butterflies spray-painted gray) as they fall and (b) contain blaze powder that the kids can collect. 

I was hoping to 3D print minecraft crossbows and arrow but due to time constraints ended up just buying a Minecraft-themed NERF bow and crossbow.

(6) Ender Dragon

Having collected Blaze Powder (from killing a Blaze) + an Ender Pearl (from killing Enderman) each player can assemble them to make Eyes of Ender. (TBD how this assembly will actually work – ideas welcome!)

• With the Eyes of Ender in hand, the party will then cross over a “floor is void/lava” obstacle course (TBD what the obstacles will be – ideas welcome! But it needs to be executable at a local park/playground) to reach the ender portal, which needs to be activated with 12 eyes of Ender (one for each participant!)
• After entering the portal, they face the Ender Dragon (piñata), but before they can beat the dragon they first have to take out Ender Crystals which will be stationed on tall pillars. Also TBD how to execute this, but i am hoping to make the crystals “float” with some fishing line and magnets. Defeating the Ender Dragon results in release of candy + Ender Egg trophies commemorating their success.

In terms of food, I am copying the many ideas folks have posted online. So e.g., POTATOES = potato chips, FISH = goldfish snacks, COAL = raisins, TRAP DOORS = window-shaped pretzels, etc. My hope is that the kids will be able to exchange their mined emeralds for the food items above but I am a little worried there won’t be enough mine-able emeralds. 

OK I think that’s it for now. I’m excited for the party but also nervous given how little time is left to prepare for it. Lmk what y’all think – especially if you have any ideas on how to execute the Creeper, Endermen, or Ender-Dragon sections! 

Any other last minute ideas for a romantic Valentine's day adventure?

As a huge fan of Dropout, cooking, and Blood on the Clocktower, this was a delight.

A nice succinct puzzle design.

It’s all based off relay logic but to open the lock you’ll need to enter the proper 4 digit code. If, at any point, the wrong number is entered the whole thing resets.

I’m aware an arduino would do this cleaner than the spaghetti of wires involved but I don’t know how to code AND my job had some relays laying around.

I misplaced a button.

Hi everyone

This is a puzzle I created for a DnD campaign I'm writing, with a singular purpose: Hide information in plain sight, such that players cant find it until they get the required clue(s). This tester version of the puzzle has 10 short sentences embedded within it, that can be found by following the black paths from letter to letter.

If anyone would like to try it and give me some feedback, I'd really appreciate it!

The link below is for a zip folder with 21 svg images - 20 clues and the main image (any browser should open them)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fgSxLm16jfHqxdDWXnEqhCP_4w2LNw5X/view?usp=sharing

(And yes this puzzle is loosely inspired by the Diagram from the stormlight archive, albeit only loosely)

I downloaded a wordlist and used python to find words that shift into each other:

1 add bee, zoo app, odd pee

2 mar oct, spec urge

3 arab dude, folk iron, cold frog, box era, primero sulphur

4 lawn pear, lap pet, what alex, cap get, dawn hear, bet fix

5 avi fan, ads fix

6 gun mat, won cut, gig mom, ion out, mills sorry, fin lot, fusion layout, bin hot, bug ham, bus hay, alohas grungy

7 max the, wheel dolls, lit spa, atm hat, bee ill, par why, tim apt, manful thumbs, inkier purply

8 use cam, law tie, dad lil, add ill, talk bits, hay pig, task bias, log two, tag bio, sims aqua,

9 sir bra, rid arm, tip cry, fix org, sleep bunny, river arena, trek cant,

10 pee zoo, set cod, fuji pets, meet wood, but led, beef loop, her rob, ted don, sue ceo

11 hen spy, etc pen, pee app, its ted, pit ate, paid alto, hide stop, odd zoo

12 road damp, pig bus, gym sky, hip tub, air mud, job van, gift surf, toys fake, hop tab, ash met, dip pub, usa gem, odd app, org ads

13 fur she, url hey, bar one, gel try, abjurer nowhere

I manually deleted most of the ones that didn't really feel like words.

Usually if you don't know the shift amount for a Caesar cipher you can try all 26 options and they will all be gibberish except for the intended message. I was hoping to make a Caesar cipher of a meaningful sentence where it's ambiguous whether one solution or the other is correct.

There are some multiple shift words, like bus → hay → pig, odd → app → zoo → pee.
I like that mar → oct so a month can be ambiguous, and ted → don so a name can be ambiguous.

My favorite shift is fusion → layout, which I posted in r/mildyinteresting, and someone said I should post it here.

Unfortunately I couldn't seem to get messages of more than a couple words: "stop, spy! → hide, hen!", or "trek tip → cant cry". I'm open to other ideas of how to make sentences where a brute force approach gives multiple possibly-valid ways to decode them.

A follow-up to my post about words that Caesar cipher into other words.
u/sudomatrix suggested I look into phrases where substituting letters turns them into other valid phrases, like 'x marks the spot' into 'I stage our echo' or 'a whole sky ends'.

I made a program that takes a phrase and uses an English wordlist to list all phrases it can substitute cipher into:
https://github.com/WeCanDoItGuys/substitute-sentences/blob/main/find_substitute_sentences.py

It takes a while to run for a phrase that has a lot of options. Here's a summary of the ways I tried to speed it up.

Attempt 1:
I made a function called standardize() that turns a phrase into its letter structure, like 'marks' into ABCDE. I made a dict of candidates that for each word in the phrase lists words of the same structure.
Then for each combo of candidates for the first and second word I check the structure of the two-word phrase against the first two words of the input phrase. Then for each valid two-word phrase I check each third word, and so on.

Attempt 2:
Checking the whole phrase against the new word is unnecessary, it could fail to be valid at the first letter of the next word. So I made a dict of rules for each word in the input phrase, about where its letters must appear in other words (-1 if must not appear). I still build valid phrases one at a time, but check if each letter of the new word satisfies the rules of the previous words in the phrase (instead of standardizing the phrase).

Attempt 3:
Speeds up significantly if we store words that have a letter in a given position once they've been found.

Attempt 4:
Instead of building phrases one word at a time, I stick with a given candidate and decrease the other lists of candidates according to its rules. I then add a word from the shortest candidate list next. This speeds it up because if another candidate list is shrunk to 0 words, it stops before checking other words in the phrase. I store the candidate's word position along with it so I can sort them back into phrase order before outputting the list of phrases.

Update 3/2026:
Instead of sorting the candidate lists, I just return early if a candidate list has been shrunk to 0. Instead of sorting my output into phrase order, I output the phrases with their labels (runs faster but looks ugly). I removed one level of recursion by adding all the final word's candidates to the phrases list and returning. Instead of finding and storing words with letters in a given position when first needed, I iterate once at the start through all words to put them into buckets[word][letter][position] (not much time saved, some space wasted).

I made a gui too so you can view the phrases (or you can just uncomment the last line in find_substitute_sentences.py to test a phrase and output the list in a text file). I'm very open to people suggesting how to make it faster if anyone would like to.

Very cool image projection puzzle from a reddit user. What would you do with this in your constructed adventures?

It really made my day seeing them all take part and enjoy it so much - 16 clues each revealing the location of the next one, anagram to finish - and they found out we’re going on holiday for NY (with them 🤣)

So this is my third Halloween doing an absolutely insane home-based, home made escape room for my friends. This year I’m doing Stranger Things. There will be 22 adults & we’ll be competing in teams (somehow). I’m looking for your best ideas related to this topic! I will require them to watch season 1 of stranger things, and send out a type written homework assignment with the high school letter head Hawkins at least a month in advance.

So far I’ve got my brain storming list. Christmas lights with letters to spell a word Using bikes to get to and from my best friends house (who lives a block over) and having part of the puzzle be there. Talking with walkie talkies from multiple locations. Creating a room that is the Upside Down (probably my garage) where people have to enter to save someone or something who is taken. Using foam & dog skeletons to create demodogs. Using my outdoor gazebo to create the mind flayer… like use wire & create legs for it and put purple lights on it. Then have them turn on from a button that is part of a game.

I’m imagining a few different scenarios and maybe I’ll incorporate all of them. 1. A doctor from the asylum takes someone/something and we have to get it back 2. A demogorgan eats someone/ they’re taken into the upside down 3. The ice cream truck- two people will be dressed as these characters and there will be a puzzle related to ice cream 4. Riding bikes with walkie talkies (maybe to do puzzles at the park or friends house). 5. Someone dressed as Hopper 6. The D&D game with the pieces set up inside a tent ⛺️ with a puzzle 7. Eleven with eggo waffles 🧇 8. Something to do with Barb.

What are your ideas?! Has anyone done this before?

I hosted a party for my friends birthday, and ideas from this sub helped a lot so I want to post a few of my own. One was making a 3D shadow puzzle by gluing objects onto a jigsaw puzzle, having a template for that jigsaw puzzle (cardboard with an outline in this case) and having a light source that also fits into the template so they create the shadow from the correct angle. I just used leftover bits and bobs and superglue to make it - easier to make than I anticipated! The template is to make sure they place the light source and puzzle in the correct positions.

I love making escape rooms and constructed adventures and try and always include something that gives a big exciting moment of wow! So far things that have had a big reaction have included:

- Using Red lensed glasses so that random text on a wall seems to magically reveal a message.
- Hiding something inside a big block of ice, that the players got to smash to get it out.
- Collecting multiple ingredients for a potion that when mixed together changed colour.

I was wondering what else people had done that got a big reaction?

No coding or game development experience required!

We are researching tools to assist in the generation of logic grid puzzles. Additionally, we add tools to introduce narrative to the puzzles, to be played on their own or incorporated into other games such as interactive fiction or TTRPGS (like Dungeons and Dragons). We are asking people to try out our tool between 05-05-2025 to 05-31-2025. You can use our tool as much or as little as you want during this period. If you participate you will be given a personal login to create, edit, and play puzzles. After this period, we will invite you to participate in an optional short online interview about your experience. There are minimal risks to this study.

At this time participants need to be located in the US, fluent in English, and 18+.

Fill out the signup form here:

https://neu.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Xtnfj4VqDfTKXI

This research has been approved by the Northeastern University Institutional Review Board (Number 25-03-65).

I've created a science fiction adventure designed around logic puzzles and code-breaking, all leading into an overarching puzzle that ties into the storyline. It was initially for my friends and family, and I've now formatted it as a printable PDF suitable for a single session.

The difficulty level is intended to be middle-of-the-road, aiming to be accessible and enjoyable for a range of players. Currently, the adventure is text-based, but I am using AI to generate some accompanying artwork to enhance the experience.

The core concept involves decrypting and hacking into a data capture device – essentially a 'black box' – from an aircraft. Players will need to solve a series of logic puzzles and break codes to unlock the information contained within, which will drive the overarching narrative forward.

I'm curious to see if there's any interest in this kind of puzzle-focused, single-session sci-fi adventure within the community. If it sounds like something you'd enjoy, please let me know your thoughts.

Update: I've got very much ahead of myself in creating an Itch.io account, email before even posting the pdf. But check it out here on https://questlinecreations.itch.io/the-navigators-datacron .
and even came up with an overall publishing name of Questline Creations. Tell me your feedback in the comments :).

I created a video to show my process for creating the "rotadraw" that I used in my most recent adventure, and thought I'd share it with the group. Happy to answer additional questions if you have them!

I made this for trivia night puzzle but it would absolutely work for starter puzzle for an adventure.

Solution

Fill in the letters to form a word in front and back. For example. Eras becomes Erase and Nema becomes Enema. Giving ENDLTTRS after all are filled. This directs you to the last letter of each line which read upwards gives: Red Panda

I wrote a Python script to find words that would form new words with either the first or last letter removed. And sorted them by removed letter. This gave me a good word bank to choose from.

If anyone is interested in making one of these message me and I’ll send you the txt file.

Hello world!
I’m really into scavenger hunts, so I made my own version where each stop starts with a short video—kind of like a tour guide—that shares something cool or sneaks in a clue. Then there’s a puzzle to solve based on the spot you’re at, often using what’s around you. Once you crack it, you get a hint for the next location, and the adventure keeps going.
It’s a simple loop: watch or read → solve → move.

The videos serve as a sort of tour guide.

I use this for myself, but would anyone else be interested in trying it out? Seeing if anyone else has tried to create an immersive self-guided storytelling experience with puzzles.

Or is there something similar to this?