By Julie Barnes, Western Carolina University; Shih-Wei Chao, University of North Georgia; Rachel Epstein, Georgia College; Kerri Jamerson, Mars Hill University; Wei-Kei Lai, University of South Carolina at Salkehatchie; Allie Ray, Birmingham-Southern College; Laura Steil, Mars Hill University

How can we do fun, interactive activities with students when we can’t meet in person?

For over 15 years, we have hosted a non-competitive problem solving event for students attending our section meeting. There, participants worked collaboratively in teams, solved roughly six interactive puzzles, collected clues, and eventually figured out how to get to a treasure. Since our section meeting was online this year, we decided to transform our old event to a virtual escape room. Thankfully, we were able to do this with a few simple changes to how we planned our old in-person event. With our basic framework, you can create your own escape room for a section meeting, individual math club, or class.

For those unfamiliar with escape rooms, they are often used as team-building events or just for fun with family and friends. They involve visiting a room that you are “locked” inside and need to find clues and solve puzzles to unlock the exit. Physical escape rooms are inspired by video game escape rooms, where you typically work alone to find a way out of a virtual room. The type of virtual escape room we created mixes the two: you work in teams, but it is all done virtually. One main difference between our escape rooms and the traditional ones is that we don’t use any hidden objects, focusing instead on mathematical puzzles that tell a story.

Starting with a Theme

We begin by choosing a theme to frame all of our puzzles. For a normal section meeting, the theme revolves around interesting features at the host university. For the online event in March, we decided to use a travel theme because most of us have missed traveling during the pandemic. This is a bit different from an actual escape room where you can’t leave the room, but the overall framework is the same. There are puzzles to solve, files to unlock, and a goal of unlocking something in the end. We are also currently working on an escape room for MathFest with a theme of trying to attend a virtual fictitious conference (MathPuzzleCon), and participants run into a collection of technological problems they need to escape.

Creating Puzzles

One advantage to working as a team to set the puzzle is the diversity of our backgrounds and perspectives. This helps us create different types of puzzles, although it is certainly possible for one person to do this. Some of our strategies include modifying known puzzles like Sudoku, creating puzzles inspired by strategy games like Azul or Hanabi, asking questions that could be found in freshman or sophomore level courses, and modifying standard math challenges. In all of these, we then fit the puzzle to the theme. For example, in the travel-themed event, participants “visited” the Alhambra and did a variation on an odd-even Sudoku using the different patterns found at the Alhambra classified by their symmetries. Another challenge started with a problem where you need to find the number of kings that can be placed on a grid without any of them being captured. Then we attached that puzzle to the location of Giza because kings are buried in pyramids there. To fit the pyramid theme, we changed the grid in the puzzle to a small pyramid shape instead of a rectangular grid. We aim for variety in the types of puzzles and problem-solving techniques. We also think about whether a problem is fun, and eliminate ones that seem too tedious. As we write each puzzle, we also make sure that the answer could work as a password on a password-protected pdf file.

Setting up the Final Clue

Once we know how many different puzzles or activities are involved, we create a way to get to a final prize. For the travel-themed version, completing each puzzle gave the participant a clue of 3-4 letters chosen from OME, RESN, THE, KEH, CELI, and OPLA. Once they had the letters, they needed to rearrange them to spell out the final password, THERESNOPLACELIKEHOME. This was then the key to opening a virtual suitcase that had a final electronic prize in it. There are many ways to provide partial clues that could be combined to get a final code. Some ideas have come from types of clues we have seen in actual escape rooms or from various boxed escape room games. The bottom line is that you need as many clues as there are puzzles, and these clues can be combined together to open that door and escape, open the suitcase for a prize, or do whatever you want participants to do at the end of the event.

Converting to an Escape Room Format

Turning all of this planning into a virtual escape room does not have to be complicated. We start by matching each of the final clues to one of the puzzles. For example, in the travel-themed version, the clue “KEH” was attached to solving the puzzle at Giza. We then saved the clue “KEH” as a pdf in a location where you can share password protected files, like OneDrive. Then we used the solution to the Giza puzzle, which is numerical, as the password to the KEH file. We continued this process for each puzzle and its corresponding clue, embedding a link to the clue alongside the puzzle so that participants can click, enter the password solution to the puzzle, and obtain the clue. We write all these files in Word, save them as individual pdf files, and add them to the One Drive. After that, we make a single document in Word with links to all of the puzzles. In the case of the travel theme, we added another layer of passwords based on the latitude and longitude of each location to get to the puzzle. This is optional. The main document also has an opening paragraph explaining the scenario and what needs to be done to escape the room, or open the suitcase, etc. We save that file as a pdf in the One Drive as well. This final main document is the only thing that we give participants at the event. This avoids the need to use fancy technology.

Testing

Once all the files are in place and linked, we test for clarity, correctness, and timing. We also check if the links work and if the puzzles are clear, doable, and fun. We do a lot of testing ourselves, but we also recruit people from our target audience. For a student event, we have students with roughly the same background as our expected participants test it. If it is a faculty event, we ask some of our coworkers to test it out.

Other Logistics

On the day of the event, participants join Zoom breakout rooms in teams of 3-4, we share a link to the main pdf document, and then we check in with them throughout the event to troubleshoot and give hints. In pre-pandemic days when we did similar events in person, we made a point of mixing up students at the conference so they would meet people from other universities. However, now that many students don’t even know their classmates, we have let those who want to work together be on the same team, and we randomly assigned the rest of them into teams.

Future Use

Once we are back in person, we can see continuing these types of events. For example, if we wanted to do some sort of virtual activity during a regular conference to include more participants, an activity in addition to a regular conference, or even an activity to help our own students get to know each other before the semester starts, something like this virtual event would work well. On the other hand, we could simply have students do puzzles like these in person, and then use physical padlocks instead of password-protected files to obtain clues or open a treasure chest. In addition, we could pull ideas from this activity to create either virtual or in-person class activities. If we are creative, there are many possibilities.

Best of luck creating your own escape room activities!

Julie Barnes is a professor at Western Carolina University in the North Carolina mountains. She enjoys hiking, playing racquetball, and hanging out with her two cats.

Shih-Wei Chao is an associate professor at the University of North Georgia. He enjoys reading detective novels and playing board games in addition to doing math.

Rachel Epstein is an assistant professor at Georgia College in Milledgeville, Georgia. She enjoys playing games, reading science fiction, knitting and crocheting, and loves cats.

Kerri Jamerson is an instructor at Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, North Carolina. She enjoys spending time with friends and family, especially supporting her children in their activities.

Wei-Kai Lai is a professor at the University of South Carolina Salkehatchie campus. Besides singing in a chorus, he also enjoys cooking and listening to classical music.

Allie Ray is an assistant professor at Birmingham-Southern College. Besides creating puzzles, she enjoys traveling, hiking, and swing dancing.

Laura Steil is an associate professor at Mars Hill University in Mars Hill, North Carolina. She enjoys quilting and knitting in addition to spending time with family and friends.