Racing against the clock

I’ve spent a couple of weekends locked in a room with my husband, son and daughter-in-law, where we successfully robbed a bank but, sadly, failed to save a kidnapped member of our team. Well, we tried. We were participating in a popular craze called an escape room. The craze started overseas, but the businesses are becoming an obsession in the United States. There are even escape-room apps.

First of all, you aren’t really “locked” in the room; if you need out, you can just open the door. It’s not scary — nobody jumps out at you. Players get a scenario, and the clock starts ticking. Your team has an hour to solve a mystery — and an hour has never gone by so fast in your life.

All the escape rooms run a little differently. Our escape room owner, Chad, is pretty laid-back. He introduced the storyline — an anonymous crime lord had hired us to break into a bank — and he told us what we could and could not open or move (apparently, some police officers got a little overzealous one time).

He didn’t care that I used my reporter’s notebook to write down numbers we needed to remember. (I think I would have been much better at this game 30 years ago.)

The rooms are decorated and full of clues — many of which are just red herrings.

My husband said, “It’s like a big puzzle.” He’s good at them; I never have been.

The first time we went, my daughter-in-law had been with a group from work, so she knew some of the tricks. However, her work group didn’t get finished in time, and there were parts she didn’t know. We figured out a lot on our own, but she guided us here and there when we got stuck. We broke into the bank vault and stole the gold in 49 minutes, and we couldn’t have done it without her.

If it were left up to me, I’d still be stuck in that room.

We were able to ask Chad for up to three hints, via a baby monitor. I was ready to ask about 10 minutes in, but the rest of my gang resisted.

Give me a deadline for a story, and I can fly. I love the adrenaline rush. In these rooms under pressure to find keys to open locks, or figure out a code, my brain shuts down. If only the solution required a spelling or grammar test, I’d crack that baby.

We went to a second room another day, and it was supposedly easier. It followed the first story — one of our team members had decided to keep the money and had been abducted. We got hung up on a few things. We didn’t find a key we needed to unlock an important cabinet, for one.

We managed to unlock the room where our team member had been held hostage (the unseen team member, not a real person), but the clock was ticking down.

I was about to hyperventilate. My daughter-in-law was giving my son the “ignore-theold-people” look when my husband and I were calling out suggestions toward the end. That made me laugh.

Time ran out, and we were disappointed, but we had fun.

Chad tried to make us feel better — he said a lot of smart people who play tend to overthink things. Yeah, that’s it.

That night when we were going to sleep, my husband and I replayed the whole scenario, talking about things we

should have done differently.

A third room is opening in a couple of months — it has a serial-killer scenario.

That sounds right up my alley. Start the clock.