How to host an escape room at home

In short. An escape room at home works if it has a story with an ending, eight to twelve puzzles tied to that story, clues hidden at hand height in places every home has, one person acting as the Keeper and hints in three steps. With a ready-made kit it takes about twenty minutes to set up with the lights on, printing aside, and it lasts 45 to 90 minutes.

What an escape room at home is

In a real escape room you go into a locked room and get out by solving puzzles. At home nobody locks you in. You do the opposite: the house becomes the game board. The doors, the bathroom mirror, the fridge, the sofa cushion hold the answers.

The advantage is huge. The players already know every room, so they can move around, touch, count. A puzzle that says «count the chairs around the table» has an answer, in your home, that exists only there. It's a feeling a boxed game rarely gives you.

What you need

• A black-and-white printer and ordinary 80 gsm paper.
• Scissors, sticky tape, a few envelopes (folded sheets taped shut work too).
• A torch per team. Phones are perfectly fine.
• Household objects: a shoebox, odd socks, a book, an alarm clock. Nothing to buy.
• One person to act as the Keeper.
• About twenty minutes of preparation (not counting printing), and 45 to 90 minutes of play.

If you want to skip the writing, our four free kits are ready to print. If you want to invent your own, the DIY kit has all the blank templates.

Story first, then puzzles

The most common mistake is lining up riddles picked up here and there. They get solved, but nothing stays with you. Within the first minute the players must know what they're looking for and why: the candles missing from the cake, the door someone will knock on tonight, the love note that never arrived in 1962.

Write the story in three lines before you write a single puzzle:

1. What happened. A specific event, with a time and a place.
2. Who did it, or what's missing. The final answer.
3. What gets chosen at the end. An ending where the players decide something: hand over the culprit or let them go, open the door or not.

Then give a voice to whoever writes the notes. A vain magpie who speaks in rhyme, a tired doorkeeper who writes short sentences. Characters make the evening memorable more than the puzzles do.

The structure that works

It's the same as in good detective stories, squeezed into an hour:

• The hook (minute 1): a letter read aloud, an audio clip, a piece of evidence on the table.
• The first win (by minute 5): an easy puzzle that leads to a real place in the house. The game «leaves the page».
• Parallel trails (halfway): two or three threads, one per team or one after the other. Each leads to a word.
• The red herring: everyone suspects the wrong person. One of the trails clears them.
• The twist: a clue changes the meaning of what you thought you knew.
• The meta-puzzle: the words from the trails, put together, give the final answer. For example, the initials of five answers spell a word.
• The choice: the last envelope.

With large groups, parallel trails are essential: nobody is left watching.

Puzzles that work at home

Simple ciphers

Numbers instead of letters (1 is A, 2 is B), the alphabet backwards, the cipher wheel. They're perfect as a first win. Always give the key: nobody should have to search online.

House puzzles

The ones that ask for a real action: counting the kitchen drawers, reading a message in the mirror, using a torch to find the writing behind a picture. They're the ones people remember most.

Observation

Two drawings with five differences, a photo to compare with the room, an object out of place. They suit every age.

Logic

Who's lying and who's telling the truth, times to cross-check, a grid of suspects. Suitable from age 12, in small doses.

Communication

One person reads a sheet the others can't see and describes it; the others draw. Back to back works brilliantly for couples.

Light and dark

A message you can only read with a torch shining through it, a sheet to look at in the dark. Only with the house set up beforehand and the hallway clear.

Golden rule: every answer is a single word or a number, and every puzzle states the format («a six-letter word»). Half of all arguments come from ambiguous answers.

Locks without padlocks

Combination padlocks cost money and break. We use three paper ones, always the same.

1. The answer is a place. Almost every answer is a place or an object: WARDROBE, MIRROR, CUSHION. Whoever is right goes there and finds the next sheet. Whoever is wrong finds nothing and works it out alone, without having seen any solution.
2. The Keeper is the lock. Number answers are told to the Keeper, who hands over the next sheet only if the number is right.
3. The check sum. Where the Keeper is playing, the envelope carries a check that doesn't give away the answer: «Open only if your five words have 40 letters in total».

Where to hide the clues

At hand height, in places every home has and that you can reach without moving anything heavy:

• under a sofa or bed cushion;
• behind a mirror or a propped-up frame;
• inside a book, between two particular pages;
• in the pocket of a coat hanging in the hall;
• under the doormat, on the inside;
• in a biscuit tin, inside a sock, under an upturned mug.

Never in the oven, the washing machine, under the sink where the detergents are, near sockets or the hob, or high up on wardrobes. Write down where you put everything: you'll need it at the end of the evening.

A trick from our kits: every sheet to hide has a small service label in the top right corner, for example K1 · 2 · WARDROBE. It stops whoever sets up from getting confused. The players ignore it.

The Keeper and the hints

The Keeper is the organiser. They read the story at the start, hold the solutions, check the number answers and give the hints. With children they don't play: it's the most fun part of the party.

Prepare the hints in advance, for every puzzle, in three steps:

1. Hint 1: shifts the gaze. «Look closely at the numbers: none of them is above twenty-six.»
2. Hint 2: shows the method. «Each number is a letter's position in the alphabet.»
3. Solution: gives the answer and why.

The most important rule, and the one nobody follows: if a group has been stuck for five minutes and nobody is talking, give the first hint without waiting to be asked. Anyone stuck for too long stops having fun, and won't say so.

Time is a score, not a defeat. When it runs out you carry on: the ending still comes.

Timing and difficulty by age

With more than eight children you need two adults. With more than ten players, split into teams with parallel trails and a shared ending.

Safety

Said aloud at the start, before anything else: «Everything you're looking for is in this house, at hand height. No climbing on chairs, no opening the oven or the hob, no leaving the house, nothing gets broken, nothing heavy gets moved.»

• LED candles only.
• Before switching off the lights, clear the hallway floor.
• An adult keeps the scissors and craft knives.
• With children, ask the parents about any allergies if you use food or socks «to sniff».

The most common mistakes

1. Puzzles you can only solve online. Every piece of information needed must be in the house or on the sheet.
2. Ambiguous answers. Capitals, spaces, plurals: always state the format of the answer.
3. A single thread. If only one puzzle is open at a time, with six players one solves it and the others watch.
4. No test run. Have someone who knows nothing try the evening. You'll find the puzzle that doesn't work.
5. A story that's too long. The letters should take a minute to read. The rest is discovered by playing.
6. Shrunken printing. Print at 100% and check a ruler: the shapes to cut out have to line up.

The night-before checklist

• Printing checked at 100% (the 10 cm ruler on page 2, in our kits).
• Envelopes cut out and prepared; they get hidden tomorrow.
• The one «physical» piece tested: the mirror test in the dark, the sealed box, the socks.
• Solutions on your phone, not printed out and lying around.
• Phone charged: there's a photo to take at the end.

FAQ