22 Unhinged Things People Have Desperately Tried In Attempt To Get Out Of An Escape Room

From Redditor u/sharrrper:

A friend of mine works for an escape room and he told me one about a puzzle where the key to the next door was shackled to a desk by a combination lock. What you are supposed to do is figure out the combination for the lock from the clues around the room to free the key.

What one group decided to do instead was get a guy on each corner and pick up the 150 pound desk and carry it across the room, slide the key into the lock, and then rotate the entire desk to unlock the door.

From Redditor u/irrelevant_usernam3:

Not an employee, but I went with a group of friends once. It was a room where you started out with your ankle shackled to the wall and just had to get to a door to escape. As soon as the timer starts, this shy, quiet girl in the group takes off her shoe and sock, yanks her foot completely out of place, slides the shackle off, resets it, and walks out the door.

It turned out she had some condition that makes her joints super flexible. But she set the record for the fastest escape time!

From Redditor u/Geeky_Monkey:

I have a friend who solved one in a similar manner.

We were all shackled to a post, so he just removed his artificial leg, slide the shackle off, and said “well guys, this has been fun - meet you in the bar in a hour?” and walked out leaving us all there!
 

From Redditor u/LyricalPig:

I went once on a date and got paired with half a dozen randos. The typical stereotypes of over-active escape room enthusiast came out with people frantically trying to pick up tables, rip off doors, and look for clues that had nothing to do with hints came out.

There was a 4-dial padlock, each number 1-9. We found 3 clues and had 3 numbers correctly set. The team was frantically looking for the 3rd clue to find the missing number. Casually, I say "Umm, the last number has to be 1-9. Can't we just flip the dial until we find the right one?" And it opened on 3

Escape rooms turn otherwise normal people into lunatics.

From Redditor u/PCCoatings:

There was a story on here a while ago about a guy in a group of four who took a broom from the first room because "it had to be for something". He said it looked too out of place to not be needed. Well he was half right. It was out of place but that's because it was the broom used by employees to clean the room. It was simply forgotten when they cleaned last time. The guys giving hints thought it was hilarious that this guy carried a broom through four rooms expecting it to be the key to their escape at some point. I thought that was funny as h*ll

From Redditor u/Snowf1ake222:

Had a group of engineers who were familiar with the style of the lock effectively reverse engineer the lock. They showed us how they did it afterwards.

From Redditor u/radarksu:

Obligatory "I'm an engineer". I did one where the door to the next room was locked with a card reader. The card was in a small wooden box with a padlock on it.

I'm like, "its a proximity card, just hold the box up to the reader". Bingo! At the end the guy running it says "the combination for the padlock is on the back of the blinds". I said "if you don't want people doing it my way then put the card in a metal box."