Have you ever got a group of people together to go to an escape room for a night of fun? Sometimes you might have the best group and work well together and other times you may bump heads and end up not having as much “fun” as you thought (depending on your competitiveness). Entering an escape room is very intimidating, you know nothing other than your brain is about to be put to the test. A fear of the unknown and the pressures of the clock ticking, or the opposing team, have adrenaline racing through your body. When you are under pressure it is much more difficult to focus your attention to certain details because we are focused on our anxiety. Mental sets and cognitive biases are sure to appear when you are with a group of different problem-solvers trying to solve the same problems. Mental sets are different in everyone and can surely make problem solving more difficult. Although having the right strategies could end in a victory for the team.

Escape rooms are made up of many well-defined problems with only one correct answer and are quite literally the problem space. Problem space refers to the information processing approach and is defined as, every possible state of affairs within a problem (Goldstein, 2017). Newell and Simon (1972) developed a schematic diagram of problem space with different nodes representing different state of affairs and there is one node that is the initial state and one that is the goal state (Goldstein, 2017). The point is many pathways can be taken and some steps can be skipped in order to get to the goal state more quickly. Using the problem solving strategy of Mean-Ends Analysis might not work in most escape rooms because there is usually one specific pathway to the goal and you must figure out all of the sub-goals first before you can reach the final destination. Mean-Ends Analysis is a way to reduce the steps it takes to get from your initial state to the goal state (Goldstein, 20017). There are several different puzzles that can lead to other larger puzzles and only one way to solve them. The Generate and Test method works well if you keep it simple. If there was a lock that had a three-number combination and you have six different papers that you have accumulated with numbers on them in sets of three, then it might be a good idea to test all of those numbers to see if they generate a solution, or unlock the lock. For many problems we start at the Generate and Test method and if it does not work we move on to trying a different method to solve the problem (Goldstein, 2017). So what if one person tries all of the six different combinations from the six papers and none of them work?

Our mental set is a framework or strategy we consistently use to approach a problem because it has proved successful for solving a similar problem (Goldstein, 2017). So if the person trying to figure out the combination to the lock has the mental set that one of those combinations must work since they are in groups of 3 already, they may be caught in the barrier of functional fixedness.  Functional fixedness refers to the fact that we can be hindered in our problem solving by restricting the use of an object to its normal use and not realizing the object could be used for other purposes (Goldstein, 2017). An extremely important tactic to use in escape rooms is group brainstorming and verbal protocols because every single person has different mental sets and different ways of looking at certain problems, so it is good to get your ideas out and bounce them off each other. Another group member may come over and look at the combination lock and notice that out of all six combinations the numbers are all different colors on each paper. Then they take notice to the fact that there are only 3 numbers in yellow out of the six pages and four or more numbers in different colors. They might suggest trying the three numbers in yellow in every order they can create and then suddenly the person has an “aha” moment and the lock opens.

Now let’s say those six pieces of paper all had the same color font of numbers and the person trying to solve the problem has to figure out another way to solve what the 3 number combination is. Another helpful strategy may be to work backwards. For instance, when the group first entered the room, before going through a secret doorway, there was a piece of paper that said “become the Master”. When doing an escape room you must assume everything is clue, but more times than not one can get caught up in adding assumptions that may not have anything to do with any of the puzzles. In this case, this piece of paper got left behind, so the person re-traced their steps, found it, and thought how it could be used for the lock combination. Analogical problem solving is using the solution to a similar problem to guide the solution to a new problem (Goldstein, 2017). While the person stares at the paper they are trying to construct an analogical transfer, the transfer from one problem to another (Goldstein, 2017). The lock combination is the target problem and the piece of paper that says, “become the Master”, is the source problem. The source problem is the second problem that shares similarities with the target problem and illustrates a way to solve the target problem (Goldstein, 2017). This person must really think outside the box, they now notice that “Master” is the only word capitalized and make the connection of the Master Lock. They must use analogical encoding to figure out the passage, so they count each letter in each word, since there are only three words, and find 6 letters in the first word, 3 in the second, and 6 in the last word, 636 is the combination and they escape the room before the time is up.

Having an open mind to all problems and thinking outside the box is critical in escape rooms because there are so many different puzzles that are tough and require several steps to uncover. Learning how to use certain problem-solving strategies can benefit individuals not only in escape game rooms, but in real life too. The key is to keep it simple, throw around ideas, and look at the broader picture. It is very easy to get stuck in a problem when staring at it for a long time, like looking for a puzzle piece that you have in your hand. Linus Pauling, Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry was once asked how he got ideas and he replied, “If you want to have good ideas you must have many ideas. Most of them will be wrong, and what you have to learn is which ones to throw away” (Crick, 1995)(Goldstein, 2017).