Escape Game History: The Uncrackable Code of the Phaistos Disc

Both sides of the Phaistos Disc

The current obsession with codes and puzzles that every escape game fan enjoys has a very long history. Pretty much as long as humans have been able to communicate through language, we’ve had the burning desire to encrypt that communication. What can we say, we’re a complicated species.

One ancient example of our fondness for code-making—one that still has cryptologists scratching their heads—is the Phaistos Disc.

Found on the Mediterranean island of Crete in 1908, the Phaistos Disc is a 15 cm disc of fired clay with a spiral of symbols adorning each side. The 241 symbols are made up of only 45 signs, which can only mean one thing—the images aren’t just decoration, they’re trying to tell us something.

The archaeologist who found the disc, Luigi Pernier, continued excavations at the Phaistos palace site for years afterward, but no other example of the symbols was ever found. This makes not only the message the Phaistos Disc contains a mystery, but also its very origins—no one knows where in the world it came from (literally).

Since the Phaistos Disc was found in Crete, and is from very very long ago—the second millennium BC, to be exact—some people have gone so far as to connect the mysterious artifact to the legendary Maze of Daedelus—otherwise known as the home of the Minotaur.

While this seems highly unlikely, it’s as good a guess as any, as many archaeologists and crytography experts think there’s little chance of the message of the Phaistos Disc ever being solved, without any other examples of this symbol set to help decipher it. Some of the symbols resemble those from another writing system from the same geographical area, called Linear A. However, Linear A also hasn’t been solved, so no luck there.

It seems that the Phaistos Disc is a mystery we’re just going to have to learn to live with.

At Krakit Vancouver Escape Game, you have a much better chance of solving our codes. You can try out your hand at cryptography by booking a go in one of our four themed escape rooms.