From Ostomachion to Escape Game: A History of the Puzzle

The Ostomachion Puzzle (Illustration: Rosario Van Tulpe (CC))

Escape games may be a pretty new phenomenon (the first one opened in 2007 in Japan), but coming up with puzzles to solve purely for the fun of it is an ancient human pastime. While it’s hard to know for certain what the very first puzzles were, there are some really old ones entered into the history books.

The world’s first mechanical game

This game from 2550–2250 BCE looks oddly familiar. Many a Christmas cracker and kid’s birthday goody-bag comes stuffed with one of these puzzles, which requires you to lead the ball from one end of the labyrinth to the other. This clay one looks just as hard as the plastic versions we have today.

The world’s first riddle

One of humankind’s oldest riddles unsurprisingly comes from Classical literature. In Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex from 429 BCE, when Oedipus encounters the wily Sphinx, it asks him this riddle: "What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?"

Oedipus answers correctly: “Man,” and is spared becoming the Sphinx’s dinner by his own quick thinking.

The world’s first puzzle

The famous mathematician Archimedes is behind this most ancient of puzzles: the Ostomachion Puzzle. Invented in 287–212 BCE, this puzzle has 14 geometric pieces that the player is required to arrange correctly in order to fit into a perfect square.

The world’s first crossword

The crossword is the new kid on the block, for sure. It was invented in 1913 by a journalist named Arthur Wayne, which makes it just over a century old. Crosswords are so commonplace now, it’s hard to imagine they were once an innovative pastime, just like escape rooms!

Take on a variety of puzzles and riddles when you play one of Krakit Vancouver Escape Games four themed escape rooms. Book now.

History’s Great Escapes: Napoleon's Escape from Elba

Napoleon greeted by the 5th Regiment at Grenoble after his escape from Elba (Charles de Steuben)

On February 26, it will be exactly 201 years since Napoleon Bonaparte made his great escape from the island of Elba. Being one of the most famous exiles of all time has really got to put a damper on your chances of making a prison break, which is why we at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game consider this one of the greatest escapes of all time.

It’s true that a lot of negative qualities are associated with Napoleon—being overly aggressive as a way to compensate for a lack of height being just one of them—but no one can argue that he wasn’t also a great strategic mastermind. This is precisely what led him to seize power as the new leader of France following the Revolution.

Unfortunately for him, people eventually tired of his antics, which mainly included invading other European countries. After ten years, his enemies finally got the better of him and ousted him from his position as Emperor of France, exiling him to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean Sea.

Napoleon lived on Elba for the better part of a year, at which point he caught wind that his rivals planned to move him to an even more remote location—an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. So, on February 26, 1815, Napoleon made his escape.

Taking advantage of in-fighting among the European powers who had placed him on Elba in the first place, Napoleon managed to slip past his guards who were otherwise preoccupied. He and his 1,000-man army—which he had amassed on Elba using his undiminished powers of charisma—boldly marched aboard a French ship and sailed to Provence. A regiment was sent to overtake Napoleon and his army, but instead, these men simply joined his ranks.

Two days later, Napoleon returned to Paris—and to his former title of Emperor. This wasn’t fated to last very long, however, with Napoleon’s power lasting just two days before he was exiled again. This time, to a new island a thousand miles off the west coast of Africa, where he would be unable to duplicate his Elba escape. He died on St. Helena five years later.

Pull a Napoleon and make your own escape when you book one of our four Vancouver escape rooms here: http://bookeo.com/krakit

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.

A Short History of Escape Games

The history of escape games may be brief in the grand scheme (as compared to, say, tennis), but this entertainment favourite has been moving and shaking at an impressive speed, growing fast in a little time.

Escape room legend has it that the first of these rooms opened in 2007 in Japan: the Real Escape Game. It’s not surprising that escape games have their start in Japan—a country known for some seriously innovative thinking—but escape room history actually goes even further back than that, to PC gaming.

We all remember being completely defeated by Myst back in the ’90s, right? Logic puzzle games like this are where we find the origins of the first “real” escape game. Because what’s better than pretending you’re in a mysterious room with your own brain as the only key to escape? Actually being in one, of course. As generations grow up with gaming consoles and the Internet, spending great chunks of their lives in virtual worlds, there has come a great hankering for something more tangible, something more real.

Back to 2007: Takao Kato attempts to satisfy this hankering, and translates PC room escapes into the Real Escape Game. Fast forward five years to 2012, and the first escape room opens in the US. Meanwhile, more than 100 others have popped up across Asia.

Escape rooms have now spread to every continent (except Antarctica probably—although it’s really just one giant escape room, isn’t it ...). The first Canadian escape games, including the first Vancouver escape rooms, opened in late 2013 and early 2014, with Krakit bringing some dedicated horror fun to the Coquitlam escape game situation in September 2014.

The trend toward bringing some hands-on reality to entertainment isn’t just visible in the rise of escape rooms. Immersive entertainment has also infiltrated cinema (like London’s Secret Cinema) and can be seen in the steadily increasing popularity of city-sized ziplines and slip-and-slides.

What does this tell us? That the history of escape games is only just beginning. Because you can’t beat the real—no matter how fancy your 3D animation may be.