My son’s 11th birthday was a no school day this year! I knew I wanted to come up with something fun that would take him a lot of the day– but also wouldn’t take me forever to put together. One of his favorite books is 11 Birthdays by Wendy Mass — a story about a girl stuck in a Groundhog Day-style time loop on her 11th birthday.
I felt a little overwhelmed trying to come up with an escape room that had a number of puzzles that led to the next. To help my brain wrap around everything I started with two key elements and worked backwards. First this poster:
Inside were the locations where they would put the answers to four puzzles. The answer to those puzzles gave them the location of the keys to open a large tote that I had strapped closed (and where I had hidden all his presents).
Then all I had to do was give them a trail of clues that led to each of those four word hints, and scatter them around the room. I tried to make each of those clue trails made up of 2-3 different puzzles. Having a lot of different puzzles was key to keep everyone occupied. I also read that it helps to have some things that require thinking & looking, while others just get need someone to down to business like a crossword– this gives different problems for different kinds of brains (we have a lot of those in our house).
The first trail they tackled started with the 11 balloons on the wall. After trying to figure out if there was some kind of pattern or color message, they eventually realized there were papers inside and they popped them (that was fun). I had written the letters P O C K E T and the number 4 ( Pocket was word #4) on little pieces of paper in descending size to help figure out the order. I guessed right that this might need an extra clue, so I also had a crossword on the table that I made with a free online crossword generator. Across the top was the question, “what’s left?” The leftover letters were directions to a hint, “Under giraffe statue”. Under which had a graphic with a number 4 and letters lined up in ascending size. I thought they would 100% have it figured out at that point, but it took them solving a few other clues to realize that the number 4 on both clues meant that these two clues went together. They did however realize that it went to the 4 on the giant card and taped the card up there.
Next, there were cupcakes on the table (this picture the is of them pre-frosted the night before). A sign next to them said, “Aren’t cupcakes better with friends?” On the bottom of the wrappers I wrote the letters of the name of his friend who lives next door. The kids all ran next door, and I had already talked to this friend and his parents and gave him a clue to bring when they came. His clue was a zipper with the number 3 written on it (that was word #3–zipper).
They had two clues (at least mostly) down at this point:
Now for the third trail! We luckily had on hand these red secret message glasses and some extra secret code paper from a spy kit. I hid both in the room (which, by the way, they took apart entirely looking for clues). The message said “Go get _____” and listed another neighbor friend. Everyone ran over to his house where he was waiting with another clue.
His clue was a card with a number 1, and 5 star sticker in a pattern. These stars corresponded with another clue that they had seen on the wall but didn’t know what to do with– A calendar with stars on random dates. Each of the numbers corresponded to a letter of the alphabet, and the stars on the card was a hint at what order they should go in. Now, here’s the crazy part. Unbeknownst to me, there happened to be a duck under the couch with those exact star colors (how?! I chose the sticker colors randomly!) which the kids found and were sure had to do with this clue. I eventually did have to give them a hint to get them on track that the numbers were letters and had nothing to do with a duck. The letters spelled the word U N D E R (word #1 -Under)
Last trail! I made this one the hardest since I thought the word might negate the need for other clues. I left some binoculars on a windowsill (to make them look outside), and across the yard on the fence I taped up a code. I included a cypher on this one, because It was kind of tough. I knew that one of my other kids would know what it meant because he just finished working his way through the 39 Clues Books, and this is a cypher that they use in the story. He was busy elsewhere and it took awhile for him to wander over and see the clue and get it written out. The message said “The book that doesn’t fit.”
This sent them to a small bookshelf I have in the room, that only holds some of our favorite series. Hidden among the Chronicles of Narnia was the book 11 Birthdays (which they knew immediately was important because it was my son’s 11th birthday!) This clue met up here with another tiny trail. I had a notebook on the table, that I had written on the top page with a pen, and then tore that off so just the imprint was left– hard to see, but not too hard. That told them where to look to find a cardstock that I had cut to the size of the book page, and cut out with a xacto knife the exact spot where word #2 was on page 213. I wrote the page number the bottom corner. The word shown through the window was couch (Word #2–couch). The two dots on top were a hint that this word is clue #2.
With all of those four words together the message was: Under couch zipper pocket. On the bottom of our couch is a zipper pocket where the legs came during shipping. Inside the pocket, I had hidden keys to open up the present tote. BOOM. Done.
Now- I want to mention some decoys I threw in (aside from the unintentional duck) just to throw them off a little and make solving the puzzle take longer:
-The words “Happy Birthday” on the front of the card were filled in with different patterns. I tried to make them look like that might be important. A couple had stars. I even recreated with markers the spy-paper look, which did fool them. They spent awhile studying it with the red glasses (I had written “Hi!” underneath for them to find when they did this).
-I had a coin-purse zipper pouch that I hid under the couch so that if they got a 3 or the 4 words they might think it was referring to that.
-I hid a couple keys that did nothing in random places around the room to keep the little ones busy finding.
The whole thing took them about an hour. It definitely took me longer to make, but I had a pretty fun time doing it. And it was so much fun one of my other kids has asked me to do one for his birthday, so we’ll see how that goes.
Let me know if you have any questions about any of the puzzles!
Kimberly Horch 