Demo · escape room engine
Closing Time
A two-puzzle taster, written for this website. It is not one of the rooms for sale and shares no puzzle, no answer and no story with them. A real commission runs six to eight puzzles and takes an evening.
Before you begin
It is ten past nine on a wet Tuesday. You stayed late to finish a job and the front door of the print shop has locked itself, as it does at nine, and the keypad wants today's code. Ivy who owns the place is in Portugal. The code is in the room somewhere, because Ivy does not trust phones.
Hints cost you a minute each. Running out of time does not lock you out — it just ends the run and lets you keep going for the answer.
The back room
The Delivery Log
The keypad by the front door has a four-line note taped above it in Ivy's handwriting, and the note is not the code. It never is.
On the counter, under a mug ring, is the delivery log for today. Everything that came through the door, when it came, and what it weighed.
Delivery log — Tuesday
| Arrived | What | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| 09:15 | Kraft card, 8 boxes | 122 kg |
| 11:40 | Ink cartridges | 34 kg |
| 17:05 | Envelope boxes | 61 kg |
| 17:45 | Foil sheets | 18 kg |
| 18:20 | Gloss paper, 4 reams | 96 kg |
| 20:10 | Vinyl roll | 43 kg |
Taped above the keypad, in Ivy's hand: “Code is what came in after the counter shut. Counter shuts at half five. Weight, not boxes. Numbers only.”
What is the door code?
The stock room
Locked. The door code opens it, and the code is in the back room.
The stock room
The Proof Sheet
The stock room smells of hot toner. The back door is here, and it is unlocked — but the alarm panel beside it wants a word, and a wrong word brings a security firm out of Bristol at your expense.
Pinned to the corkboard is this afternoon's job: a sign for a village hall, five proofs, all rejected. The job ticket says the sign should read PLEASE MIND THE STEP. Ivy has written under the pin: “alarm word is in the mistakes.”
Proof sheet — 5 rejected copies
- 1PLEASE MIND THE STEL
- 2PLEASE MAND THE STEP
- 3PLEAST MIND THE STEP
- 4PLEASE MIND THC STEP
- 5PHEASE MIND THE STEP
Each proof has exactly one letter wrong. No proof has two.
Read the wrong letters, top to bottom. What is the alarm word?
What this taster is showing you
- Answers are checked, not stored. Open View Source on this page. The accepted answers are not in it — only salted hashes. Nobody gets spoiled by clicking around, which is the one thing a printed escape room can never promise.
- Wrong answers say something useful. Two specific mistakes in each puzzle get their own response, because "no" on its own kills a table's morale.
- Typing never costs you the game. Capitals, spaces, punctuation, units and a stray leading "the" are all normalized away before anything is compared.
- Hints cost time, not pride. Three graded hints per puzzle. Take all three and you will be given the answer, at a price.
- It is one file. Disconnect the network and reload — this page keeps working, because nothing on it was ever coming from anywhere else.
A commissioned room adds your names, your venue, your in-jokes, six to eight puzzles, a printable pack and a facilitator screen. How that works.