Sydney gets a bewilderment of escape rooms

What do you think that the collective noun for a group of escape rooms ought to be? Perhaps you didn’t think that such a word was necessary? Well, when, like Sydney, you hit a critical mass of rooms you need a word: And I’m voting for a ‘bewliderment’.

Escape rooms are the latest craze. You get locked in a room and have an hour or so to work your way through the clues and escape. They’re intrinsically geeky being a combination of puzzle-solving and a computer game brought to life and the ones we’ve played have been great fun.

Sydney’s first room was Escape Hunt Sydney, and then in the last few weeks The Mystery Puzzle was announced.

Now in quick succession there are two more coming. Strike, of the bowling and laser-tag fame, has announced escapism to open at the King St Wharf. It’s pitched as: “One room. One team.50 minutes. A bit of thinking and a lot of fun.” As far as I can see there’s actually three different puzzle rooms available.

Finally, for the moment at least, there’s the Enigma Room which has announced plans to open in December at 262 Pitt St. The trick with all of these rooms about is differentiation and the Enigma Room does appear to be aiming to use a bit more science and technology than the others have so far.

So that’s four sets of escape rooms, and counting: Which I’m going to label a bewilderment of escape room options at least until they’ve all been tested and reviewed and we can see a way to differentiate them.