November Meeting: Mysteries/Thrillers and an Escape Room Challenge

We had a full house for our second Bookshop meeting of the year, although we did have a few latecomers. Please do your best to come on time so we can stay on track for our book discussion and activities. Since we had several participants miss the first meeting, we did brief introductions again and chatted about some good things that had happened since our September meeting (two Bookshoppers had birthdays!).

Then we went around and shared the mystery/thriller/adventure books we had read for the meeting. The books shared were: a book with a forgotten title about a creepy mansion where dolls came to life; D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths by Ingri d'Aulaire and Edgar Parin d'Aulaire; The Bible; Fuzzy Mud by Louis Sachar; The Adventurer's Guide to Treasure (and How to Steal It) by Wade Albert White; The Witch Boy by Molly Knox Ostertag; Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes; some Spider-Man graphic novels; and Small Spaces by Katherine Arden.

After quick booktalks, we jumped right into a library-themed Escape Room Challenge designed by yours truly. The "room":

The challenge: The Bookshoppers had been so engrossed in their books that they missed the library closing announcements and got locked inside the library after-hours. They didn't want to set off any alarms and get in trouble, but then they remembered that one of the librarians had mentioned a door in the staff break room (shown above) that would let you leave without setting off an alarm. Unfortunately, there were three codes that had to be entered in the decoder first (re-purposed from Escape Room the Game and shown below) before the door would unlock from the inside.

Because the codes were hard to remember, staff had hidden clues around the break room to give hints about the three codes. All the group had to do was go to the staff room, find the clues, and enter the codes. They had 60 minutes before the motion sensors would come on, and the alarms would start going off when they moved.

Clues involved a puzzle, a word jumble, and decoding a bookmark. The group jumped into action and unearthed the hidden keys for the decoder and most of the puzzle pieces within minutes.

The actual puzzles stumped them for a bit, but with a few subtle hints, they were able to "escape" in 31 minutes and 34 seconds!

I was very impressed with their problem-solving skills and the way they divided and conquered the different puzzles. Some Bookshoppers expressed interest in further Escape Room activities, and there are some fun, free, online ones available here.

Our next meeting will be on Monday, December 2nd. Our book genre this month is funny books with some suggestions pictured below: