ESCAPE THIS PODCAST Game Master’S Notes

ESCAPE THIS PODCAST Game Master’s Notes

The notes below are a guide for game masters. They contain all required information to run the specified room, including: All room items All puzzles and solutions All correct (and some incorrect) player actions Full room introduction and conclusion Additional notes and tips

Do not read these notes if you intend to play the escape room; there are spoilers everywhere.

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The Engagement

Notes

This is Part 2 in a 10-part connected arc! However, it can be entirely played standalone, just with a couple of omissions from the introduction and conclusion. Thank you so much to Blake Hodges and Haley DalColletto, our Patreon donors whose names have been included in this room! You’re awesome.

Introduction

Times are stressful right now, but in a good way. For all the right reasons. You’re getting married this weekend! You couldn’t be happier, and your fiancé/e, Blake, is just as brimming with excitement as you are. You’ve divided up the pre-wedding checklist and you’re each rushing through your half of the necessary tasks. First item of the day for you: pick up your wedding cake. It’s a cool little bakery you’ve chosen, the Love Bakery. Maybe they could’ve put more effort into the name, but they make the best wedding cakes. They say in all their ads that they have the most high-tech equipment, which gives them an edge. You don’t know what high-tech bakery equipment is – a fancy oven, maybe? Either way, you ordered a cake from here, and now it’s time to pick it up. You’re doing it today to avoid those sneaky day-of delivery charges. Blake is nothing if not thrifty. You enter through the front door; as you do, a little electronic doorbell plays the first few notes of Wagner’s Bridal Chorus. Classic. You hear the sounds of someone pottering about in the back room, so you patiently wait for them to come out, and in the meantime you take in your surroundings. Beside the door you entered through in the south wall, there’s one large window facing outside. A stand of display cakes sits proudly in front of it. In the centre of the room is a table with a vase displaying a large arrangement of edible flowers. Against the left wall are two more tables: one with a tray of cake toppers – like, the little brides and grooms that go on top – and one with a tray labelled ‘sample platter’. In the north wall there’s a doorway leading to the back area, but instead of a normal door, it’s got a beaded curtain. And over against the right wall is a tall cabinet… and inside it, you see your wedding cake. The person finally comes bustling out from the back room, and to your surprise, it’s not the baker you’ve been chatting with through this whole planning process. You didn’t know they had any other employees. “I’m Haley,” the person says, not sounding particularly interested. “I’m new. What’s up?” You explain why you’re here, and she nods, but also frowns. “Right. The cabinet cake. Sure. Um… so, the cabinet’s locked… and I don’t have a clue what the code for the lock is. I mentioned I’m new, right?” But… you need your cake. Now. You’re on a strict deadline, with many other wedding tasks to take care of today. 2

Haley shrugs. “The owner probably left me a note or something. I’ve been finding them everywhere, telling me what my jobs are. I don’t really get most of them, you know? But at least this place pays well.” With that, she parks herself in the corner of the room and takes out her phone. Her eyes go glassy; she has no intention of helping you any further. This is ridiculous. You’ll file a complaint about her later. You’ll file ten complaints. But for now, you need to free your cake!

Observable items

Baking station: The baking station consists of a long, metal bench with built-in cupboards underneath. You find a bunch of typical equipment – bowls, spatulas, measuring cups, oven mitts – and all of your standard base ingredients, like flour, sugar, both baking powder and baking soda. One of the cupboards is also a little fridge, so there are eggs and butter and things, too. You don’t find anything that looks out of place at all – except for a piece of paper on the edge of the bench. It’s a hand-written note. Haley, you mixed up the tops of your P’s. Swap them back, please! Beaded curtain: The beads hang from strings suspended from the top of the doorway, and make a surprisingly musical sound as you pass through. It doesn’t sound like bits of wood hitting each other; it actually sounds like there might be little bells or chimes inside them. Beyond the beads you see the back room. It’s not very big: to your left is an oven, to your right is a freezer, and in front of you is a long metal table, a baking station. Cabinet: Your cake sits in the cabinet, taunting you. You hope it’s okay in there. A three-digit lock stands in your way. You examine the rest of the cabinet, and when you run your hand over the high top of it, you feel something. A post-it? You pull it down and read it. Haley, it’s that time again! Password changes! Don’t worry, I’m not too paranoid about this. Just add one to all the passwords and that’ll be good enough. Cake toppers: The cake toppers they have out at the moment are all little, basically identical groom figures. You aren’t sure if they’re edible or not. [Show toppers image.] Flowers: You know these flowers aren’t real because, quite frankly, they’re way too nice. Not a single petal is out of place. It’s a huge bouquet of – you count – three dozen lily-like blooms standing in a vase on the table, all in different vivid colours. You count 11 red, 8 blue, 9 pink, 4 white, and 4 purple. They’re so shiny, you think they must have all been dipped into molten sugar. Freezer: The freezer is a big, solid, steel cube with a door at the front that should swing open. In fact, there’s a message written on it in permanent marker: Pull to open. Okay. You pull… and nothing happens. Well, that’s misleading. Front door: There doesn’t seem to be anything too suspicious about the front door. It’s got a small glass window at the top, large enough to look through, too small to climb through. Its lock is fancy and electronic, though unlocked, so no worries there. You see attached to the door frame the little motion sensor that activates the song that played when you entered. 3

Oven: It’s an enormous, extremely expensive-looking electric oven. This is impressive. Look at all those knobs and dials! It’s radiating heat, so there must be a cake baking in there right now. You try to peer through the front but it’s too dark to see anything. You consider opening it, but you know that some cakes are extremely temperature-sensitive, and you wouldn’t want to wreck it by exposing it to cool air before it’s ready. Samples: The tray says ‘samples’, but what’s in these little squares doesn’t look like anything you’d want to eat. They’re laid out in three rows – three squares in the top row, four in the second, three in the third, all evenly spaced out – and in each square is a clear liquid. You notice a bunch of little disposable pipettes for dripping beside the tray, and what looks like a mixing palette. If you try to sniff or taste any of the liquids, you get no sensory feedback whatsoever. These are the most unidentifiable chemicals of all time. How are they samples? Window displays: The cakes on display in the window are all real, and you assume they’re actual customers’ orders. Some of them are relatively normal, like big slab cakes with a picture or a message on top, but others are super novelty cakes. You count seven cakes in total:

- One shaped like three clocks; - A pink and white wedding cake with two women and the word ‘equal’ on it; - A purple and white wedding cake with a face, a plus sign, then another face; - One shaped like a rose and a violet intertwined; - A purple and gold birthday cake with a big 21 in the middle; - One shaped like a giant lock with the word ‘code’ on it; - A bright red cake. Just red. Window: The window is made up of several small squares of glass. You didn’t notice it when you entered, but trying to look out, you realise the glass is filthy. There’s a crusty layer of white covering all of them, like it’s been unintentionally frosted. You touch one of the panes; the muck is totally caked on. Ha. Caked. It probably is some cake-making residue that settled from the air. You don’t even think water will get rid of this. It’s quite frustrating, because on at least one of the squares, you swear you can see some colour hidden underneath…

Actions

Baking station – examining the baking soda carton closely: Let’s see… logo, dietary information, ingredients… how many ingredients can baking soda possibly have? Anyway… ah, like many basic ingredients, the baking soda’s carton has a list of recommended recipes on the side. Nothing too remarkable, except you do notice one ‘recipe’ that is for something other than food. It says if you use one part baking soda, five parts vinegar, and half an egg white, you get a really potent glass cleaner. Egg white? Half an egg white? That’s weird, but okay. Baking station – mixing baking soda, vinegar and egg whites in the proportions stated on the carton to make a glass cleaner: Who are you to argue with a carton? You grab the ingredients, very carefully crack open the egg, separate the yolk, then separate half the albumen, and mix everything together in a bowl. The concoction fizzes up, then settles, and it does look like a pretty good cleaning solution. 4

Beaded curtain – pulling on the beads randomly: When you brush past the beads, they make a faintly melodic jangle, but if you actually focus on them one at a time, you notice that they actually pull down slightly. Like, there’s a bit of elastic holding them up in the top of the doorframe. Not only that, you realise that when you pull down and release, each bead thread makes a different note when it shakes around. Beaded curtain – pulling on the beads so they match the Bridal Chorus notes played by the door: It takes you a few tries to match the notes precisely, but you get there. One, two, threefour… one, two, threefour… after you ‘play’ the first bit, you hear a noise coming from the back area. It sounds like the pop of something coming open. You poke your head in, and it’s the freezer! Cabinet – inputting the code 109 by mistake: You put 109 into the cabinet lock, but it doesn’t click open. What? You’re positive you did those flower calculations correctly! Cabinet – inputting the code 110, as told by the cryptic cake clues and flowers: The lock opens! You swing the cabinet door wide, revealing your glorious wedding cake to the world. It’s perfect. Figurines of you and Blake stand perched on top, holding hands, and in your figure’s other hand is a magnifying glass because you like mysteries; in Blake’s other hand is a mug of Jim Gorton’s coffee, because quite frankly Blake has a serious addiction. It’s perfect. Well, guess it’s time to head off! Flowers – stealing a bite of one: These are just for display, right? They don’t actually belong to any customer. So no one will mind if you take a tiny sampling. You break off a single petal of the tastiest looking flower and put it on your tongue. It’s so sweet it makes your eyes water! All you can taste is pure, glazed sugar. You think there’s supposed to be a proper flavour in there, but the sugar coats your mouth so thoroughly you can’t possibly identify it. Flowers – looking under the table: There’s something trapped under one of the table legs. It’s a curled piece of receipt paper; quite a long one, as if multiple receipts were printed off in quick succession without being torn. You take a look and find that there are seven entries, each one with a name, a flavour, the date ordered, and a price. Alphabetically, here’s what you read:

Abbey ordered a caramel apple cake on the 4th of the month, which cost $185.99. Cat ordered a vanilla basil cake on the 2nd of the month, which cost $195.99. Dominic ordered a lavender basil cake on the 6th, for $205.99. Elspeth ordered a chocolate cherry cake on the 7th for 190.99. Fred ordered a coconut cherry cake on the 5th for $210.99. Gretchen ordered a caramel banana cake on the 8th for $175.99 Hal ordered a chocolate banana cake on the 1st for $200.99. Freezer – after the door opens, looking inside: As you head into the back, you hear Haley’s voice calling out to you. “I’ve just got to step outside for a sec, taking a phone call, just keep doing what you’re doing!” Sure, fine. It’s not like she’s been that much help. You swing the freezer door open the rest of the way, and there’s a cake in here! At least, you think it’s a cake. It’s a perfect sphere, with its shiny fondant coating textured in just the right way to make it resemble a giant orange. There’s a receipt on its base: Bert, lavender liquorice cake, $180.99, ordered on the 3rd of this month. And… hey, when you pick up the receipt, there’s another piece of paper stuck 5 to the back of it. This one must be here by accident. It’s covered in hand-written scrawl, and seems to be instructions for the baker’s assistant:

- The ‘red’ cake is more expensive than Cat’s cake. - A man ordered the birthday cake. - The most expensive cake has a maths symbol on it. - The ‘code’ cake is $10 cheaper than the flowers cake. - Hal’s cake, while two flavours, is just one colour. - The ‘equal’ cake has fruit but no caramel. - The ‘times’ cake was ordered on the 2nd of the month. Isn’t it ridiculous that even in this day and age, a man never orders a pink cake? Remember! Upon order, put special meaning into all cake designs. Front door – opening and closing it BEFORE unlocking your cake: You really shouldn’t leave without your cake, but out of idle curiosity, you open the door anyway. The automated doorbell sings the Bridal Chorus once more, each note single, separate and clear. Front door – attempting to open it AFTER unlocking your cake: Time to go, then! Balancing your cake carefully in your arms, you walk to the door and manoeuvre your hand to the doorknob. It doesn’t budge. It’s locked? Well, no problem. Haley just stepped outside to take a call, she can’t be far… but after several minutes, you don’t see her anywhere. And the door is still very much locked. Why would she do this? That’s got to be the most fireable offence in the working world, locking up your shop with a customer trapped inside! And she knows you’re here! Unless – is it possible she didn’t realise she locked the door? The lock is fancy and electronic, like everything else in here; you don’t think it opens with a normal key. And that’s when you spot it: a small, printed sign in the bottom corner of the door that you swear wasn’t there earlier. It says, “Due to overheating risk, oven must be switched off before final employee leaves. Automatic lock will engage when sensors detect oven is on and only one person is in the shop.” Well, that makes some sense. In a workplace health and safety nightmare sort of way. Oven – scouring the dials and buttons for an ‘off’ switch: It’s no use. Maybe it’s because it’s a fancy industrial device, maybe because it’s electric and you’re used to gas, or maybe it’s just because new technology hates you, but no amount of pressing, pulling or twisting works. If anything you just make the oven hotter. Oven – attempting to find a power cord: It’s an electric oven, so there’s got to be a cord, right? You peek into the tiny gap at the back… there! It’s a totally normal power cable plugged into a wall socket. You start edging your arm towards it… ouch! The space is so narrow, the heat from the oven is filling up the space, and the cable is way too hot to touch! Oven – using oven mitts, reaching for the power cord and pull it out: Well, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if something’s too hot to handle, you should wear gloves. You grab an oven mitt from the baking supply station, put it on, and once again reach into the gap behind the oven. Success! You can barely feel the heat. You tug the plug out of the socket, and for a second, the breathy sound of the oven’s heating element dies – then it immediately returns. Oh no. There must be a back-up generator attached to it! You look, and sure enough, you find a box affixed to the wall 6 labelled BACK-UP POWER. Okay, no problem, you’ll just have to open it up and turn it off. No problem at all… except for the five-digit password it needs to open. You search the box’s exterior for any hints, but all you find is this vague sticker on the side. [Show generator image.] Oven – inputting the code 18699 into the back-up generator: Refer to conclusion! Samples – mixing squares together randomly: Since you aren’t totally sure what you’re doing, you take just a few drops of some of the liquids and mix them together off to the side. When the drops from one square hit another, they combine instantly and turn a strange, murky colour and give off an unidentifiably odd odour. You don’t think that’s quite the result a professional would get. Samples – mixing squares together in the same pattern as the correct window language matches: You find the square in the same position as the window pane that says “Je t’aime”, then the one that had a French flag. You take a small amount of the two and mix them together. The liquid immediately turns a rich amber colour and the scent of caramel wafts up into your nostrils. Nice. You try a different combination, this time the Spanish squares: these ones create a much darker brown, and the smell of warm chocolate. The UK squares turn pale green and smell like apple, and the Japanese ones turn white and smell like vanilla. The US ones… huh. Okay, so the smell is fine – the fragrance of a tangy orange – but the colour is a really vivid blue. Not exactly what you’d have guessed. Windows – using your self-made glass cleaner from the baking station to wipe down the windows: You splash your cleaner on all the mucked up glass on the windows, and like magic, as the liquid drips down all the dirt sloughs off with it. You can see the glass, and all the images painted into it! [Show windows image.]

Conclusion

The box pops open. Inside is a single power switch, which you hurriedly flip to ‘off’. Immediately the sounds of the oven die down, and you heave a sigh of relief. Great! You should be able to leave now, with just enough time to spare to get all your other wedding duties done. You stand up and prepare to pick up your cake, when a flash of guilt crosses your mind: you didn’t ruin someone else’s wedding cake by turning off this oven, right? You were so conscientious about that earlier, and somehow it slipped your mind… better take a quick peek, just in case. You pull the oven door the tiniest bit open, and to your surprise, there’s not a cake in there. In fact… there’s nothing. Nothing baking, anyway. There’s just one tiny thing – what is that? Using your oven mitts you take the strange item into your hands. It’s a triangular piece of plastic. You have no idea what it’s from, or why someone would put it in an oven… unless… Could someone have been trying to melt it, to hide it? Quickly, you pocket the triangle. It’s still hot but you ignore it as best you can. You grab your cake and teeter out of the back room, out the front door, out of the Love Bakery. You hope you don’t have to go back anytime soon. Just when you unlock your car and bend down to set the cake in the passenger’s seat, a set of footsteps clatters on the path behind you. 7

“Hey, you got your cake!” It’s Haley. She looks completely unstressed, even cheerful. She has no idea what a pain she’s been to you. “How was it?” You frown. “It’s fine, I guess. It looks good. We won’t really know until we’ve eaten it, though.” “No, no, I mean, how was the getting of the cake? Did you have fun? Was it stressful?” Her eyes sparkle. “Did you at any point feel like you were totally going to have a dramatic emotional breakdown and your wedding was ruined and your partner would be inconsolable if you didn’t pull yourself together and make things right?” You have no idea how to respond to that. But Haley is really weirdly eagerly awaiting an answer. As you try to pull one together, that’s when you notice: her gaze flickers, for a split second, to the bakery door behind you. You turn – and for the first time, notice a small security camera perched on the bricks above the door. It all clicks. “This was a trick!” you exclaim. “You’ve been recording me struggling, trying to get out – so you could show your friends and laugh about me later! Do you do this with all your customers? Look, I’m sorry, but this is way too far. I’ve got to put in a complaint with you to the owner. A serious one. I’m not normally one to give life advice, but… get it together. Seriously.” Now who’s speechless? Annoyed, but a little bit satisfied at the same time, you get in your car and drive off. Nobody messes with you and gets away with it.

GM’s explanation

This cake shop, while it caters to a wide variety of events, specialises in wedding cakes. So it’s no surprise when you open the door, and the customer alert noise is the first couple of bars of the Bridal Chorus by Wagner. Cute detail, or super serious puzzle clue? Well, one of the first things you’ll need to do in this room is get the freezer open. It helpfully has a note that says, “Pull to open,” but it has no handle. What it means is you need to pull on the beads in the bead curtain that separates the shop from the cooking area. Pulling on them individually reveals that they have very distinct notes when they rattle around, as they each have differently weighted beads, and with some experimentation you’ll be able to replicate the Bridal Chorus notes. The freezer will pop open. Hidden under one of the tables, you’ll find a stack of receipts/identifying cards that have customers’ names, prices, and dates to pick up. These must go with the cakes in the window display… only, which one goes with which cake? Well, that’s why we needed the freezer open: inside the freezer is one final cake, with its tag, and also with logic puzzle instructions for which cake goes to which person. Logic puzzle solution – following the clues: - The red cake is more expensive than Cat’s cake. This tells you Cat didn’t have the red cake, and the red cake is more expensive than $195.99. - A man ordered the birthday cake. Assuming gender-conforming names, that means the 21 cake is either Dominic, Fred or Hal, since we already know Bert got the orange cake.

- The most expensive cake has a maths symbol on it. This is either plus or equals (the ‘times’ cake doesn’t actually have a multiplication symbol, no tricks there), which was bought by Fred. Now we also know Fred didn’t get the 21 cake, so that’s either Dominic or Hal. - The code cake is $10 cheaper than the flowers cake. That means the code cake isn’t one of the two most expensive, and the flowers isn’t one of the two cheapest. - Hal’s cake, while two flavours, is just one colour. This means it must be the red cake, since Bert got the orange. This now leaves Dominic with the 21 cake. - The equals cake has fruit but no caramel. Together with what we already have, this rules out everyone except Elspeth and Fred. - The times cake was ordered on the 2nd of the month. This means it belongs to Cat. - A man didn’t order the pink cake. This rules out Fred for the equal cake, leaving Elspeth. This should fix the rest of the answers: Abbey can only be flowers, Gretchen can only be code, and Fred can only be plus. After finishing the logic puzzle, what you want to do is order the cakes chronologically by their pick-up date. (As instructed on the freezer card, which says there’s meaning “upon order”.) This reveals a somewhat cryptic message, if you can read it: Red cake – various time pieces – an orange – flowers – wedding cake with a + on it – a 21st birthday – an ‘equality’ cake – a suspiciously puzzle cake with the word ‘code’. Red x orange flowers + 21 = code Awesome! This’ll be the code to your cake cabinet. All you need to do is count the number of red and orange flowers. Except… there are no orange flowers. And if some of them are orange flavoured, you can’t tell, because if you dare to eat one they’re so glazed with thick sugar you can’t taste anything else underneath. To figure out this mystery, we’re going to have to wind back a bit. Let’s look at the cake toppers. Did you notice they were all facing in different directions? If you draw lines in the directions they’re all facing, you’ll get four numbers: 5009. Except… there’s nothing in this room that needs those numbers. Weird. What you need to look at here is the note at the baking station – the one that says to buy cake topper trays without all the gaps, and it doesn’t matter that it looks like letters that way instead of numbers. This may be tricky: if you squish the numbers 5009 completely together, in their blocky form, they look a bit like letters. Exactly which letters is tough, but based on what’s in the room (and more specifically, the baking station), the correct letters spell SODA. The 5 and first 0 are okay, but the last two are the hard ones. This tells you to look at the box of baking soda. One of the recommended recipes on the side is for a glass cleanser. Nice! You can quickly whip that up and clean down the windows, revealing the words and symbols on them. They’re a collection of flags and the phrase “I love you” in various languages. There aren’t many, and also no real penalty to getting it wrong, so I’ve left this as something players can work out using their own knowledge, but if GMs want to add a geography book somewhere in the room to help them, that’s cool. The correct matches are: Je t’aime = France 9

Te amo = Spain Aishiteru = Japan I love you = UK Aloha wau ia ‘oe = USA (Hawaii – tricksy, right?) What you want to do is figure out which squares match together, and take that knowledge over to somewhere else with the same shaped grid: the sample platter. The language pairs tell you which samples to mix together. Mix the wrong ones, you’ll get a weird, off smell and colour; mix the right ones, you’ll get a beautiful scent and a nice, matching colour. Except the one that smells like orange. For some reason, it comes out blue. The exact shade of blue as 8 of the edible flowers. That’s 11 red flowers, multiplied by 8 ‘orange’ flowers, plus 21… that’s 109! Sweet, you have your code! Except – oops – it doesn’t work. Because stuck to the side of the cabinet is a post-it reminding the employee to add 1 whole number to all their old passwords since it’s time to update. Super secure. So just add 1, and that’s that. Cabinet open. Wedding task complete! Except. While you were so involved in your task, the employee left. Just straight up left you in here. The front door is locked and won’t let you out, because apparently there’s some weird security thing where the shop won’t let the last person leave if the oven is still on. Fire prevention stuff. The employee must have messed up. So now you have to turn off the oven! You can’t figure out the crazy buttons at all, but no worries, it’s an electric oven. There’s a power cord running up the back of it. You’ll need to shift the oven aside slightly to get to it – use oven mitts from the baking station! – and then pull it out, and… the back-up generator kicks in. And the switch to turn it off is trapped behind a numerical lock with a strange grid and a dollar sign underneath. The grid is the exact dimensions of the sample platter, with four circles filled in. Match the circles to the correct samples (caramel and apple), and only one cake on display right now contains both of those flavours (the flowers cake). Take its price ($185.99), add 1 for the updated passwords (186.99 – remember, it said add one whole number), and you’re in! You can switch off the oven, peek inside to find a strange plastic shard that’s barely been saved from melting, and get home safely with your wedding cake.