Escape Room & Puzzle Trivia

From cardboard jigsaws to padlocked rooms, humans have always enjoyed being cleverly, temporarily stuck — someone just had to build the box first.

Locked In, On Purpose

Real-life escape rooms trace back to Japan, where a company called SCRAP staged the first "Real Escape Game" in 2007, drawing inspiration partly from point-and-click puzzle video games. The format spread fast, turning locked doors, hidden compartments, and cryptic notes into a genre of their own.

Puzzles With Pedigree

• The jigsaw puzzle began in the 1760s when a mapmaker glued a map to wood and cut it into pieces to teach geography.
• Sudoku's modern grid format was devised by an American, Howard Garns, but became a global phenomenon after Japanese publisher Nikoli popularized it.
• The Rubik's Cube, invented by Hungarian architect Erno Rubik in 1974, was originally called the "Magic Cube."

Codes Worth Cracking

Wartime cryptography still echoes through puzzle design today: Allied codebreakers at Bletchley Park, including Alan Turing, famously cracked Germany's Enigma cipher, and dots-and-dashes Morse code remains a favorite trick for anyone designing a room full of locks.