My daughter Varsha came home for Spring Break and wanted to do something fun together and she recommended that we go to ‘The Hidden Key Escapes’ in Naperville. This is a form of an ‘escape room’ game activity that is gaining popularity across the nation. Apparently, even Obama and his elder daughter Malia had tried an ‘escape room’ for fun in Hawaii, last December.

The goal is simple. The game master reads out the rules and then locks you in a room full of objects and hidden clues. You will have to search your way through the objects, find the clues and keys, unlock boxes to find more keys and unravel more clues, until you find the ultimate Key to escape from the room. You have 60 minutes to do this.

In this place, it was a group activity for 6 – but we were 3 of us, and unless we booked the room for ourselves (by paying for 6), they would let 3 others in. We booked our 3 tickets, and so, we were joined at our time slot by 3 young guys – all college students. We went in, and I must say that it was stimulating activity for our brain cells and we got into it right away and started cracking many clues.

Admittedly, Usha and I were slower than our younger, more agile teammates but we managed to stay useful to the team, by solving a few clues and taking notes. There was an interesting moment, when we were at the 30 minute mark. We found a clue to “hear” the next clue, which was in the form of an old, mini – or should I say micro – cassette player, with a tiny audio cassette inside. It was amusing to see that none of my younger teammates had any clue how to operate that, and Varsha suddenly turned to me and said – “Dad, you should know how to get this to work!” – and the moment was accentuated by the quizzical looks on the boys’ faces as well.

In that instant, I couldn’t help but feel a bit archaic, as the kids looked up to me for help on using, an outdated gadget from the late 80s! We got that working and started to decode the rest of the clues.

It was good fun indeed and a thrilling finish, as we managed to escape from the room in the nick of time, with just 55 seconds to spare, on the clock!