TESOL EVO 2020 Escape the Classroom! - Using Puzzles
1. Escape Room ELT
Live Escape Rooms
Puzzles
graham.stanley@gmail.com https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com
2. Puzzles
What is a puzzle?
Can you list some of the
different types of puzzle?
Have you ever used puzzles
for language learning?
3. Aha! Puzzles vs process puzzles
https://thecodex.ca/puzzles-aha-vs-process
• puzzles that lead to that “Aha!” Moment – when you finally get a
flash of inspiration that helps you solve a puzzle
e.g. riddle, figuring out a pattern or a sequence, connecting the
relationship between two unrelated objects
• Process puzzles are those you know you have to solve and "you just have
to put in the work to complete“
e.g. jigsaw puzzles, math problems, sudoku puzzles, mazes, basic
ciphers, algebra, logic deduction problems, searching for hidden objects
4. Beware of the man,
be he friend or brother,
whose hair is one colour
and beard another.
6. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 1: Puzzles Should Be Fair – You are on the Player’s Side
• Rule 2: Clue Everything and Remove Ambiguities – Don’t Make Players Guess
• Rule 3: A Puzzle Should Have One Answer
• Rule 4: A Puzzle Should Have a Self Validating Answer
• Rule 5: Clues and Puzzles Should Be Clearly Linked
• Rule 6: Aha! Correlations Should Make Sense
• Rule 7: A Puzzle Should Not Take More than 5 minutes to Complete
• Rule 8: Tedious Work Should Not be Ambiguous on Instruction
• Rule 9: Puzzles Should Have No Destroyable States
• Rule 10: Puzzles Should Have Feedback
• Rule 11: Your Puzzles Should Be Consistent – Follow Patterns You Set
• Rule 12: Your Puzzles will be too hard – Beta Test and Iterate
• Rule 13: Basic Rules
• Rule 14: Language should usually be the focus of the puzzle
• Rule 15: Non-language puzzles should be easy to complete
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
7. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 1: Puzzles Should Be Fair – You are on the Player’s Side
You should want players to solve your puzzles and not take delight in
their failure to do so.
Especially in ELT Escape Rooms, puzzles shouldn’t be so difficult that
they take too much time to solve, or (worse) players can’t solve them.
If puzzles are challenging or players have problems, offer hints.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
8. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 2: Clue Everything and Remove Ambiguities – Don’t Make
Players Guess
Don’t asume it’s obvious – give clues and don’t leave it ambiguous as to
what a player has to do with the information he/she finds
See Scott Nicholson (2016) Ask Why: Creating a Better Player
Experience Through Environmental Storyttelling and Consistency in
Escape Room Design http://scottnicholson.com/pubs/askwhy.pdf
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
9. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 3: A Puzzle Should Have One Answer
“Players tend to go down rabbit trails: they will find an incorrect theory
and expand on this theory until they are so far down the rong path they
may as well be playing a different game. However, if your clues point
them in that direction, then it’s not their fault.”
There should be one answer to a puzzle and it should be clear.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
10. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 4: A Puzzle Should Have a Self Validating Answer
When players solve a puzzle, they should be confident they have the
correct answer.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
11. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 5: Clues and Puzzles Should Be Clearly Linked
It should be obvious when players find a clue that it is linked to a
particular puzle. This is easy with linear Escape Room Design (bottom
left), but more difficult when your room is non-linear (bottom-right)
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
12. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 6: Aha! Correlations Should Make Sense
“The majority of Aha! puzzles have to do with correlation.”
Help players with that moment when they get a flash of inspiration that
helps them solve the puzle by making it clear that a clue connects to a
puzzle
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
13. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 7: A Puzzle Should Not Take More than 5 minutes to Complete
5 minutes per puzzle has become an accepted rule in the Escape Room
community
It could be argued that 5 minutes is too long with an ELT puzzle unless
the focus of the puzzle is on language (see rules 14 and 15)
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
14. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 8: Tedious Work Should Not be Ambiguous on Instruction
If you want players to do something that will take a long time to
process, make sure it is clear what they have to do so they don’t spend
a long time doing something that is of no value to escaping the room.
Even better, with ELT Escape Rooms, avoid this type of puzzle
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
15. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 9: Puzzles Should Have No Destroyable States
“In an escape room, you don’t want to design a puzzle where crucial
elements to solving the puzzle can disappear.”
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
16. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 10: Puzzles Should Have Feedback
Players need to know when they have correctly solved a puzzle or if
they need to try again.
Combinations on locks are obvious (i.e. the lock opens or it doesn’t),
but other puzzles are not so obvious.
You could play an applause sound when the players solve something.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
17. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 11: Your Puzzles Should Be Consistent – Follow Patterns You Set
Do not mislead players and be consistent in your puzzle design. When
you give Information to players, they should be able to trust it.
You need to be consistent especially when you design multi-part
puzzles.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
18. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 12: Your Puzzles will be too hard – Beta Test and Iterate
You may think a puzzle is easy – it is likely to be harder than you think.
Try puzzles out on colleagues, family and friends before using them
with students – if your players are new to escape rooms, they will find
the puzzles difficult.
If you are told a puzzle doesn’t work, then remove it or change it.
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
19. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 13: Basic Rules
• No red herrings
• No outside knowledge (make an exception for ELT Escape Rooms?)
• No spelling or grammar mistakes (another exception for ELT?)
• Puzzles should be solvable without requiring hints (Exception for ELT?)
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
20. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 14: Language should usually be the focus of the puzzle
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
1) "rotate the dial
to 30 on the left,
unless the dial is
green, in which
case you must first
rotate the dial to
number 15 on the
right“
2) "open the
lock on the
door with a
star that
doesn't go"
21. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Rule 15: Non-language puzzles should be easy to complete
Sometimes you will want non-language puzzles in your escape room –
your theme might demand it or you want to provide variety, but don’t
make them too difficult. e.g. the jigsaw below.
The jigsaw has the combination for a lock,
But how long would students take to complete
it? And what language would they be using?
https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com/puzzle-design-in-escape-rooms
22. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Advice given by Brett on the #Education thread of the Escape Room
Enthusiasts secret chat in Slack
“If the goal of the game is to motivate a student to learn English, the
implicit type is probably a better fit. Explicit-type puzzles are likely to
feel more like homework, which is a problem in general with
"educational" escapes. Ideally the educational part is a side-effect of
the gameplay, not the focus. Otherwise you can end up with the
opposite problem to what you describe, a room that is educational but
not much fun.“
https://escaperooms.slack.com
23. Puzzle design for ELT escape rooms
• Advice given by Brett on the #Education thread of the Escape Room
Enthusiasts secret chat in Slack
“Many (probably most) of the educational escape games I've seen focus
too much on using bits of knowledge as answers (something like "1492"
as the combination for a lock that was supposedly used by Columbus),
turning a large portion of the games into trivia contests or math
problem sets. It is an easy and natural thing to do if you don't have a lot
of experience making puzzles, but I think there are better ways to work
learning into puzzles.”
https://escaperooms.slack.com
24. Escape Room ELT
Live Escape Rooms
Puzzles
graham.stanley@gmail.com https://escaperoomelt.wordpress.com
Notes de l'éditeur
This video explores the use of puzzles in live escape rooms for language teaching, English language teaching in particular.
We will look at what to consider when designing puzzles for Escape Rooms, particularly when the objective of the activity is for learning or practising English, rather than having fun.
So, to begin with, let’s explore the nature of puzzles, especially in reference to language teaching and learning.
What is a puzzle? What types of puzzles are there? How have you used puzzles for teaching? You might want to stop the video at this point and discuss this with someone if you are not watching this alone If you are on your own, just take a moment to reflect on these questions and write some notes.
There are different ways of categorising puzzles, but for the purpose of this video, let’s use the categorisation that was shared on the Codex, a website and community dedicated to escape rooms. This comes from an article that Escape Room enthusiast and co-host of the Escape Room Divas podcast, Errol Elumir wrote.
Now let’s look at some puzzles that coul dbe used in an escape room game for language learning.
Let’s start with a simpe riddle that could be found at the beginning of the game. This is an old ryme I came across when I was a child. The students might find this, for example, on a discarded piece of paper, or may be handed it very deliberately – how the puzle is introduced Will depend on the story you créate for the game. That’s very important and we will be looking at it in another video later on.
So, later on in the game, a number of case files might be found - the suspect number marked here opens the lock on a box. The link between the rhyme and the photos shouldn’t be obvious. That way, the students Will think they’ve discovered the link when one of them puts two and two together.
What type of puzzle is this? You could call it an ‘Aha!’ puzzle – the players will hopefully realise the connection between the riddle and the photos and make the connection that the suspect number is what opens the lock to the box.
What makes a good puzzle for an escape room? There is a lot of discussion of this in the Escape Room community, but I think a good place to start is another article that Errol Elumir, has written, entitled 13 Rules for Escape Room Puzzle Design. I have, however, added to his rules, and although we’ll look at these last, they are probably the most important ones for ELT teachers.
The focus of puzzles in ELT Escape Rooms should be on language or on puzzles where a clear understanding of language is necessary.
The first example here opens up the directional lock.
The second (answer = nova (The Spanish for “does not work” is no va) is the clue to the word lock shown in the picture.
This video explores the use of puzles in live escape rooms for language teaching, English language teaching in particular.
We will look at what to consider when designing puzzles for Escape Rooms, particularly when the objective of the activity is for learning or practising English, rather than having fun.