mystery

I recently did an escape game as a work activity, and I had a blast! A few of my coworkers and I were locked in a room and couldn't leave until we had solved a mystery. It was so much fun. When I got home, I told my son about it, and he loved the idea. My brain must have been working on it all that night while I was sleeping, because when I woke up, I had an idea for creating a mystery for my son in our spare bedroom.

After spending 30 minutes setting up, I gave the following photo to my son and his friend, who was at our house for a playdate, and told them that Paduba the Dog was missing! They needed to find out where he was and who had taken him.

Here are the clues they found (plus a few more, like a washcloth and spare credit card that weren't actually part of the game):

To get some of the clues, they first had to find keys / combinations to open locks for the suitcase and safe:

There were also clues hidden here (although not in the Kleenex box, as they discovered through their meticulous searching):

They spent almost an hour in the room! It was fun hearing them talk to each other and to see how well they had done when they finally asked for a hint. They had found almost all of the clues and just needed a little help to figure out how to use the clues to solve the mystery.

Here's what my son thought about it all:

He immediately got to work making more clues so that we could set up the room again, with a slightly different mystery, for Daddy when he got home from work.