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In Czech Republic, we have many puzzle hunts per year. The "escape room" fad also came here, it seems similar; I haven't tried it, but it seems really overprice

In Czech Republic, we have many puzzle hunts per year. The "escape room" fad also came here, it seems similar; I haven't tried it, but it seems really overpriced. Typical price for 20-hour puzzle hunt is about $3-5 per person. Escape room costs 1 hour for about $30. The room is probably much better done, but I would bet you would have more fun puzzle solving in a more traditional puzzle hunt.

dkopi 11y ago
20 hours is quite a lot of time to devout. An escape room provides a 1 hour intensive experience. It's not only about solving puzzles, it's also about the adrenaline (Time limits do that), team building and cooperation, and functioning under stress. Just came back from a 5 day vacation in Prague. We went to 5 different escape rooms during that vacation. It comes out to about $10 a person for a group of 5. Money well spent for an intensive hour of fun.
- NotOscarWilde 11y ago
  To be more specific about the timing, it is 20 hours as in "starting Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday noon". I agree that it's tough on parents who cannot leave for a weekend here and there; the organizing teams are usually a mix of devoted fans and university students. There is a lot of stress involved in the puzzle hunts as well -- you have to solve the toughest puzzles at around 3am in the woods, some even in November. Struggling with fatigue (personally at around 8am) and not giving up is a big part of that, and if your team wants to be among the top 10, speed is a very big issue. The Czechs who like puzzle hunts (such as me) will likely prefer them over room escapes as they are all cheap, non-profit, community events with a good atmosphere, whereas the room escapes are more of a product that aims at the workforce (many room escapes talk about team building in their brochures) and the prices reflect that. The main downside for the foreign audience is that most Czech puzzle hunts I attended required fluency in Czech in a non-trivial way -- encoding messages in proverbs, conjugation, wordplay and so on. It's tricky; foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom), so they do not want to attend -- and the organizers feel that having them in Czech is enough.
  - kachnuv_ocasek 11y ago
    >foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom) I'm Czech and I've never heard of such thing, but again, I've never heard of escape rooms either. I had no idea this was so big here.
    - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
      The biggest one (TMOU) had 2074 people (in teams of 5) this year at the online qualification round. 1074 people passed to the actual puzzle hunt. For a intellect based hobby event for Czech-speaking people, I'd say those numbers are pretty big.
  - maxerickson 11y ago
    It sounds similar to scavenger hunts in the US. A scavenger hunt might be a simpler thing, but the more complicated one would still probably be called a scavenger hunt. I guess they are mostly being done by social groups for their members, not for customers.
    - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
      The term "puzzle hunt" was actually not invented by this thread. The closest event to the Czech puzzle hunts which is popular in the States is probably the annual MIT Mystery Hunt [1]. (Note that it is also older than the Czech variant of puzzle hunts.) Wikipedia categorizes it as a "puzzlehunt" and it has even a page about them [2], including one of the Czech ones. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Mystery_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Mystery_Hunt [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt
      - maxerickson 11y ago
        That wasn't my meaning. I was talking about how people would describe it here, not arguing about what it should be called. If you walked up to someone in the street in the US and said 'puzzle hunt', many would not know the word, but if you said 'scavenger hunt with puzzles', they would get it right away. I was also curious if that comparison was at all accurate.
dantheman 11y ago
Are the puzzle hunts also available in English? Can you provide a link or two. Id make a trip to do one. I love escape rooms.
- asgard1024 11y ago
  I am not aware of any, unfortunately. NotOscarWilde above described it correctly, IMHO.
- nicolethenerd 11y ago
  MIT Mystery Hunt - http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/ http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/ happens every year in January. Afaik you don't need to be an MIT student to participate

dkopi 11y ago

20 hours is quite a lot of time to devout. An escape room provides a 1 hour intensive experience. It's not only about solving puzzles, it's also about the adrenaline (Time limits do that), team building and cooperation, and functioning under stress. Just came back from a 5 day vacation in Prague. We went to 5 different escape rooms during that vacation. It comes out to about $10 a person for a group of 5. Money well spent for an intensive hour of fun.

NotOscarWilde 11y ago
To be more specific about the timing, it is 20 hours as in "starting Saturday afternoon and ending Sunday noon". I agree that it's tough on parents who cannot leave for a weekend here and there; the organizing teams are usually a mix of devoted fans and university students. There is a lot of stress involved in the puzzle hunts as well -- you have to solve the toughest puzzles at around 3am in the woods, some even in November. Struggling with fatigue (personally at around 8am) and not giving up is a big part of that, and if your team wants to be among the top 10, speed is a very big issue. The Czechs who like puzzle hunts (such as me) will likely prefer them over room escapes as they are all cheap, non-profit, community events with a good atmosphere, whereas the room escapes are more of a product that aims at the workforce (many room escapes talk about team building in their brochures) and the prices reflect that. The main downside for the foreign audience is that most Czech puzzle hunts I attended required fluency in Czech in a non-trivial way -- encoding messages in proverbs, conjugation, wordplay and so on. It's tricky; foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom), so they do not want to attend -- and the organizers feel that having them in Czech is enough.
- kachnuv_ocasek 11y ago
  >foreigners don't know about our puzzle hunts (it's a purely local custom) I'm Czech and I've never heard of such thing, but again, I've never heard of escape rooms either. I had no idea this was so big here.
  - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
    The biggest one (TMOU) had 2074 people (in teams of 5) this year at the online qualification round. 1074 people passed to the actual puzzle hunt. For a intellect based hobby event for Czech-speaking people, I'd say those numbers are pretty big.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It sounds similar to scavenger hunts in the US. A scavenger hunt might be a simpler thing, but the more complicated one would still probably be called a scavenger hunt. I guess they are mostly being done by social groups for their members, not for customers.
  - NotOscarWilde 11y ago
    The term "puzzle hunt" was actually not invented by this thread. The closest event to the Czech puzzle hunts which is popular in the States is probably the annual MIT Mystery Hunt [1]. (Note that it is also older than the Czech variant of puzzle hunts.) Wikipedia categorizes it as a "puzzlehunt" and it has even a page about them [2], including one of the Czech ones. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Mystery_Hunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Mystery_Hunt [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzlehunt
    - maxerickson 11y ago
      That wasn't my meaning. I was talking about how people would describe it here, not arguing about what it should be called. If you walked up to someone in the street in the US and said 'puzzle hunt', many would not know the word, but if you said 'scavenger hunt with puzzles', they would get it right away. I was also curious if that comparison was at all accurate.

dantheman 11y ago

Are the puzzle hunts also available in English? Can you provide a link or two. Id make a trip to do one. I love escape rooms.

asgard1024 11y ago
I am not aware of any, unfortunately. NotOscarWilde above described it correctly, IMHO.
nicolethenerd 11y ago
MIT Mystery Hunt - http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/ http://www.mit.edu/~puzzle/ happens every year in January. Afaik you don't need to be an MIT student to participate