We had 8 in our group and were joined by a couple we did not know. They fit in nicely and it went very well.
For what that’s worth.
mmm
I’ve done two, and recently designed one for a friend of mine to do at his bachelor party. My thread about it.
One mistake that I see almost everyone make when solving them is to worry that they’ll “mess up” some state in the room and break the puzzle. A good designer is not going to make a puzzle where one person could, say, change the order of books on the shelf and make the puzzle unsolvable.
The first time I did one, it was me, my friend, and his fiancee, and seven other guys, most of whom were fairly useless. The three of us solved about 80% of the room, and I think two of the seven solved the other 20%. But the remaining five didn’t really hurt anything. The other people can really only be a hindrance if they find something and don’t tell anyone about it, so just make sure you talk it out and make sure everyone knows what you’re looking for.
Also, be aware of when you can solve a puzzle with incomplete information. If you’ve got three out of four numbers for a combination, just try all 10 combinations.
I’ve done a couple and one stood out above the others as far as tying the whole theme together where the books and puzzles used (as well as the rhyming and language of the clues) just were very creatively applied. Our team blew through it in 32 minutes so they let us do another one which took ~45 minutes. They didn’t believe we had no ringers, but instead we are a bunch of computer coders and game enthusiasts.
When I was in Greece last year, there were Escape the Room businesses every couple of blocks in Heraklion and Athens so it seems to be spreading…