Mazes, Mandalas & Mystery

The proliferation of escape rooms, subscription mystery boxes, and other solution-oriented entertainment can be traced back to several different points of origin. As technology continues to advance, writers and other creators find new ways to challenge enthusiasts, whether it be through the twists and turns of a mystery novel or puzzling clues in an escape room challenge.

The modern love for escape rooms can be attributed to many different sources, but one of the oldest origins is the Greek myth of Theseus and the Minotaur. According to this tale, the architect Daedalus designed a labyrinth to trap the Minotaur for King Minos, and the hero Theseus eventually takes on the task of solving the maze to find and kill the Minotaur at the center. When Theseus returns home to Athens, he succeeds his father Aegeus as king. In this tale, the labyrinth is used to symbolize a spiritual journey or a tool to discover one’s path in life. The mandala, also, is a symbol of the search for meaning. The design begins with the outer edges of understanding and uses intricate line work and repeating elements to lead the eye toward the center of meaning. The first known image of a mandala appears in the Rig Veda, which is a Hindu text dating from around 1500–500 BCE. This text is made up of 10 books, each referred to as mandalas themselves. The structure of the mandala is similar to the labyrinth both in its physical design and its spiritual purpose, as both are intended to be used as a tool for finding greater meaning and personal growth. The Chartres Cathedral in France features a labyrinth design in the floor of the nave, which was placed there to allow those who could not physically complete a pilgrimage to symbolically do so by walking the path.

Beginning in the 1500s, hedge mazes became popular with wealthy Europeans and royalty. These mazes were elaborate gardens designed for pleasurable strolls with company, moving the usage of labyrinths to a less complicated, more relaxed type of entertainment. Instead of traversing the labyrinth with a singular goal, hoping to discover the one path towards the center and back out again, hedge mazes offered a leisurely alternative with many ways to navigate through the beautiful gardens. This use of gardens also marks one of the earliest examples of people using the thrill of escape from a physical space purely for entertainment.

With more modern technology, the game of escape went virtual. “Escape the room” games began with text-based adventures in the 1970s and then morphed into CD-ROM games in the 90s. Developer Will Crowther designed a popular teletype game in 1976 called Colossal Cave Adventure wherein players explored a complex cave system by typing in short commands. In 1993, the graphic adventure puzzle game Myst was released. Participants explored virtual worlds by clicking and dragging objects to help them solve puzzles. Through first person point of view, players explored the island of Myst by gathering information and following clues to complete the game’s primary puzzle and “escape.”

It is this more recent foray into puzzle games that sparked the current escape room obsession. This move from virtual back to physical spaces was cemented with Takao Kato’s Real Escape Game (Riaru Daashutsu Ge-mu), which opened in Japan in 2007 to much success. The game was originally designed to be quite difficult, so much so that in its first run only six out of 150 participants completed the escape room successfully. When asked about his thoughts behind the design, the creator wrote, “The game was created so that anyone with good ideas, creativity, and good communication skills can manage to escape…When confronted with time limits and confined spaces, people think outside of the box and really have a blast.”

Whether it is literally or metaphorically, the act of locking ourselves in a room until the ultimate truth is discovered is an ancient practice that has taken on many forms.

Takao Kato’s hope is that the Real Escape Game “can make your life more thrilling.” His philosophy is that if people looked at the world in the same way they looked at an escape room, their lives would be more adventurous and interesting. Regardless of the purpose for entering an escape room, the experience offers participants the opportunity to engage in the world in a way that is unlike their dayto-day lives. As writer Jenny Kingsley says, “perhaps it is the joy of the ‘journey’ that we need to understand and find comfort in our perplexing world.”

Locked-room mystery stories offer a similar experience as traversing the labyrinth or mazes. In these stories, the reader is isolated along with the cast of characters, who must discover the truth before time runs out and evil prevails. Sometimes there is only one meandering path to the truth, and other times there are many avenues pointing to several different solutions. Though, in a mystery novel, the reader faces no danger of getting lost unless it is in a mountain of clues and red herrings (much more appealing than giving up on a hedge maze and tromping through bushes to get back out).

The recent resurgence of Cain’s Jawbone, a mystery puzzle originally published in 1934, shows how text-based puzzle games are still popular today. The book is 100 pages of incorrectly ordered narrative, which the reader must sort out in addition to solving the numerous word puzzles contained within. As of 2020, only three people have ever solved the puzzle correctly. The first two individuals completed the puzzle in 1935 and won a prize of £15, and when the book was republished in 2019, another prize of £1,000 was offered. Though many people have attempted the puzzle since the reprint, only one person has correctly solved it. Comedian John Finnemore reportedly spent several months of lockdown working on the solution to the murder mystery puzzle and was announced as the competition winner in November 2020.

Whether it is literally or metaphorically, the act of locking ourselves in a room until the ultimate truth is discovered is an ancient practice that has taken on many forms. Though now it is more often used as a form of entertainment than spiritual journey, the intrigue of the labyrinth puzzle persists. The social aspect of escape rooms also eases some of the pressure on any single individual to be the one to crack the code. Like many of life’s problems, escape puzzles are often too complex to be solved by one person and instead require group efforts. Even the hero Theseus needed Ariadne’s help to get through the labyrinth. Fortunately, you don’t have to be the cleverest person to find your way out of a maze. You just have to be persistent.