Concordia Math Club Brings Escape Room to Campus

Sophomore Timothy Rasch, junior Christine Bennett, and sophomore Emma Heidorn, along with other members of Math Club, put together an escape room at Concordia. Photos courtesy of April Bayer.

by Emily Kollbaum

Concordia Math Club presented an escape room Feb. 17-19 in the Thom Leadership Education Center for teams of students, professors and community members.

An escape room is a game where people are locked in a room and have to solve sets of clues and puzzles to escape within a certain time limit.

The Math Club’s escape room centered around the mystery of Dr. Kyle Johnson’s “stolen” bowtie and teams tried to solve the mystery within a 45-minute time limit. The clues were hidden throughout the room, and the teams followed each hint to a new clue. The hints were hidden in books, math equations, puzzles and balloons, which led contestants figure out the name of the person who stole the bowtie and find the key to escape the room.

“We first came up with the idea of going to an escape room as a club, but then that quickly evolved into bringing an escape room to Concordia,” junior Math Club member Meghan Woodruff said.

She was pleased with the reactions to the room, but was surprised by how much some teams struggled.

“The success rate ended up being about 40 percent, not what we anticipated,” Woodruff said. “We expected about 75 percent of teams to escape the room. It was difficult to anticipate where things could go wrong.”

The Math Club is planning on providing an escape room at least once a year on campus.

“I had never been to an escape room before, but this has made me really want to (go),” junior participant Cadence Klemp said. “It definitely exceeded my expectations.”

One of her favorite clues was when she chugged a bottle of blue Kool-Aid to get to the clue on the label. Klemp was a part of a four-person team that held one of the fastest escape times.

Professor Bryan Moore, Alexa Kirchgasler, senior Melonie Kotschwar, junior Emily Kollbaum and Dylan Woodall made up the fastest team, escaping with 22 minutes remaining on the clock.