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Escape room

physical puzzle game played by a team of players

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 11, 2026
Entity authorityQ17015069
Source-derived summary

An escape room, also known as an escape game, puzzle room, exit game, or riddle room, is a game in which a team of players discover clues, solve puzzles, and accomplish tasks in one or more rooms in order to achieve a specific goal in a limited amount of time. The goal is often to escape the game environment.

Most escape games are cooperative, but competitive variants exist. Escape rooms became popular in North America, Europe, and East Asia in the 2010s. Permanent escape rooms in fixed locations were first opened in Asia and followed later in Hungary, Serbia, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, and South America.

Definition

Escape rooms are inspired by escape room video games, live-action role-playing, point-and-click adventure games, puzzle hunts, interactive theater, and haunted houses. They are also referred to as "room escapes", "escape games", "exit games", or "live escapes".

In spite of the name, escaping a room may not be the main goal for the players, nor is the game necessarily confined to a single room.

Gameplay overview

The participants in an escape room normally play as a cooperative team of two to ten players. Games are set in a variety of fictional locations such as prison cells, pirate ships, and space stations.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Escape room” as physical puzzle game played by a team of players. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Escape, room and physical.

Editorial reviewA dependable orientation record for establishing vocabulary, names and a first evidence trail. The current 207-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Escape, room and physical providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Escape room”, the useful work is to connect “physical puzzle game played by a team of players” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q17015069. The Library of Congress control number is sh2018003147. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.

Critical limits

Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
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  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
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The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Escape room”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Escape room primary sources, Escape room archive and Escape research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Escape room” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.