A key part of our work as financial planners and ethical investments advisers is puzzle solving. We all really enjoy solving puzzles like - how much do our clients need to have a financially comfortable retirement? Which are the most suitable investment managers for our clients and why? What is likely to happen to the investment environment in the short and long term?
So, now that we only have three of us (plus our robot Millie who doesn't really have a good enough personality to come to our Christmas function), we decided to do something different for Christmas.
When Peter and Carey were on holiday in the UK, we decided to try an 'Escape Room' (having no idea what they were or how they worked). Peter decided to try the hardest one, which was based around WWII and decisions that had to be made. Suffice to say, we failed to solve the puzzle, but were hooked. We learned that the more people you have, the easier it can be to solve the puzzle, but we now reckon that the more escape rooms you have done, the more easy it is to solve the puzzle, as you learn how clues might be untangled!
For our 2024 Christmas function, we started with a nice brunch then went and completed two escape rooms and had a nice dinner afterwards.
The three of us work very well together, all bringing different skills to the table, and we knew that it would be a lot of fun trying to sort out these puzzles.
The first puzzle was trying to find a cat that had gone missing and was locked in a prison. We weren't very good! At least we got into the second room, but we ran out of time. The people that ran it came and explained what else we had to do to release the cat from its prison (and there was lots that I don't think any of us would have worked out), but it was fun and we all learned a lot! And we learned that there is no shame in asking for hints (unless you are a whiz and want to get on to the leaderboard).
We went and took a break and then tried our second escape room - at a different venue. They all run slightly differently. This one was called 'Spy in the Sky' and had two rooms as well (the one we did in the UK apparently had about 4 different rooms and we got into the second room).
The puzzle was complicated, but we had a few more clues after our first one. We spent quite a bit of time going around in circles. Hints helped, but we are all a bit stubborn and didn't really want to use the hints. We managed to get into the second room, but then ran out of time. We were kindly given a 5 minute extension, and another hint (or two) and we solved it!
We will do this again, it was so much fun and a great team building/puzzle solving activity, and far more enjoyable than just going out for a meal (but we did that too!). Highly recommend that you explore escape rooms if you like solving puzzles. Even so... Carey and Peter can't convince Paul (yet) that jigsaw puzzles are fun - something we do together over the Christmas break each year (and we had two really hard ones this Christmas break!).
