Murder, He Wrote

If you could choose a mystery to experience, what would it be? An Agatha Christie crime thriller or to be briefly mixed up in a Mary Higgins Clark murder? Perhaps a Sherlock Holmes tale, or maybe more of a scholarly yet rough and tumble type, like Indiana Jones?

The Room-NWA tests those curious minds that would willingly drop themselves into a drama-entangled adventure for an hour of deciphering clues, solving riddles, working puzzles and breaking codes, all to solve the mystery and save the day.

The appointment-only escape room opened last month in Springdale, the second of The Room's locations, and has seen more than 45 groups through its doors of mystery and intrigue since.

"Does anybody have any idea what they're getting involved in?" Matthew Sorrell, owner of The Rooms, asks a group of 30 on a recent visit. A mumbling and shaking of heads says no, they don't. "Perfect, just the way I like it."

Contestants come in and are placed in groups of two to six, led into small, themed rooms and asked to jail their cell phones for the ride. They're handed an envelope with prompts and riddles to supplement the items of the room that are locked, hidden and tucked away. A Samsung tablet counts down the 60 minutes they have to bring the investigation to fruition and escape the room before fictional tragedy falls.

"Each room has a different objective and a different story, a different way to get in," Sorrell says. After a quick tutorial on the six types of locks they might encounter on their adventure and an explanation of the rules (cell phones are cheating and the consequence is that everyone will point and shame you), teams are sent off to the Man Cave, Bio Hazard, Miner's Map or the Professor's Study.

In Man Cave, the amateur detectives arrive to find two very important items gone missing -- a remote control and batteries -- and must piece them back together before the start of "The Big Game." They scramble through enigmatic clues and riddles to match them to items in the room, like a dart board, auto maintenance items and car magazines, golf balls and Xbox games. The items lead them to a variety of safes and lock boxes, the combinations of which they find through relating the alphabet to the numerical system, sometimes calculating intervals and solving math problems.

With each conundrum, contestants jiggle plenty of filing cabinets, turn items over and keep in close contact with their group. The clues are maddening -- and they're supposed to be.

"Each time we have a group through, it's [as hard] as if we did it the first time," says Sorrell, who formed The Room from his fascination with puzzles and intrigue. Experiences with The Escape Room in Oklahoma City and the Can You Escape app on iTunes were influential.

But all of the clues lead to something vital in the storyline.

"There are no red herrings," he says. "You're not going to do a bunch of things that won't lead to anything. ... But you may be getting things along the way that you'll need later that you don't know [yet] that you'll need later."

Bio Hazard, a room that contains the antidote to prevent a zombie apocalypse, seems to be the house favorite so far. Entering the laboratory-like environment, contestants pass a hazmat suit and fluid-filled beakers, books labeled "Plants, Pills and Potions" and "The Handy Science Answer Book," hoses, chests and bowls and must decide which of the items are important.

A few minutes with the "hazmat team" reveals the utter confusion they begin with.

"Why are the hoses here? Is there something in there?"

"Whaaat, like really?"

"What's that say? Did you try the eight?"

"We could get a clue, y'all."

Sorrell's team provides clues to teams upon request, when all members of the team agree and signal by all raising their hands at the same time. Recorded audio and video help keep the cheating to a minimum and allow Sorrell to deliver the clues when they are needed.

"All they have to do is ask for a clue, but none of them want to yet," he says. "Other people just want to make the board [list of the top five fastest]."

Clues come at a penalty of adding five minutes to the team's overall time, and very few finish before 60 minutes is up anyway. The record setting team at Springdale completed in 33 minutes. A group that loads up on clues often clocks in past 90 minutes.

"What you take inside the room are your own limitations, when you say, 'Oh it couldn't possibly be that,'" Sorrell says, noting that The Room establishes social roles quickly. "It's interesting. ... We can pick out the 'yes man,' the worker, the person who's super shy, the wallflower.

"Almost 100 percent of the time, the wallflower is right, but they don't want to assert themselves."

Similar escape rooms lock the contestants in together, while others include interactive elements like chaining an actor playing a zombie in the center of the room to heighten the suspense.

Leaving it less formal and without any elements of horror was by design, says Sorrell, who encourages families to bring children of all ages and corporations to have team building exercises there.

The frustrating tasks bring out the strengths and weaknesses of team members, challenge them to work together in different ways and push the limits of their egos.

"People come in and they say, 'Don't judge us by the things we say to each other while we're in there,'" Sorrell jokes. "It's built to be frustrating with the mind that you'll break and ask for a clue."

In Miner's Map, treasure seekers comb the belongings of the wealthiest Arkansan miner, who's gone missing, in hopes of finding a map to his fortune before the authorities arrive to confiscate it.

Amid the oil lamps, cots and hanging balance scale, contestants open trunks, attempt to interpret the tiniest details, like the significance of the page number a book is turned to, inspect ropes and camping dishes and use the riddles to point them to the next clues. Whether the missing piece is a horseshoe or a rusty key, teams rely on logic, math and each other, which makes for a good bonding experience.

"With families, the bond between father and son is stretched as the boy gets older," Sorrell says. "When The Room starts, they may be on opposite sides, but in the end, they're right there together working on it together."

More than 70 percent of contestants return to complete another room. With the business expanding to two additional locations, Sorrell says teams have more opportunity for future adventures when they rotate themes. Mysteries like the International Jewel Thief, The Expensive Millionaire and The Disgruntled Nanny will make their way to Arkansas later on this year.

NAN What's Up on 07/17/2015