❧Twisted Times: escape room fun facts and a free family crossword. Can you solve it?❧Please ensure that if you have Meta glasses or any similar recording glasses with you when you arrive, they are placed in the locker provided, as recording devices of any description are not allowed in the rooms under any circumstances. There are no exceptions.❧Three private escape rooms inside Vancouver Mall: Griffin's Door, Dogfish Briggins and Doll's Attic.
How a free computer game became a global craze, and why your family should try it
By Our Puzzle Correspondent · Vancouver, Wash.
Your team is shut inside a themed room: a wizard's study, a pirate ship, a creepy attic. Hidden all around you are clues, codes, locks and puzzles. Work together, crack them one by one, and get out before the clock runs out. That, in a nutshell, is an escape room. Games usually last 45 to 60 minutes, and teams are normally two to ten players.
It Began on a Screen
The story starts in 2004, when Japanese designer Toshimitsu Takagi released Crimson Room, a free online game in which players wake up locked in a red room and must click around to find their way out. It made "escape the room" games famous around the world.
Then It Got Real
In 2007, Takao Kato of the Kyoto company SCRAP turned the idea into a live game, the Real Escape Game: the first real-life escape room. In Japan it was called the Real Dasshutsu Game. "Dasshutsu" means "escape".
A Craze Crosses Oceans
The craze reached Europe in 2011, when Parapark opened in Budapest, Hungary. Two years later, in 2013, Puzzle Break in Seattle became the first American-based escape room company, a few hours up I-5 from Vancouver.
By 2019 there were estimated to be more than 50,000 escape rooms worldwide. Not bad for an idea that started in a single room in Kyoto just twelve years earlier.
By the Numbers
$6.66 bn
Worldwide
Estimated value of the global escape room market in 2025, forecast to reach about $13.7 billion by 2032.
$3.51 bn
Europe
Estimated value of Europe's market in 2025: more than five times the highest estimate for the USA.
$300–655 m
United States
What American escape rooms take in a year: about $300 million (2025 estimate) to $654.5 million (2024 estimate).
7,800
Rooms Across America
Spread across just over 2,000 venues in the United States at the end of 2025.
Why the big range? Market researchers measure the industry in different ways, so even the experts can't agree. A mystery worthy of an escape room.
The Twisted Times Crossword
Click a square and start typing. Click the same square again to switch between across and down. Stuck on 7 Down? The answer is in today's front-page story.
Need to dash? No problem. Your answers save automatically as you go, so you can come back and carry on where you left off, on the same device and browser. (Private or incognito windows don't keep them.)
On a tablet? Tap any square to bring up your keyboard, and tap the same square again to switch between across and down. For a bigger grid, turn your tablet on its side.
Click any square to begin
Across
Down
Stop the Presses: You Escaped!
Every answer correct. That's the kind of teamwork that beats the clock. Ready to try the real thing? Pick your room:
Fancy a crossword? Our Twisted Times crossword is built for bigger screens. Pop back on a tablet or computer to play. In the meantime, enjoy today's paper.
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Think You've Got What It Takes?
Three private escape rooms · $39 per person · Kids 7 and under FREE Inside Vancouver Mall · 10 minutes from Portland
