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I think the jigsaw ones would need a special setup due to the need to keep all four jigsaws assembled simultaneously, but I might do one of the boxes at some point on my own. I'm guessing they didn't sell as well because Exit seem to have stopped after producing just three of them? It would be good to do one at some point at any rate. Thanks for the suggestion!

Ravensburger made the submarine advent calendar. They also made a series of other advent calendars but they are only available in German. They have, however, created a series of 'exit puzzle' jigsaws in which there are a few (~8) puzzles to solve once the puzzle has been assembled, typically of the order of completing a sequence or finding a missing number. Is that what you're referring to? I've solved two of these, and did video one of them but haven't uploaded it, so I guess I could edit and upload that if that's what you mean? The quality of those puzzles is very variable, with some that cannot be fully solved except by guessing.

@@drgareth no i saw some non German advent calendars somewhere

@@williameusterwiemann4551 Not from Ravensburger - or if you did, I've never come across them. Can you share a link, or some other reference I can look up? Thanks! :)

No, we haven't done that one yet. We probably will eventually, although there are so many games to get through and so little time! :) Good to know it's tricky, though!

Funnily enough, we've already recorded 'Exit Gate Between Worlds' and it's just awaiting editing. I do have 'Exit Kids Jungle of Riddles' but haven't tried it yet - I'm undecided as to whether to try it with Laura or with my son instead.

Yes, certainly! :) It's the first in a new series of puzzle novels from Laura and me, in which you follow a group of local villagers who usually enjoy solving puzzles, but now have ended up solving a murder instead. There are 70 puzzles interspersed with text between each of them, and if you like Murdle or logic puzzles then you should (I hope!) really enjoy it. The first book in the series is due out later this year, with the second book currently due for May 2025 (UK publication dates).

@@drgareth Wow!! Sounds interesting. I will definitely get a copy as soon as it’s released.

I'm glad you enjoyed seeing the puzzles, and I can promise the book has many more all of a similar complexity! :)

Yes! Dr. Gareth, I recently bought Word Fall I, and the Undercover Agent Puzzle Book, my next acquisition will be this one 404, don't stop publishing this great videos!

Yes, it's nice to do some puzzles where you can be sure of what you're supposed to be doing! :) There's one puzzle in the third set of puzzles in this box that we thought was weak, but all the rest are definitely doable.

Thanks so much! I haven't, and in general I avoid ones with lots of narrative text. I know some people really, really love that, but for me I just want to solve puzzles and not bother reading anything if I can help it. :) (I mean I do love reading, of course, but that for me is separate to escape room games - I don't want the two to overlap)

We're slowly working through all the Exit the Game games, although they continue to release them! Another two just came out, and there's another due shortly (as of the time of this comment). I did all of the Ravensburger Submarine calendar - every day in a separate video - and you can find that linked from my channel page. CZcams.com/@DrGareth

@@drgarethno I ment the brand that made the submarine

Hiya, thanks for watching and your very kind comments! It's fun solving with Laura. By a Danish game, do you mean the 50 Clues games? If so then I have their 'Leopold' trilogy of three games but I'm afraid I very much disliked it for the truly shocking things it required you to do as the solver. But perhaps you mean something else? And yes, we have a mailbox address: Any Puzzle Media Ltd, Lombard Business Park, 8 Lombard Road, London, SW19 3TZ. Although if anyone sends anything there they should let us know to go and check the mailbox else we might not receive it for a very long time, if at all!

@@drgareth Yes its the 50 clues games, i have bought the Maria series part one but not yet tried it myself since my boardgame group is in Edinburgh, where i used to live but i am currently back in Denmark for few years, and here i am sadly yet to find any that's into more complicated boardgames or puzzle solving games. so i take it that you would not be interested in one of the 50 clues series for your channel? let me know if there is any other puzzle games that take your fancy, i am happy to donate you a few for the channel and it would mean more of you and Laura for me :)

@@drgareth oh and what do you mean with truly shocking? as in it doesnt make sense how they try to link clues or how they expect you to come to certain conclusions, or something third... or forth? :)

To anyone reading this comment, don't read further if you are sensitive to fictionalized portrayals of sadistic situations involving children. @@chrisedinburgh5051 In the third game in the series you play a possessed child torturer and murderer, and to progress in the game you need to think of and then 'do' awful things to a child, such as (*spoiler alert*) burning out their eyes so they are blinded. I have read that the creator justifies this as being no different to horror or thriller stories/movies, but the very real difference is that in those you are passively watching. In this game you need to actually think of and then consciously decide to do those horrific things yourself. The first two games are unpleasant, but it's really the third game that upset and disturbed me - otherwise I would not have played on after the first two games. I should add that perhaps those solving who are not parents will not feel this so strongly, but in any case it is not a game I would personally recommend. As purely an escape room game, though, I think it's fine - narrative aside.

@@chrisedinburgh5051 That's so kind of you, and I really appreciate it. I think for now we have a big supply of miscellaneous games to get through, since for a few years I backed every project on Kickstarter that seemed escape-game related and yet have never tried most of them! We do continue to buy older Exit games to play them for the channel, though, but have a bunch waiting already so if you do want to contribute then you'd be very welcome to do so by clicking the 'Thanks' button that should appear under each video. If you do then we can give a shout out in a future video if you like too.

About 60. There are 56 main codes and another several hidden ones - including a meta one that covers the entire book. And I’m glad you’re enjoying them! :)

Yes, it's pretty poor to sell the same content without labelling on the box that it has been re-used! I think the Jumanji game came first too, although I might be wrong. According to a post on boardgamegeek, there is /some/ new content in this box, but that must be in the earlier parts.

Thanks for the recommendations! I have all but the latest Escape the Room game, 'Murder in the Mafia' (which is, like Cursed Dollhouse, only on sale in the US), and have Box One but only had a cursory glance at it so far. I don't have the two Kickstarter games, but I have at least two dozen other similar Kickstarter ones yet to try! :) I've been wanting to try Cursed Dollhouse for a bit but I will need to think about how to film it given its height.

Every one of the boxed (3-in-1 or 4-in-1) games comes with a decoder, although at some point they started giving fewer keys(!). There are also some expansions that rely on things included in the original box (like the shoelace, or reflective mirror surface) that aren't included in all of the later boxes. It's a bit of a mess and I entirely agree they should have a 'starter box' or similar and then not include the decoder in later packs. I have at least 5 Chronodecoders. Maybe more. Apart from minor changes in the plastic colours, they're all identical so far as I know.

Glad you enjoyed it, and I recommend them! They occasionally require leaps of faith, but so long as you're happy to take a hint once you get stuck for a few minutes then it doesn't generally matter too much. They're great value too. :)

Thanks so much for commenting, and your kind words! I'm really glad you enjoyed this, and the tutorial too!

Bless you, that's kind. Sometimes we do get stuck but it's amazing how inventive the various Exit games are so I guess that's good too - it shows that they continue to create new puzzles! :)

Definitely not cheating! :) You can pause the video more easily than you can avoid accidentally seeing the whole answer card, too. Probably. ;)

Oh, you're quite right. Looking at the solution cards, I see you had the intended solution. I don't think it's necessarily meant to be the case that you can use 3 as the answer - it's just that the decoder disc has 5 holes cut in it on the middle ring and so there are 5 values for the middle digit that will work for this one! Every odd number would be accepted! Gosh. I don't know if that's true for all Exit games, but it's true for this one - I just took a look.

I'd recommend Exit the Game: The Lord of the Rings as a good one to do early on. Beyond that, Return to the Abandoned Cabin is pretty fun with some nice physical puzzles, and The Enchanted Forest is another fairly approachable one with some good puzzles. The earliest ones tend to be quicker but with some puzzles that are relatively weakly clued compared to later games; but later games tend to have more steps so take longer and can (I think) feel a bit too much, if you are trying to solve all in one go - and can still contain tough puzzles! I also think the secret of these games is just to take the hints when you get stuck, since I pretty much find that if you don't get it in 5 minutes you're not likely to get it in 15 minutes either.

Thanks for advice and suggestions.

Thanks so much for watching and I’m really glad you enjoyed them! Good luck with the book! There are also lots of hints on the website if you need them! :)

Hi! I’m afraid it’s only available in printed form, because some puzzles rely on the exact positions of things on consecutive pages and require you to fold and/or cut the paper. Even printing double-sided wouldn’t be sufficient because it relies on the pages being centre-bound.

I think this has been discussed in another comment, but no it never occurred to me it did anything useful! I would love it to be some kind of clever Easter Egg, but if it is then I don't think anyone's found it yet. :)

Hiya! Thanks so much for watching, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the video! There's no third part yet, but I suspect we'll try it at some point. These are a pleasant level of difficulty. :)

Check out the latest video: part 3 is up! Thanks for watching and hope you enjoy! :)

That's very kind of you - thank you! And thank you for commenting too! :)

Well done for completing it! I feel like even once we'd found the 'light' we weren't much closer to solving this puzzle. One of the tricky ones for sure. Thanks for watching! :)

Yes, I think this puzzle is really tough. There are just too many ways to interpret it.

Haha - thank you for watching! Don't worry, I make plenty of mistakes too 😅

Woohoo! Enjoy the solve!

Haha! We've all been there 🤣 thanks for watching!

Good question! Probably not in the immediate future, since there are such a ridiculous number of games on my shelves that we haven't looked at at all yet, but on the other hand they are nicely self-contained so perhaps we should. Thanks for the suggestion, and thanks for watching!

Good question @analucialopez6050 !! Have you solved it? Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, not my finest assumption! :) I thought there were far too many letters for it to be something you had to anagram, but of course if you're using it to identify something you already have on the page then that's quite different. Doh! I also cut out a minute or two of us reviewing everything else all over again before we came back to this too (just repeating things we'd already noticed).

Hehehe. Thanks for watching - hope you enjoyed!! 😊

Thanks for watching, and thanks for the recommendation! We definitely will - it's been sitting on the shelf here for a while, so we will get round to it at some point hopefully soon! :)

I should have thought of that! :) Would have been a shorter video, mind you. ;)

Yes, we talked about solving puzzle boxes but we agreed they’d be impractical to try with two people - or at least this kind of physical manipulation one, anyway. There are some other iDventure ones which have puzzles on the faces, so they could be co-solved at least partly I think. Still probably a frustrating experience for whoever’s not holding the cube though! :) And I like your idea - this would be an excellent puzzle for that concept! Thanks for watching and commenting!

It's really fun, isn't it?! I wasn't completely sure what to expect, since I've looked at some of their other puzzle boxes before and they progressively dismantle as you solve them (or at least to some extent) - but this was more straightforward. What's funny, though, is how simple it seemed once I had finished it but how complex it seemed before I began. :)

There have definitely been bugs in the Unlock app in the past (including some game-stopping ones, such as changing background music being a clue and yet the app not checking to see if background music is turned off, or the image detection code being somewhat ropy and stopping you advancing even when you do the right thing), but in this particular game it's card 91 that tells you to take card 99 - not the app. That said, we used the iOS app so maybe the Android app doesn't work so well for this game?

The Mystery Agency stuff is good. But as for 50 Clues, disturbing doesn’t begin to describe it - and particularly in the final game of the three. On that basis, I can’t recommend them. It's one of the most morally decrepit things I have ever come across, especially since you have to think of and then decide to do truly terrible things yourself. I wish I could forget them, but they’re so appalling that I can’t.

@drgareth play other games until it becomes a repressed memory.

@BenDaresAll That’s good advice! Although admittedly it was a few years ago already!

Very good question! We record our videos in twos or threes in advance so weren't able to include it in this video, but we think the solution posted underneath the previous video by a very helpful viewer must be the intended answer. It results in a small diagonal piece being exposed at the bottom but I think the pieces just haven't been cut too carefully. I've just posted a comment on that video, and linked to a solution image. czcams.com/video/Llquahrr3Tw/video.html

*SPOILER* It's on the hidden card in the bottom of the box, in case you start investigating the box in more detail earlier in the game than the game tells you to. If you find it early, the message tells you to take card 23 (which congratulates you on being clever but tells you to ignore it for now).

@@drgareth thanks so much now I can sleep peacefully again 😁

@@jinro.f.t.a Haha - glad to help! :)

I came back to the comments to see if anyone got the solution! Way to go!!! Very impressive! Your explanation was great too. It took a couple of tries for me but I was able to follow it with my cut out PDF pieces.

I think that must be it! And massive congratulations - I really thought it might be impossible! This assembly results in a small diagonal exposed area at the bottom that I feel might have prevented us exploring this further if starting at the bottom of the F, but looking at it as a whole I feel certain that it must be the intended solution. It's also interesting how much thinner the base of the F is than the top part, which again I think is exacerbated by the piece being a bit narrow. Here it is laid out with the wooden pieces, so you can see what I mean: www.puzzlemix.com/tmp/Fsolution.jpg

Well done!!!!

I think it may actually be genuinely impossible. So far as I can tell only one company sells this, and I found one online discussion on it from several years ago during which nobody posted any solution. I also asked them for the solution and they didn't get back to me. :)

Nope - it looks like it can be done! See the comment from @ads_yo below.

Absolutely love the implication that we are in any way masters of this!! Thanks for watching :)

I'm glad it wasn't just us - there's now a few people who've had the same issue! It's a shame, because ultimately it's a silly thing to get stuck on and they could easily have designed this part of the game so much better. Perhaps it wasn't play-tested in its final form.

These games are quite variable, but conversely they do also have quite a bit of variety in the way they solve. Mind you I definitely do prefer Exit too, but when comparing with Unlock it's more of a toss-up. :) Unlock has the advantage of being nicely self-contained, though, and not needing the bulky (mildly annoying) decoder. Thanks so much for watching, and commenting!

Always look forward to your next post

@@keithgibbins7061 Thanks for watching! :)

I have most of the Escape Room the Game games, although they seem to be published differently in almost every country so it's quite hard to get them all - some are unique to the US, or Australia, or non-English territories. We will definitely do Mysterium Unlock, but we've also had quite a few requests for Exit the Game's 'The Catacombs of Horror' so I think that will be our next video (both parts are already recorded but whether it's uploaded next depends on how much time I have to edit it :) ). Thanks so much for continuing to watch!

@drgareth oh ok. I haven't played Catacombs but it being split into two parts makes it sound tough, hehe

@BenDaresAll Yes, it comes in a bigger box than the other ones and is actually split into two parts by the makers. It’s basically two games in one. :)

@drgareth oooh I didn't know that, hehe

Oh fun - well done! I do enjoy Unlock games and this was particularly fun I thought. Thanks for watching! :)