2:00

a poop shelf. A poop shelf. A

2:02

poop shelf that is not

2:04

submersed in water. So a

2:06

great feature of toilets is

2:10

submerging poop in water

2:12

so that everything is

2:15

in there and you don't have to deal with it. The

2:18

Dutch were like, no, let's have it

2:20

out there, just out there for everybody

2:22

to understand and appreciate. And I

2:24

feel like that's a bad call because I feel

2:26

like submerging poop in water is a primary

2:29

and positive function of toilets. There

2:32

are some ideas. It is true. It's

2:34

true. I did notice that American

2:36

toilets got a lot less smelly. Yeah, there's

2:38

so much water in an American toilet that they don't

2:41

smell as much. A

2:43

ridiculously large amount of water. Yes.

2:46

Look, I said I could go. The

2:49

thing about an American, the trade-off you get for

2:51

an American toilet is you need a plunger. The

2:53

fact that you have all the water already in the toilet, you

2:56

means you have to suck the water out, which

2:59

means you have to have a very narrow pipe

3:01

to get enough pressure to suck the water, which

3:03

is why American toilets clog. I've

3:06

never once touched a plunger in my life.

3:08

I've never seen, the only time I've ever

3:10

seen a clogged toilet in Australia was when

3:12

someone took in high school an

3:14

entire rotisserie chicken and shoved it down there.

3:18

That's it because we have less water in

3:20

a toilet and you add water to push

3:22

everything through and so the pipe is a

3:25

lot larger so they don't clog.

3:28

So that's the trade-off. Grab your

3:30

rotisserie chicken. A 15-year-old

3:32

boy. I'm going to throw this

3:34

down the toilet. Is

3:38

that unusual for an American 15-year-old?

3:41

Listen, teenage boys. Happens all the time.

3:44

That's the beautiful universal is that

3:46

teenage boys the world over make

3:48

incredibly stupid decisions. Not only

3:50

do we not know why he would

3:52

do that. I'm sure he didn't know the moment. I'm

3:54

sure like two seconds later you're like why did you

3:56

do that? I literally have no idea. I

3:59

don't know what happened. I just felt right in

4:02

the moment. At my sensible girls school, they would

4:04

never do that to a chicken because that costs money.

4:06

You just take the giant rolls of toilet paper that

4:08

are already in there and that's what you stuff the

4:10

toilet with. Yeah, I don't know. Kids are

4:12

weird. But that's not what we're talking about. We're

4:14

talking about puzzles. That's true. That's true.

4:17

I can't explain. I hate

4:20

to get, I hate to deny your

4:22

segue, but I do have to just

4:24

real quickly jump into the whole the

4:26

water goes the other way in the

4:28

toilet, northern hemisphere, southern hemisphere

4:30

thing. Oh, the Coriolis effect. Yeah.

4:34

But it's a lie. It's all a lie.

4:36

Apparent. Apparent. Look, to be honest, again,

4:39

Australian toilets, the way they flush, nothing

4:41

spins at all because we're not, we just,

4:43

everything gets pushed through. Well, there

4:45

you go. And it's all just based off

4:48

of whatever direction the water is pushed in

4:50

the US because the system is too small

4:52

to be affected by the Coriolis effect. So

4:54

in the northern and southern hemisphere, yes, things

4:57

rotate in different directions, but not in a

4:59

little tiny system that's that

5:01

small. You can just change it however you want to change

5:03

it. So I just had to get that out there. There

5:05

are a couple of occasions where the Simpsons is a big

5:07

old liar. Yeah. It's only relevant if

5:09

you're going to pee into a tornado. That's

5:12

right. Or perhaps a hurricane or typhoon.

5:15

Or a cyc, whatever you want. Yeah, sure. But

5:18

let's talk about the room. Sorry. The two of

5:20

you got through the room. You did very well.

5:22

You were, you, you, you, you, it

5:24

was quite puzzle-y this room. This wasn't sort of

5:26

much like interactive. No, yeah.

5:28

It was an unusual one for my

5:30

writing where it was pretty much just stuck

5:32

standard. Story isn't developing as

5:34

you go through. One

5:36

goal. Just go to puzzle, go to

5:39

puzzle, go to puzzle. Do you guys, as you

5:41

were playing through, did you, did either of you

5:43

have like a moment for yourself that you were

5:45

proud of that you felt the smartest as you

5:47

were playing? Oh God, no, never.

5:50

I felt, I felt

5:52

a constant series of shame. First

5:54

of all, like I fully

5:57

defer like the puzzle ability to

5:59

Matt. like Matt is much

6:01

better equipped to navigate these circumstances

6:03

than I am. But like

6:06

just the having like the fence

6:08

post clue, like any time where

6:10

I have a clue or like,

6:12

we don't know how to employ

6:14

this, that is just a lingering

6:16

specter of guilt hanging over my head for

6:18

the duration until we reach the point in

6:20

the puzzle where like, oh, we can actually

6:22

use this. So

6:25

that's where I was at. I will say, Jeff, though, the thing

6:27

that you did do well is

6:30

stuff that a lot of people struggle with, which

6:32

is like escape room

6:35

management, right? You were very, you're always incredibly on

6:37

top of like, here's what we've got, have we

6:39

used this yet? Let's check back in with these

6:41

objects. This thing could connect to these things. Here

6:44

are all the things that have a four by

6:46

four grid. Like that sort of skill, you

6:48

know, often, like even if you let Matt swoop

6:51

in to solve it, I

6:53

think it is an underrated skill in escape rooms to

6:56

be like, I know what everything is and where it

6:58

is, and let's keep

7:00

everything going and moving and checking it off. And I

7:02

think you did that perfectly for the entire room, for

7:04

both Matt and for the audience at home. So I

7:07

don't think you should propoo your own performance. I

7:10

thank you. I'm glad that

7:12

my paranoia found a

7:14

positive manifestation to this.

7:17

Yeah, no, I mean, there wasn't anything

7:19

that stood out to me necessarily.

7:22

I definitely had moments where

7:24

I was like looking at

7:26

stuff and just going like, I have no idea what

7:29

to do next. But

7:31

there were also, there were some great

7:33

aha moments, you know, sort

7:35

of noticing that, hey, this just,

7:38

you know, at the beginning, the towel rack lines

7:40

up with the grid of the numbers and, you

7:42

know, things along those lines, seeing

7:44

the fact that the button was the start button,

7:46

right? That's where we're gonna start. And that's part

7:48

of the key to that snake is that it

7:51

starts at start and it ends at okay. And

7:53

then all the rest goes through the numbers. Yeah,

7:55

right. Which, Jethro, like I didn't even think

7:57

about the fact that it pointed right at the okay.

7:59

it didn't even occur to me, I was just

8:02

like, well, that part is just hanging off

8:04

the edge for fun. I don't know

8:06

what I thought. Like I was like, no, that's

8:08

not part of it at all. Which

8:10

is just stupid. It's all part of it. But

8:13

yeah, right. And I mean, one

8:15

of the things that I really love about

8:17

the puzzles, and this is always true when

8:20

I'm listening to the show too, is that like they,

8:23

everything means something. There are

8:25

very few red herrings. And

8:28

that's one of the things in escape rooms

8:30

that drive me kind of crazy is like

8:32

when somebody is like, oh, look, you're in

8:34

an office. Oh, look, we're gonna put a

8:36

bunch of papers everywhere. We're gonna put a

8:38

bunch of things on the wall that don't

8:40

mean anything except for this one little thing

8:42

that's right over here that, you know, and

8:44

it's like, what is that? That's not

8:46

like, and then they're like, well, that's pretty hard. That

8:48

took you a long time. And it's like, no, that's

8:50

not what hard is. That's just time

8:53

consuming and annoying. And we've sort of

8:55

talked about this before. It's one of

8:57

these things that it's almost like the

8:59

trade-off of the medium,

9:01

right? So for us, we

9:04

don't need to fill in blanks, right?

9:06

We just tell you it looks like a bathroom

9:08

and you get it. It looks like a bathroom.

9:10

It looks like an office. And then you can

9:12

picture an office. And then we only tell you

9:14

all of the relevant parts. Whereas in a real

9:16

escape room, if they only put the things in

9:19

that were the relevant bits, it would be like,

9:21

oh, I'm in a bare room with nothing in

9:23

it. Right? So they have to like build out

9:25

their core and it's hard. Sometimes they do it

9:27

poorly. You're right. Sometimes it is

9:29

too much stuff that interact a ball, but

9:32

they definitely, there is a much harder line they have to take

9:34

where there are some

9:36

things where you have

9:38

to put them in because like, hey, I know

9:40

we're never going to use these curtains, but if you looked

9:42

at the room without the curtains in, you'd be like, I'm

9:45

in an office building. Not sure. So

9:48

they have to build out decor and they have to

9:50

reach that line of life. It's just one of those

9:52

challenges that we don't have to deal with. It's like

9:54

video games often make that challenge by just going, and

9:56

these ones will color in bright yellow. So people will

9:58

know that they're the relevant parts of the. all, you

10:00

know, that one highlights when you look at it, like

10:02

as you scroll past, it goes, yeah,

10:06

it's very much about directing attention to

10:09

the things that matter and directing

10:11

attention away from the things that don't. Yeah.

10:14

It's interesting that you mentioned like video in

10:16

that way, because I noticed that with some

10:19

side scrollers that feel like they haven't got

10:21

that balance, right? They've got some deep focus.

10:23

So they're back, some elements of the background

10:25

look a bit foregroundy or some elements of

10:27

the foreground background. It's a classic, especially it's

10:29

slightly older games where there wasn't like a

10:32

developed visual language for this, where sometimes you're like, am

10:34

I meant to interact with that? It's like, oh, I

10:37

could stand on this the whole time. I thought it

10:39

was a tree 20 miles away. So no, no, it's

10:41

a platform. Come on. So

10:43

these sorts of everyone facing their own. And

10:45

we, I think, luckily have a medium where

10:48

we can do, we can solve that quite

10:50

easily. Because it basically just like you fill

10:52

in the blanks will tell you details and

10:54

you sort of have an innate understanding that

10:57

if you filled in the blank, that's

10:59

not relevant, right? Like you're

11:01

picturing, you know, tiles like this. We didn't

11:03

mention that. So don't even bring it

11:06

up. And I was going

11:08

to say what I love about that

11:10

is that then it distills it down

11:13

to just being great puzzles. Right?

11:16

Because there doesn't, we can't have this like, oh, there's

11:18

a bunch of stuff to look through that's going to

11:20

fill the time because maybe there's going to be 10

11:22

people in this room or maybe there's going to be

11:24

two. Like you know what

11:26

you're dealing with. And your puzzles are

11:28

always the thing that is the time

11:31

is being spent on solving the puzzle.

11:33

And to me, that's the beauty of an escape

11:35

room. Like that's the fun of an escape room

11:37

is solving the puzzle. Yeah, I agree. Sifting through

11:39

data. Yeah. Yeah. So

11:42

I really like that. I'll also say that like,

11:44

in particular, having listened to this and having participated

11:46

in it, like Danny is

11:49

particularly generous in

11:51

terms of nudging people towards like, okay,

11:55

you're focusing on something that's not important.

11:58

Like here's the important. And

12:01

as a panicked

12:03

person trying to find out what

12:05

I should be looking at, it's

12:08

greatly appreciated. It's not even doing,

12:10

I'm not doing that because I'm going, oh no,

12:12

look at them struggling. They're doing so badly. They

12:14

need help with that. It's more

12:16

when someone focuses on something that you

12:18

know is wrong for long enough, if

12:20

you let it keep going, the more

12:22

my brain is going, okay, once they

12:24

find the real answer, they're going to

12:26

be more and more unsatisfied. The

12:29

longer they've spent on the wrong things. So

12:31

maybe let's nip that in the bud

12:34

to maximize happiness. Yeah,

12:36

that's great. And also I think that

12:38

there's an element of podcast

12:40

production here too, right? As

12:42

people who also do a podcast, you got to

12:44

keep the show moving, right? Like if

12:46

it's- That's Bill's job in post.

12:50

I don't know anything about that. But it is during the episodes

12:52

as well. No, you're right. Like we want to

12:54

make sure there's a pace that is kept up

12:56

that is meant. Especially there

12:58

was like, I think later on, like

13:01

near the end of the episode, there are moments where you're

13:04

trying to figure out exactly how to look

13:06

at the shower. And while again, we don't

13:08

try and ever give anything away. All we

13:10

said was like, I'm pretty sure there's

13:12

some other thing that you haven't looked at. And you

13:14

were like, oh, I have the shower note. And right.

13:17

We probably wouldn't have given that little nudge quite as

13:19

early as we had if the shower was the first

13:21

thing we would have been like, ah, they'll fumble. Because

13:23

maybe they'll find it 50 minutes down the line. But

13:25

when it's right near the end, it's like, no, this

13:27

is not a tiny sticking point. So we'll give them

13:29

the nudge to be like, hey, is

13:31

there anything else? Do you want to look at any? Do you

13:33

have anything else? And then go, yeah, you know, so it changes

13:35

a bit of the pace there. But yeah, you're right. It is

13:38

also to keep to make sure it keeps

13:40

to a nice sort of flow and

13:42

timing. Because yeah, if we weren't

13:44

recording, we would we could shut up and let you play for

13:47

four hours if you needed to. Sure.

13:52

It's also an interesting

13:54

comparison to the pie. I guess that Matt

13:56

and I do where we go through Wikipedia

13:58

because like we don't have. somebody

14:00

who has the answer. So

14:02

we're definitely grasping at straws.

14:05

And like usually we find our

14:07

way, we muddle through all right.

14:09

But there are some times where we're like, oh my

14:12

God, this is a

14:14

desperate trial to

14:16

find our way to the solution. I'm

14:19

just gonna try and zoom out as much as I can.

14:22

I gotta find my way back to planet earth and

14:26

go back in on a different pathway.

14:28

Exactly. It's true, it's definitely true. We have to

14:31

do that. No,

14:33

I thought it was a very fun room. I really liked

14:35

it. And I can say it cause I didn't write it.

14:37

I just ran it. I will

14:39

note one of the things that was interesting cause it

14:41

was sort of the biggest block

14:43

at the start for you guys. And

14:46

I think it works really well is

14:49

that there's sort of like this four by

14:51

four grid in multiple forms. It's an art

14:53

installation. Yeah, it's the four by four numbers,

14:55

the four by four tiles, the four by

14:57

four version of the snake, the four by

15:00

four tiles on the floor, the four by

15:02

four tiles on the grid. Was that when

15:05

you started writing this, Danny, were you like, I'm gonna do

15:07

that deliberately or did it sort of end up that way

15:09

and you embraced it or did you not notice until right

15:11

now? Obviously

15:14

noticed it. I have

15:16

no idea where the level

15:18

of intention came from. I

15:21

think it may have come from the fact that

15:23

just the button panel was going to do so

15:25

much and so whatever

15:27

its arrangement was had to stick and everything

15:29

ended up being based off that. So it

15:31

sort of felt inevitable unless I added like

15:33

30 more buttons and just partition them for

15:35

different puzzles. That's fair. I

15:37

think, cause it's interesting. Cause usually when we write a room

15:39

like that, that's the sort of thing we would note and

15:42

avoid. But I think it worked fairly well in this

15:44

one. They were definitely more forced in that way. And

15:49

I was very much, I think

15:51

doing across my fingers of going,

15:54

okay, red and blue tiles, neither

15:56

of them is particularly yes or

15:58

no in color. So

16:01

maybe that will seem just murky

16:03

enough that they'll pay attention to

16:05

the other tower act more initially until

16:08

he gets involved. Oh, of course. That's

16:10

a big difference. I definitely would have been right.

16:13

I liked the fact that it was that way because

16:15

we had stuff where it was like,

16:18

oh, can we do something with this yet? Let's

16:21

try a couple things. Oh, it doesn't seem to be working. And then you

16:23

were also kind of like, doesn't seem like you'd

16:25

know enough yet. And it's like, okay, yeah, that's

16:27

true. It's also like

16:30

you've mentioned, you have a significant

16:32

Puzzle Hunt background. Puzzle Hunts, much

16:34

more than escape rooms, require you

16:36

to make leaps and connections without

16:38

something explicitly prompting you there. So

16:40

you're much more likely to try

16:42

to find those things. Yeah,

16:44

and I think that had this been, if

16:46

I always, like when I'm listening to your

16:48

show or when we were in this, I'm

16:50

very much picturing it as I'm doing it.

16:53

And I was picturing this and

16:55

I was thinking like, well, if this was a room that I

16:58

went to with like, four

17:01

other people or something, somebody

17:03

would go over to that panel and I would

17:05

be like, just start doing combinations. Just

17:08

do combinations. And they'd probably

17:10

solve it before we knew why. And

17:12

we'd be like, okay, how did that work? I don't know,

17:15

I just, it was this. And then

17:17

you try to back solve it. And you're like, why

17:19

did that work that way? And

17:22

why, because you wanna know, like you

17:24

still wanna know, even if you happen

17:26

to randomly happen upon it. Absolutely. And

17:28

I'll say for me, the blue and

17:30

the red towels, like the

17:33

image that I see, the

17:35

red towels all have like a

17:37

swirl in them. Yes. That

17:41

is like, suggests that like, the

17:44

red is true and the blue is

17:46

false. Like the red represents like the

17:48

presence of something and the blue towels

17:51

don't have that swirl in them. It's

17:54

a heating coil. Yeah. I

17:56

will adjust the picture before the episode goes

17:58

out to make the swirls cool. No! Don't

18:02

get all because I want the people

18:04

to see what we saw because they

18:06

will be equally confused by it because

18:09

if the blue tails had a similar swirl, then I'd

18:11

be like, okay, well blue and red are just different,

18:13

I don't know what they mean. But like, for

18:16

me, the way that we saw it

18:18

is like the red was more significant

18:20

than the blue in some way. No,

18:23

Jethro, I don't know what you're

18:25

talking about. I didn't see anything

18:27

like that. You're fired!

18:29

You're fired! I don't know what you're

18:31

on about. I

18:35

thought it was really nice. It was an odd

18:37

setting for a room. What

18:40

made you think, Danny, like I'll just

18:42

stick it in a bathroom that has no toilet

18:44

in it? I have no idea. I

18:47

don't know. I

18:50

can't remember even slightly where this one came from and

18:52

I don't have my notebook in front of me so

18:54

I can't use my own notes as helpful prompting. So

18:57

I would ask a broader question, Danny, is like

19:00

how, like what

19:02

is your library of possible

19:05

escape rooms? Like how many

19:07

ideas deep are you? Are

19:10

you desperately preparing for the next one? Or do

19:12

you have like, you know, 20 or 30

19:14

ideas deep that

19:17

you just haven't fleshed out yet? I have a

19:19

page in my notebook that has a couple

19:23

of dozen maybe dot points that gets added to

19:25

every so often when I think of a

19:27

new one. Some of them are very

19:29

broad. Like I'm pretty sure one of

19:31

them is just the words dust adventure.

19:35

It's a dust adventure. I know what that

19:37

means. We may have talked about it on

19:39

the podcast before. I'm assuming it's like a

19:41

Terry Pratchett carpet people sort of thing where

19:43

we people live in the carpet. So

19:46

maybe harvesting dust. Yeah,

19:49

I think one of them just says mailbox. I

19:52

and you've got things like that. So I haven't gone

19:54

into any level of detail. So when I need to

19:57

come up with a new room, it tends to be

19:59

just look at the. that page, see

20:01

if any of them just

20:03

feels right in the moment to

20:05

grab onto. Very nice. But

20:08

yeah, so far, still haven't run out. Well,

20:10

they've all been great thus far. Yeah.

20:13

And I love the fact that

20:15

this medium lends itself to being

20:17

able to do fantastical, amazing things,

20:19

right? That you are not inhibited

20:22

by an actual physical space or

20:24

a budget or anything

20:26

along those lines, anything can happen.

20:28

And that is, that is fantastic.

20:30

And little things like OH and

20:32

S. A toilet can

20:34

totally come out of a, of a bathroom floor hole.

20:37

No one's going to fall in. Voice

20:39

activated by the way. I mean, that's clear. Now

20:44

I can't remember what I said for Master John. I

20:47

think I just yelled it in

20:49

various strange ways, but,

20:52

uh, it was a, it

20:54

wasn't, I think it was very good to

20:56

watch you Matt do that final puzzle. Because

20:59

when I had to take out the, um, the

21:02

posts, I then like rewrote everything

21:04

to get the new order of numbers. I found everything

21:06

and then I tried to look for the message. And

21:08

the fact that you already had the message set up

21:10

meant that you could just be like, Oh, well,

21:13

half the time, I don't have to worry about the

21:15

specifics of exactly which post and

21:17

how it's affected the words, cause I know

21:19

what's going to be these. So destroying, I

21:21

can just look at the start and then

21:23

John, I can look right over the end

21:25

and find that it was very smooth and

21:27

very clean. That took me so much longer

21:29

just to say, I did. We did talk

21:31

about during the play test right at the

21:33

end of it, which isn't recorded, unfortunately, cause

21:35

I was so sick. It would have been

21:37

bad audio. I could barely talk at that

21:39

point. I, this is me at an improved

21:41

level. Yeah. Um, was right at

21:43

the end. Uh, Bill, you had

21:45

looked at the fence post briefly and very

21:48

quickly said, no, that doesn't match that bathroom

21:50

sign. So I'll ignore it. Yes. Now I

21:52

mentioned to you, if you pressed it a

21:54

little bit harder, you can get so far

21:56

as to get the word call, which is,

21:58

do you think that is too much? promise

22:00

and they will stick with the fence and

22:02

spot what's going on on their own?

22:05

Or do you think we can cross our fingers and say

22:07

that probably won't happen? And luckily it did work out

22:10

perfectly because Matt you were like, it's gibberish, but

22:12

it was so promising it said call and I

22:14

don't know but it definitely doesn't work and I

22:16

will. But then you got to

22:18

be rewarded for your early efforts at the end. Yeah,

22:20

because you'd already started to solve it. So it kind of

22:22

worked out really nice. I hoped that would be the feeling.

22:26

So one of the things after I found out

22:28

what was happening here, I was like, oh, if

22:30

I just pushed it a little bit harder, I

22:32

bet I could have figured that out. But

22:35

there have been so many and again from just

22:37

doing so much puzzle solving, there have been so

22:39

many puzzles where you're like, you

22:43

have no idea what you're doing and you

22:45

try a thousand different things and

22:47

you start one and you get like the first

22:49

three or four letters work out really well and

22:51

you're like, yeah, this is great. And then the

22:53

next five are gibberish and you're like, scratch

22:55

it, go on to the next thing. Because

22:58

you're just like, you're going down the

23:00

wrong path. And there

23:02

have been a number of times where

23:04

it's turned out that like, yeah, it

23:07

was a Z and then

23:09

an X and then something else. But it turns out

23:11

that there is an element

23:13

called Z exophyaleomize. He was like,

23:15

gee, you fool. The

23:18

atomic number out of that you'd have solved the

23:20

puzzle, you know, and just think, oh,

23:22

gosh. But yeah, that's that

23:26

was that was very fun. It reminds me of

23:28

one of these things which I've never I've never solved. I've

23:30

never really attempted to solve. But

23:33

one of these ones, you know, like

23:35

Japanese puzzle makers last puzzle

23:37

and he was like, I love is my favorite puzzle I've ever

23:39

made. Look at this. And it was one

23:41

of these ones was like, you know, figure out the pattern

23:43

of these numbers. And it's like one number feeds into another

23:45

to get to the next and then to the next and

23:47

then to the next. And when you

23:49

start it, it's like, this is

23:51

the dumbest puzzle ever, because I'm pretty sure they're just like,

23:54

this number just doubles, like, or you just like add them

23:57

together and it does, you know, as like

23:59

six and six. and then the next number is 12, you're like,

24:01

cool. And then like 12 and eight and this number is 20.

24:03

Like, what are we taught? This is easy. And it goes like

24:05

five steps. And then only one

24:07

of the steps, it's like, you

24:09

know, 30 and seven is 38. And

24:13

then that's it. And then all the rest look

24:15

like they just had to get, and then it's

24:17

like, wait, but it's the same pattern. It's like,

24:19

it's the same pattern. And you go, what is

24:21

happening? I was following it, it seems so easy.

24:24

Then one thing threw it off. It's like, that's

24:26

right. And it's this insidious, really wildly difficult puzzle

24:28

that seems like it's the most simple complex. And

24:30

then just one thing, there's one tiny wrench right

24:32

near the end. And you have to re-examine everything.

24:34

And it's that same feeling when you're following a

24:36

path, you're like, this is easy. C, A, L,

24:38

L. Oh no,

24:40

mess makers does not fit. What is happening?

24:43

Everything's broken. Oh no.

24:45

Yeah, it's like that, but done

24:48

crazily by an amazing puzzle to go. But

24:52

yeah, it's an interesting feeling. Cause yeah,

24:54

it is always, it's always one of those things.

24:56

And it always got me with bathyma now in

24:59

Baye's Me Now. I was like, first last letter

25:01

is B-A-T-H, that's bath. I'm going to set that

25:03

to the side. Obviously this is the right pattern.

25:06

E-M-E, what is happening?

25:08

I had the word bath and now I've got Eem.

25:12

Does the T-H make it theme? Oh, that's what

25:14

I did for A, it was bath theme now.

25:16

Like right now you should bar the theme. And

25:19

so during the playtest, it didn't have been like,

25:21

is it ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba.

25:26

You know, is that what I meant to be doing to get the toilet to

25:28

a pit? I

25:31

really got confused, but it was just, you know, to me

25:33

that was when it became gibberish. I had to realize that

25:35

bathe is a word. You

25:39

got bathe once in your attempts. Bathe

25:42

Me Now, that's the phrase. And

25:47

it's always challenging to, I would imagine

25:49

to as a designer of these, to

25:52

find like, there's

25:54

only so many things that you can do

25:56

to like leave. people

26:00

to a sentence or

26:03

letters like, you know, there's, there's always

26:06

like, you know, numbers turn

26:08

into letters like that. They like

26:10

there's, there's always, I would imagine as a

26:12

designer of this, never having done it myself,

26:15

that there's always the, how can

26:17

I find a different way to lead

26:19

to a string of letters? Yeah,

26:22

it's like, there's only like, it's a

26:24

dozen puzzles. Yeah. And

26:28

I do find it especially tricky if you're

26:30

trying to make a sentence, like a full

26:32

instruction to give someone because those are quite

26:34

long. And if you are trying to

26:36

embed that in something, that something

26:38

is going to be longer. And

26:41

eventually it's just going to get tedious, both on

26:43

your behalf for having to read or look at

26:45

and mess around with something that's very big and

26:48

me for having to draw and write the thing.

26:51

Nobody enjoys that. God, I swear we've

26:53

had that before in like a Nancy Drew game or something

26:55

where it was like, you know, you

26:58

siphon, you're like, you put in something and you

27:00

had to take the end and like all these

27:02

highlighted letters. But the original piece

27:04

of text was like three pages and then you get

27:06

to like, what's the hidden message? It's like, hello,

27:09

welcome to my hidden message. I hope you

27:11

are solving me now. The code that you

27:13

will is like, why did you make this

27:15

so long? Yeah. Well, like

27:17

in an actual escape rooms, like you've

27:20

only got, you've got these combinations and

27:22

locks and there's only so many permutations.

27:24

There's like locks that

27:26

have numbers, there's locks that have

27:28

letters and there's directional locks that

27:30

have up, down, left, right. And

27:33

that's about it. And there's only

27:35

so many ways to try to get to

27:37

those. And

27:39

again, right, this is talking about like the limitations

27:41

of the medium. If we wanted

27:43

to make an obscure type of a lock, right?

27:45

Like this lock, you know, has a dial in

27:48

the middle that sets different numbers

27:50

to other numbers. And we can just say

27:52

what it is. Our only limit to how well we can

27:54

describe and do it. Whereas if you're an escape room, it's

27:56

like, okay, I've thought of a ridiculous lock. I have to

27:58

get some, I have to find a locksmith to

28:01

make me this custom built for thousands

28:03

of dollars. And then I need 700

28:05

copies of it because it's going to

28:07

break every couple of months. They

28:10

really are limited to whatever is commercially

28:12

available and then justifying its presence. Whereas

28:14

in audio, you can be like, my

28:16

lock has carbon, sulfur,

28:19

potassium, and argon. Yeah, chemical

28:21

locks. And you have

28:24

to get it right first try or it will stab you. There's

28:26

a note in Danny's notebook right now, which

28:29

we saw when we were trying to figure

28:31

out what the hell we meant by it,

28:33

which said like six digit lock, but like

28:35

fingers, you know? And

28:38

it was like in a necromancy. There's an idea for like,

28:40

you do like a wizardly necromancer escape room and there's like

28:42

a six digit lock and it turns out you have to

28:45

find all these fingers and put the correct fingers in the

28:47

right order. And it's just

28:49

a bit, but we can just make that like that's

28:51

now made. The process of coming up with the joke

28:53

is also the same as the process of making it happen.

28:56

It's now real, right? Six digit lock. I'm done.

28:59

That's all the work that you need to do. It's fantastic.

29:01

You know? And so, yeah, we can explore

29:03

those a little bit better, but yeah, when

29:05

you're really restricted, it can be tough. You

29:08

know? On other notes about the medium

29:10

build, how did you find GMing this one? I

29:12

feel it's your first time GMing one that I

29:15

wrote? It's one that you've written. Yeah. I've

29:17

GM two rooms before that guests wrote in.

29:20

And that was interesting because that was much harder, not

29:23

so much because of the quality of the writing,

29:25

but because we were just sent the room. Right?

29:28

And so to be able to run it, I had to

29:30

like figure out how it worked

29:32

and read through everything and see. This one you still

29:34

got to play. Whereas this one I got to play

29:36

first. So I knew what it felt like

29:39

and I knew what the limitations were and what should

29:41

be right and what should be wrong. And

29:43

so I go. On the other hand, I don't think you'd read

29:45

through the notes. No, no, I hadn't read through

29:48

the notes. There were a couple of sentences, especially where I

29:50

came in with a certain inflection and then went, oh, that's

29:52

wrong. In general, while

29:55

you were reading everything, I just went, oh my

29:57

God, you take this so much more seriously than

29:59

I do. You're very

30:01

sincere. How sarcastic

30:03

do I come across when I read out my

30:05

things? Not at all. You've always accused yourself of

30:07

this, but I don't think you do. For

30:10

people at home, every time Danny hears a

30:13

little bit of a recording of a Scatters

30:16

podcast, Danny's just like, oh,

30:18

I sound so sarcastic. I sound like I'm making fun

30:20

of everybody. I sound like I don't want to be

30:22

here. And no one else has ever said this in

30:24

the history of listening to the show. So

30:27

I think that's just on you. I

30:29

think you guys do a great job

30:31

of the GMing. I

30:35

recently discovered a thing called Parsley.

30:37

Are you guys familiar with Parsley?

30:40

Like the food? Yeah. No,

30:42

no, no. It tastes nice. My parents used

30:44

to go all the way back here. It's

30:47

a collection of things by a guy named

30:49

Jared Sorensen. And

30:52

he essentially wrote these. They're

30:55

like old text adventures, but

30:58

they are done out loud. So

31:01

one person plays like the computer. Oh, so

31:03

very similar to this structural. And everybody else

31:05

gets to play the game. Oh, dang. Okay.

31:10

You're outside a bar

31:13

and says, go into the bar. You go into the bar.

31:15

In the bar, you see this and this. Go

31:17

over and look at the whatever. And it is

31:19

a very similar type of thing. Yeah, wow. It

31:22

is. And the thing with

31:24

our show is we talk about being escape rooms

31:26

and tabletop role play mixed together. But then usually

31:28

privately before I talk to people, when I email

31:30

them, I say, but really it's more like an

31:32

old text based adventure. It's like playing Zork. It's

31:35

like playing in a

31:37

mud or whatever. Zork, you lit

31:39

my heart on fire. But

31:43

really, because structurally, that's kind of like how you

31:45

play this game as well. It is. I

31:48

describe a thing and then you say, that was

31:50

a lot of my play. I was

31:52

a console kid growing up, but for

31:54

PC games, boot up the old

31:56

DOS, that was my style of game. It's

32:00

pretty much a look closer, look at

32:02

chest. All right, here's a description. Okay,

32:04

use this with chest. That's really more

32:06

the structure of how they're written out.

32:09

So that is very cool. Someone else has done a

32:11

similar sort of a thing. But the

32:14

thing that I found really, because I played

32:16

these with some of my friends like over

32:18

Zoom or whatever, and I was doing the

32:21

reading the parts, and it was

32:24

like you had to find where

32:26

the thing was, right? And there

32:28

were certain things, like if they did something, then you

32:30

had to track that down. And if you missed it

32:32

or didn't give them a thing, it

32:35

was bad news. And you guys are just very good at

32:38

knowing what to do. And I mean, obviously

32:40

you've written them, so that probably makes it a little

32:42

easier. I feel like in scope, they tend to

32:44

be more limited. Yeah, but really here's the

32:46

thing. And I think a big part of it as well is as

32:48

I was saying before, it's like

32:51

we edit down the show. Nothing content-wise, nothing

32:53

major. For people who are worried listening to

32:55

this, I always specify there's no major

32:57

like structural changes. We

33:00

never edit to like fix or

33:02

make people get things that they

33:04

didn't get, right? But for the flow, we'll edit down. And

33:06

part of that means that we- You don't miss anything. You don't miss any

33:09

muscles. Yeah, you never miss anything, everybody. But it means that

33:11

we can sort of relax

33:13

into the dead air occasionally. And so sometimes

33:16

when you're doing something with people live,

33:18

like if you're running a D&D game or

33:20

if you're doing something, you feel, especially or if you're

33:22

doing a recording that you know is gonna be streamed

33:24

or is live, you feel this necessity

33:26

to fill the blank space. And that's where

33:28

a lot of the time you will miss

33:31

something. Cause people say, oh, okay,

33:33

we go West. And you, you

33:35

know, or like we pick this up and we go

33:37

West and you think, okay, so you're heading West having

33:40

picked this thing up and then you just get caught

33:42

up in your own description. You read through the going

33:44

West part and you realize you never checked if there

33:46

was anything for the picking that thing up part. And,

33:49

you know, and for these games,

33:51

and also a good thing if you're playing games

33:53

in real life is to be able

33:55

to say, okay, cool, give me one sec. And

33:57

then just stop and look and double check

33:59

people just sit for like a minute and they're,

34:02

okay, cool, yes. And that, I like, that

34:04

happened in this episode once or twice of just like, we,

34:07

you know, we pull these things out and I'd

34:09

go, cool. Let me just check if there is

34:11

an action. No,

34:14

okay, cool. Yeah, all right, good. You

34:16

know, giving yourself room to be

34:18

like, I don't fully know, let

34:20

me just take a second and I

34:22

can figure it out. And luckily we have that capacity

34:25

on the show to be, to just

34:27

tell you to be quiet for a second. Like, sorry, give

34:29

me one moment. I'm gonna scroll through my notes.

34:31

I'm gonna see if there's anything there. Did you

34:33

leave in the part for this one when, when

34:35

Jethro went on his rant about like

34:38

the use of garbage cans in the

34:40

United States and the lack of

34:44

looking that it's very important that

34:46

people understand that garbage cans in

34:48

America are used for a very

34:50

particular purpose. And I feel

34:53

like it's important that the world and

34:56

the garbage cans are used. You said

34:58

all this during the, we did it, you said

35:00

all this during the room, man. I appreciate

35:02

that it was a 45 minute

35:05

monologue about garbage cans in America. Well,

35:08

you know what? The entire room ended up

35:10

being an art installation about resource management, so

35:12

it made sense. It was irrelevant. It was

35:14

totally relevant. Thank you. I'm

35:17

glad that my art is appreciated.

35:21

But look, I was so much fun to have you two

35:23

on. You did really well. And I think, I don't

35:26

know how much we had personally talked about puzzle

35:29

solving and escape room experience

35:32

on the previous times we've recorded together. So I'm

35:35

not sure if I, I think maybe we did

35:37

know that like math that you'd done like

35:40

puzzle hunt MIT stuff. And so

35:42

I think this worked out well as a room for

35:44

you because it was quite puzzle focused. Some

35:46

of the other rooms will have like one puzzle

35:48

and then a lot of environmental and

35:51

like examination and collection

35:53

and moving, which is good for people who are

35:55

like very RPG D&D

35:57

players who don't want to, you know. So I

35:59

think. I think this worked out really well as a

36:01

room for you two to play, because you smashed it,

36:03

you did very well. Yeah, whenever I designed

36:06

a room and we're getting to almost play

36:08

testy stage, those having to decide who the

36:10

guests are and without telling him anything about

36:12

the room, I have to sort of go,

36:14

okay, you want this sort of person for

36:16

this one. Who's comfortable doing a puzzle.

36:19

All right, cool. But I'm really glad

36:21

we were able to get you on the show. And- Yeah. Yeah,

36:24

and thank you so much. I'm sorry

36:26

you didn't get the normal experience, I'm

36:30

glad you got the premium experience of me

36:32

running the room. Well,

36:35

we are just thrilled to be asked to

36:39

even come on and do it. It

36:41

is an honor, honestly, and

36:45

so much fun. And since the first

36:47

time I even heard your show, it

36:49

was like a little dream to be

36:51

able to do this. So I can't believe

36:53

that we got to, and I thank you

36:55

so much for having us. We really appreciate

36:57

it. Yeah, absolutely. And

37:01

again, Matt is a far

37:03

more experienced puzzle guy than

37:05

I am, and it's always a delight to be able to

37:07

sort of draft off

37:10

of his expertise, but it's

37:12

an utter delight. And you guys always

37:14

put together such an incredible experience. So

37:17

thank you very much for having us on board.

37:19

And we really appreciated it. And keep

37:22

doing the amazing stuff that you're

37:24

doing. It's always a delight. Yeah,

37:26

well, look, it was wonderful to have you. If

37:29

people wanted to go and check out Drunkards Walk

37:31

or anything else that you're doing with your lives,

37:33

where can they go? Where should they look? So

37:38

I always direct people to our Linktree

37:41

because we don't really have a proper

37:43

website, so to speak. So if you

37:45

go to, if you're familiar

37:47

with Linktree, just it's slash Drunkards Walk. If

37:49

you're not familiar with Linktree, it's

37:52

linktr.ee slash Drunkards

37:55

Walk. And

37:57

I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well, so people can

37:59

just... click through and go, wow, look at all these links.

38:02

It's like a whole tree fall. That's right.

38:04

And you can give us topic suggestions.

38:06

And if you do, you could be

38:08

a guest on one of our walks.

38:11

You can send us emails.

38:13

You can find all of our episodes, obviously. And

38:16

yeah, there's various different little things linked on

38:18

there. So we are, I don't know when

38:21

this is dropping. This

38:23

is coming out not this week, but next week.

38:26

Okay, so we are just wrapping up season

38:28

10 of Drunkards Walk right

38:30

now. And we

38:33

will be, I think that gets

38:35

wrapped up in mid-July, I

38:38

think is when that'll be wrapping up. So you

38:40

can tune in. And if you're familiar with, I

38:43

mean, if you haven't gone back and heard the

38:45

episodes where we've had Bill and Danny on, go

38:47

and do that because they're amazing. If

38:50

you are familiar with Good Job Brain, Karen

38:54

Chu is our guest on

38:56

June the 12th, I

38:59

want to say 11th maybe, something like that. So you go

39:01

back a couple of weeks and you can listen to that

39:03

one. And

39:06

yeah, come listen to

39:08

what we're doing. That's

39:10

all I'm doing in my life that people would care about. And

39:13

I don't know if they'd even care about that. So, Jester,

39:16

do you have anything else? No, I mean,

39:18

that's it. Also, I'm on LinkedIn

39:21

trying to find a job. So

39:23

that's my other big passion at the

39:26

moment. But as far as entertainment, Drunkard

39:28

to Walk Podcast, we'll get you where

39:30

you want to go. Yeah,

39:32

lovely. And look, my advice for people who listen

39:34

is play along at home, figure

39:36

out where they're going, beat them to

39:38

it, and then email in saying, you

39:40

dummies, you missed this connection. You

39:43

should have gone via Nebraska, you

39:45

fools. Didn't you know shares from

39:47

Nebraska? Shares from Nebraska? Like, yes,

39:49

it's not true. But-

39:52

We would love that actually. We actually, I should also point

39:54

out we have a Facebook group. I

39:56

don't know if anybody still uses Facebook, but if you

39:59

do, we have a- group that you can come and

40:01

be a part of and you can chat about the

40:03

episodes and and share all those different types of things

40:05

and tell us how wrong we are Jethro loves to

40:07

hear these wrong. Please come and tell him more. It's

40:10

my favorite. I can only do it for so much.

40:12

Wonderful. Alright and thank you everybody at home for listening. Thank

40:14

you Danny for writing the room and I'm sorry you're so

40:16

sick that you couldn't run it but thank you for being

40:18

here to be part of the episode and the

40:21

post discussion. Glad I could help.

40:23

If you listened thank you so much. You're

40:26

all wonderful people. You're all cool. You're all cool

40:28

people for listening to

40:30

the show. If you want to help support

40:32

the show look the easiest way, the best

40:34

way is to tell people about it. Go

40:36

and spread the word. Just get

40:39

a street spot busking in your local

40:41

city center but instead of playing music

40:43

just play our show and

40:46

have everybody listen to it and yell out about

40:48

it. Be like one of those preachers who stands

40:50

on the corner yelling about thing but just be

40:52

like the end of

40:54

season 14 is coming. It's coming soon with

40:58

special guests struck at walk. Well

41:00

you just listen to it so I suppose you can say it's

41:03

the start of season 15. The

41:05

other way you can support is by signing up for

41:07

our patreon. We don't run ads or anything like this

41:10

on the show. We make our money through crowdfunding because

41:12

it's the best way to make money and

41:14

by which I mean it's the morally best way to make money in

41:16

my eyes. So everybody

41:19

who supports can appear as an NPC

41:21

in one of Danny's rooms. In this case

41:24

McKinley Sprinkles. Thank you so much. Single sprinkle

41:26

wasn't it? McKinley Sprinkle. I

41:28

apologize. So thank you so

41:30

much McKinley Sprinkle for being that

41:32

donor for this room. You've got

41:34

to be unimaginably wealthy and I hope you

41:37

appreciate it. Yes and

41:40

then also there's bonus audio. Every week there's

41:42

a new bonus episode up for our $5

41:44

donors. Mostly it's playtests. Whenever

41:46

we don't do a playtest or don't record it

41:48

such in this week there's other fun bonus stuff.

41:50

And there's two-minute mysteries of

41:52

us solving murder. We were just finishing

41:54

I think. Maybe with this episode that

41:56

we finish all of the two-minute

41:58

mystery and have to new version for the future

42:00

but lots of fun stuff. There's bonus,

42:03

there's vlogs of us reacting to escape rooms

42:05

in pop culture for $10 donors.

42:07

There's trivia and a whole bunch of fun stuff.

42:09

So thank you everybody who supports us there. You

42:12

being supporting us there means that we can make this

42:15

real main show free for everybody else and

42:17

it's a fantastic way to support

42:19

art in your community even

42:22

if your community is an international one like this one. So

42:24

thank you everyone for your support. Thank you everybody

42:27

for listening. Thank you again to Drunkard's Walk for

42:29

walking your way over here completely drunk

42:31

but still managing to solve

42:34

a few other puzzles. Thank

42:37

you. Bye everybody!