Spy School Escape Room!

Spy School by Stuart Gibbs, in which "twelve-year-old Ben Ripley leaves his public middle school to attend the CIA's highly secretive Espionage Academy, which everyone is told is an elite science school," is one of the most popular book series for middle schoolers at Overlake. So I decided we needed a Spy School escape room. Looking around online, I found that the Wauwatosa Public Library in Wisconsin had created one for their patrons, and they generously shared their outline and other files with me. As they hadn't retained all of their puzzle information, I created a few of those, and Andrea McCandlish helped me greatly by creating some fun prop "wanted" posters and other decor items for the room. 

During the escape room, kids had to solve a pattern puzzle, find a hidden lockbox, solve a complicated mathematical equation that (counterintuitively) led to a word lock, examine tiny words on a map to determine an itinerary, solve a shape puzzle to open a color lock, and solve a book cipher to open a four-digit lock to get their cookie prize. Several groups participated, and fun was had by all!

Thanks so much to all the students who participated, Andrea McCandlish for prop help, and Jennifer Hron from Wisconsin for sending me all the files from her library's escape room!