Tea Light Message

In this puzzle, the players are presented with what appears to be an ordinary tea light candle.

The candle is lit for the players, and for a while it is just a normal candle like any other prop. But if the players happen to look back at the candle later, they might notice something forming in the wax.

Later, the candle’s wax becomes completely clear, and the message is clearly visible.

This challenge does not require the players to solve anything. Rather this is a hidden item that is difficult to find even though it is clearly placed among the game items. It is difficult because when the players first start the game, the message cannot be seen and, after an initial glance, the players may not take a close enough look again. Plus, it is just a fun effect.

This puzzle is created by deconstructing a tea light candle and placing a paper with the message drawn on it underneath the wax. Start with a fresh tea light (with uncolored wax) and pop the wax out of its metal bowl.

Next, cut out a piece of paper in a circle that can fit at the bottom of the metal bowl. Plain white copy paper works well. (The paper will not burn as long as you don’t let the candle burn all the way out, and you will have plenty of time before that.) You can use wax to trace out the shape.

After tracing the circle, cut out the paper and write the message on the paper. Place the paper against the wax with the message pressed against the wax and then place the wax, wick, and message back in the metal bowl with the message on the bottom.

The tea light candle is now ready to be lit.

Note that in the pictures above, I’ve taken out the wick, fed the wick through a hole in the paper, and placed the paper between the wax and the base of the wick. In the tea lights I was using, the wick was not attached to the wax (before it was lit). In other tea lights, the wax is already melted to the wick. If this is the case, you probably won’t be able to remove the wick without breaking it. In this case, you can probably just put the paper under both wax and wick. Just make sure none of the message is underneath the wick base.

I recommend testing this before using it in your escape room. The main thing to get right is making sure the timing works well. When I first built mine, I found that it took between 1 hr and 1 1/2 hr to fully see the writing on the paper. This is too long as your escape room will probably finish in this time.

I worked around this problem by lighting the candle before the escape room and waiting the 1 - 1 1/2 hr to see the message and then blow the candle out. When the candle cools down, the wax will become opaque again and the message will be obscured. When I lit it again for the escape room, it now only took about 30 minutes to become clear. You might be able to quicken the time by removing some of the wax instead, but it will likely be hard to do precisely.

At any rate, there will be a long delay between when the candle is lit and when the message is visible. As such, it is probably not fair to make the players light the candles as part of the puzzle. First, players have no way of knowing if their actions are helping solve the puzzle. Second, a puzzle that requires players to wait around for 30 minutes will not be very fun. Instead, light the candle as players enter the room. It works best to make this part of the escape room scenario (for example like the ghost chasers escape room).