Map Trace

This puzzle first involves a map. The map can be mounted on the wall or made available in a box. The map can be of real or imaginary places. It can be global or for a local area. It does not matter but the location and scale should match the theme of the escape room.

For the example below, I am using a digital world map provided by the UN. This map likely has more detail than is easily printed for use by players. For a world map, consider using a commercially printed map. You might already have a large-format world map in your house. Or perhaps you have a globe. Or you might even have a board game with a convenient map printed on its board such as Risk or Pandemic.

The second clue of this puzzle involves a collection of locations on this map. The players might find multiple airline tickets with the following departures and destinations. (They are shown in a table here for brevity, but it will be more interesting to provide each of these transfers on their own card.)

An optional third component of this puzzle is a hint for the proper order of the locations. In this example, the connections of the departures to arrivals trace out a path. Another clue could be to assign a date to each location or order by some property of the locations (such as population). If players are expected to reorder them, it is best to provide each location on a separate card to make sorting easier. For a simpler puzzle, simply provide the list of locations in the proper order.

Given the clue above, the order in which the locations were visited are as follows.

Once the players have determined the proper order of locations, they have to trace out the path on the provided map.

A key feature of this path is that each segment goes primarily in a cardinal direction: north, south, east, or west. In this example, the path goes south, east, north, east, north, west.

This sequence of directions is finally used to open a directional lock with the directions corresponding to the directions on the map. In this case, the lock opens up with the code down, right, up, right, up, left.