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Free · no sign-up · fifteen to twenty minutesMaths Escape Rooms

Fourteen narrative rooms, three or four locks each, fifteen to twenty minutes a room. They are built to end a lesson rather than fill one, and to be played by three or four students round one screen. More rooms are being written and will appear here as they are finished.

New, and still finding their level. These went up after a summer of building and have not yet been run against enough classes to be sure of the timings. If one lands badly — or brilliantly — the feedback page is read by a person.

What we would like to know

Anything at all, but these are the three things nobody here can answer from a desk:

Is fifteen to twenty minutes right? The per-lock timings are the puzzle author’s own and have never been run against a real class.
Is it too easy once they get going? The difficulty is meant to come from not knowing which clue belongs to which lock — not from harder arithmetic. If a group works that out instantly, say so.
Does the joke land? Every room has a comic cost for getting it wrong. If any of them reads as having a go at a student rather than at a member of staff, that is a bug.

Every room has a teacher page with the answers, the hint ladder, the misconception each lock is built around, and where every clue is hidden.

The rooms

Ordered easiest to hardest. Each one states what failing costs before you start.

Stars show difficulty, set by each room’s hardest lock: one star, Warm-up, grades 1 to 3; two stars, Core, grades 4 to 5; three stars, Challenge, grades 6 to 9.

The school hall, empty, in bright light from tall windows. A stage with its curtains drawn back stands at the far end, with an easel holding a map of the school in front of it, and double doors at the side open onto a long corridor. Rows of plastic chairs face the stage, some with clipboards resting on them, and the floor is marked with sports court lines. A cardboard box of spare clothes and a water bottle sits on the floor with a trainer beside it.

Big School Begins

It’s transition day, the school is enormous, and your group has four stops to find before lunch, without losing anyone on the way.

Coordinates · Turns · Time · Money

Mrs Rogers' idea, and she stars in it. Want something built? Let us know.

A classroom with the chairs tucked in and old green textbooks, held together with tape, lying open on every desk. At the back stands a tall wooden cupboard with its two doors shut: a round combination dial on each door, a brass slider bar across both at handle height, a small riveted metal plate and a plain sticker below. A clock hangs above it. To the right are a sink and a door with frosted glass; the teacher’s desk in the front corner has a folded leaflet on top and a sheet of paper taped to its drawer.

The Comic Caper

The old cupboard is going in the skip at the end of the day, and Mr Babel's French comics are still locked inside.

Built from a site user's request. Want something built? Let us know.

An empty art room at the end of the day. An old top-loading kiln stands against the back wall, its lid clamped shut and scorched around the rim, with a newer grey control box and a red emergency stop bolted to the wall beside it. A stack of banded portfolios sits on the floor alongside.

The Kiln Disaster

The kiln is counting down with the portfolios inside, and the only person who knows where anything is kept is Smudgey.

Multiples · LCM · Order of operations

Built from a site user's request. Want something built? Let us know.

The backroom of a school library, seen past a loaded returns trolley. An old metal drop-box is built into the wall, and a sorting belt runs out of it towards a chute and a wire bin. A mechanical arm has stopped over the belt with one book in its grip, and a flat deflector arm sits at a slant across the belt. Shelves of books line the walls, a few sticking out at odd angles, and a small screen glows on a desk beside a date stamp and a cup of tea.

The Library Jam

The returns machine has jammed with the whole class’s books inside, and at half past three the library system emails every parent.

Ordering decimals · Angles on a line · Money

A cluttered school science prep room. Benches run down both sides under shelves of jars, flasks and bottles, with a fume cupboard against the far wall and a desk lamp lit over the central bench among test tubes, clamps and trailing leads. Animal cages stand on the near bench. The store room door in the background is ajar with the light on inside. Old diagrams are pinned to the walls.

The Great Hamster Heist

Lungey has confiscated Pythagoras and shut him in an old cage at the back of the science lab. Fifteen minutes to get him home before the bell. Circumference, upper bounds, gradient.

The inside of a breeze-block P.E. store on a wet afternoon. Bare grey blockwork with damp streaks and cobwebs in the corners, dark timber roof beams overhead, and a small metal-framed window looking out on rain and a green field with posts in the far distance. A long wooden rail of empty coat hooks runs along the back wall above two slatted benches. On the left a trestle table is stacked with traffic cones and marker discs, a heap of unwashed bibs slumped over the edge. A net sack of balls leans against the wall and muddy footballs, volleyballs and rugby balls lie scattered across the concrete floor. On the right a chipped sink with a dripping tap, a mop in a bucket and a broom against the wall.

The P.E. Store Rebellion

Freezing, raining sideways, and cross-country is on. Get the arena inflated indoors instead. Sectors, inverse proportion, linear sequences.

An empty secondary school classroom before the day starts, the chairs still upside down on the desks. Hard white sunlight pours through half-open blinds, one hanging crooked, and lays bright stripes across the floor. Two air-conditioning units sit high on the wall, silent. A desk fan stands on the teacher’s desk, a dark jacket hangs over the teacher’s chair, and a plastic water bottle lies on its side on a desk by the window.

The Heatwave Mutiny

Thirty-two degrees, and the energy contractor has switched the air conditioning off to protect his bonus. Fifteen minutes before the bell to switch it back on. LCM, surface area to volume, inequalities.

A cramped school finance office at night, lit by a single desk lamp. A beige computer monitor and keyboard stand on a heavy wooden desk among stacks of paper and buff folders, with a small grey cash box and a mug beside them. Grey metal filing cabinets fill the left-hand wall, one drawer hanging open and crammed with folders, and loose sheets have spilled across the floor. A worn swivel chair is pushed back from the desk. The walls are pale green and marked, and a dark window looks out on the night at the right.

The Prom Budget Embezzlement

The head has spent the prom fund on a life-sized bronze statue of himself, and he is out of the office for fifteen minutes. Reverse percentages, compound growth, Venn diagrams.

A school canteen servery a few minutes before lunch, seen along the length of the counter. Stacks of coloured plastic trays wait at the near end, the hot wells beyond them are empty and gleaming, and a steel gantry runs above the counter beneath an extraction hood. A smart till stands at the far end beside the cutlery rack. Past the servery the dining hall is empty, its tables bare and most of the chairs still stacked.

The Canteen Menu Hack

Ms Cinnamon has taken the chips off the menu and priced the last cookie out of reach, and nobody was asked. Fifteen minutes before the bell to put it back. Mean averages, simultaneous equations, fractions of an amount.

An underground staff car park under cold strip lighting, early morning, with concrete pillars and a wet floor. In a row of bays by the lift, one bay is plainly narrower than the rest, its new white line bright beside the faint ghost of the old one. A small hatchback with stick-on eyelashes on its headlights is parked in the wide bay beside it. A walk-behind line-marking machine stands by the fresh line. A charging post with its cover open is at the head of the narrow bay, a barrier arm is down at the foot of the entrance ramp, and a measuring wheel leans against a pillar beside a yellow bollard.

The Headteacher’s Car Trap

The governors are coming, the deputy head has rigged the staff car park, and the Head is about to drive straight into all of it.

Bounds · Arc length · Quadratics

A school classroom after the last lesson, rain running down the tall window. Four tables are pushed together with a gridded battle mat across them, three drilled blocks of small green goblin figures standing in ranks and a pair of figures in the middle. Character sheets, pencils and handfuls of dice sit at the places. A cardboard folding screen stands at the far side, a mug of tea and a tall pile of marking on the right, and on the brick wall by the whiteboard a blank pinboard.

Roll for Initiative

A teacher who has never played D&D is about to be taught by her own club, and the villain has drawn his fortress to regulation.

Probability · Scale · Area of a circle

Built from a teacher's idea. Thank you, Mrs Rogers. Want something built? Let us know.

A bare school hall in December. An empty Christmas tree stand in the middle of the floor, a box taped shut with hazard tape in the corner, and a laptop on a trolley with a Santa hat beside it. Through the glass doors, a white refrigerated truck is parked with its doors shut.

The Christmas Tree Fiasco

Eric Ember, fire safety officer and Christmas's biggest fan, has entered the school into a competition for a brand-new tree.

Negative numbers, scale and combined ratios, and a refrigerated truck nobody can explain.

The side of a wooden groundsman’s hut at the edge of a school rugby pitch, in low, warm late-afternoon sun. A seed catalogue lies open on the hut’s counter with a pencil beside it, and a torn padded envelope sits on the wooden step. Against the wall, two brass taps stand inside a wire-mesh cage with a padlock on its door and a small timer fixed to one tap. Two hoses run from the taps across a gravel path, one leaking from a split. Beyond a white gate with a blank board on it, the pitch lies perfectly striped and dry, with the posts and corner flags far off.

The Rugby Mud Bath

Mr Mower is keeping the rugby pitch bone dry, and the Year 9 mixed team want mud. Fifteen minutes before he walks his rounds. Area scale factors, combined rates, index laws.

A school IT suite after the last lesson. Rows of monitors are switched off except one big display at the front, glowing with a neon pop-concert stage: sparkles, a sweeping spotlight, and a crown hanging over an empty space. At the back a server cupboard stands open, its lights blinking. On the side wall a corkboard holds a single printed sheet with a gold star stuck to it, and the desk by the door has a keyboard pushed back, a mug of tea gone cold, a yellow sticky note on the edge of the teacher’s monitor, and a small printer with paper in its tray.

The Rightful King

The prom king vote looks amazing and isn’t secret. Mr Narry needs it put right before the result goes up at half past three.

Counting · Exponential decay · Conditional probability

How they are built

The maths is the action, not a toll gate. There is no question box anywhere in these rooms. Every lock is an instrument — a dial, a slider, a keypad — and the only way to set it correctly is to work out the value the room is describing. Setting the dial is the answer.

The clues do not say which lock they belong to. Every room hides its notes among things worth searching, and not every note is useful. Deciding which note goes with which instrument is the first real piece of thinking, and it is deliberately where the difficulty sits.

A wrong setting costs 45 seconds, and one wrong setting per lock costs more than that. Each lock is built around the specific mistake a student is most likely to make. Enter that value and the room says so by name — it does not just mark you wrong.

The numbers change every time, and never repeat back to back. Each lock carries a library of number sets and draws one per play — never the one it gave last time — so play again and every figure in the room is new. The story, the instruments and the mistake being taught stay put while the figures move. The hints, the worked solution and the notes hidden round the room all re-write themselves to match, and every set has been machine-checked to have exactly one settable answer.

Progress survives a refresh, hints are free and come in three levels, every instrument can be typed into as well as dragged, and the Aa button in the corner switches to easier-reading text.

The teacher page follows the game. Open it from inside a room and it shows the numbers that room actually drew — answers, hint ladder, worked solution and every clue as the students are reading it. Start again and it updates itself.

There is also an older, longer room on the main site — The Perfect Prank — built to a 40-minute spec before the fifteen-minute format settled. It is the outlier, kept as the long-form example.