Rescue Sherlock Holmes with this Free Escape Room

Who doesn't love a good mystery? Finding clues and fitting them together to find the answer. What could be more satisfying? Or more frustrating? It is easy to be awestruck by famous detectives like Sherlock Holmes; I mean reading his work makes it look so easy and it always fits together so nicely. 

Yes, Sherlock Holmes has incredible powers of observation and logic. These skills are great for kids to learn too, and escape rooms are a fabulous and fun way to hep them practice.

In fact, I put together this Sherlock Holmes-esque Escape Room for the 8 to 13-year-olds at our local co-op! It doesn't cover information specific to Sherlock Holmes, but instead relies on keen observation.

Supplies for a Sherlock Holmes Escape Room

• Printables (from the Resource Library)
• Puzzle with letters of numbers on it (we used this one)
• 4 lockable containers 
• Key lock
• 3-digit programmable lock
• 4-digit programmable lock
• 5-digit letter lock

Optional: 

• Strong Magnet 
• Morse Code Bead Chain (instructions below)
• Narrow Necked Bottle
• Magnifying Glass
• Sherlock Holmes book or other props 

Setting Up Your Sherlock Holmes Escape Room

The first step will be to print your printables and laminate any you don't want the kids writing on. For this one, I actually left most free for writing, but the hint cards, witnesses, suspects, and other puzzles could use laminating if you want to reuse. 

Now to start putting things together. First you need a lockable container that can hold flat sheets of paper. In the printable pack are two newspaper articles; one has extra words. Place multiple copies of the newspaper article without extra words in the box, tape the London Herald Heading to the outside, and lock with the key lock. Leave this box out in the open like a newspaper box.

Hide the key somewhere. We used a sparkling grape juice bottle and hid a magnet on a string for the kids to retrieve it. 

Place the alternate newspaper (the one with extra words) in a separate container and lock with the 4-digit lock set to 1789.

Now to set up the puzzle puzzle you will need to locate some puzzle pieces with letter or numbers. These are going to form your lock combination along with the printable that says __0__. We used the Periodic Table Puzzle, so it was easy to remove a couple pieces (we took out Zn and Er, so our combination was ZN0ER). You could easily use a different puzzle as long you have letters or numbers to work with. Be sure they have a box to look at, so they can identify the information that is missing!

 

You will want to hide the puzzle pieces that make the combination along with the Morse code puzzle in a container locked with this 5 digit combination. 

I have included a Morse code printout that you can use, but I had a lot of fun creating my own Morse code puzzle out of beads. I used large round beads for dots, oblong beads for dashes, and spacers for spaces (1 between letters and 2 between words). This isn't necessary, but it did mean the kids had to be extra observant to solve the puzzle.

In the last container place the congratulations print out and lock with the 3-digit lock set to 999.

Hide your remaining clues and any fun props you have (magnifying glass, hat, violin, whatever), and you are ready to go!

How to Solve the Sherlock Holmes Escape Room

Once the kids have located all the clues they can start start solving puzzles. 

They should quickly be able to start discovering the culprit by comparing the eye witness testimonies to the suspects. This just takes a bit of logic to rule out suspects until they find the correct one.

They can also start solving the Sudoku immediately. 4 different puzzles that all result in the same answer are provided. You can use just one if you only have a few kids or provide all four if you have a lot of kids to keep busy. If they really use their logic they can recognize they are the same and quickly fill them in. This did not happen with my group, but it is a possibility. The hint card with the boxes circled provides them with which numbers to use for the combination. 

Once they open this lock they will have the alternate article. Assuming they found the key, they can now compare the various articles to get the location. I did leave them highlighters to aid in this. They could highlight the different words that way. 

At this point they could have a culprit and a location. But to escape the room they have to know what to do with the information. For this they need to solve the puzzle. I had a fairly large group, so I had them solve the majority of the Periodic Table puzzle, but if you only have a few kids start with the puzzle mostly assembled to save them time. Once they figure out there are missing pieces they have to compare the puzzle to the box and use the clue __0__ to get the combination. This opens the box with the Morse code puzzle. 

The Morse code puzzle can be the one included in the printable or a string of beads you make. I loved that the beads fit the theme well and offered an extra layer of logical thinking.  Of course they can also try to solve the beads backwards which gives them gibberish, but if they solve it correctly they will get the instructions to call the police at 999 (remember we are in England for this) which opens the box saying they solved the room!

Once my group of kids calmed down and focused enough they were able to escape in an hour. Doing escape rooms like this on a regular basis provide such great practice in team work and problem solving is a fun setting that it is definitely worth the set up! 

Find Sherlock Holmes Escape Room  Printables in the Resource Library and find information on all the other Escape Rooms HERE!