Room Escape Artist

We introduced the ERban Dictionary: Escape Room Glossary back in 2018 as our 1,000th post on Room Escape Artist.

Today we publish post number 3,000… and we’re updating the ERban Dictionary in honor of the occasion.

Selected New Terms

We added a few phrases that I really love:

“60 Minutes to Fluency” (phrase) – this refers to when you play an Egyptian room with so much hieroglyph translating that you can sight read it by the end of the game.

“A visit from the exposition fairy” (phrase) – this refers to excessively long passages of story being delivered to the team before or during an escape room.

These two oddities are my favorites:

Chekhov’s Stuff (noun, singular) – A really intriguing, eye-catching prop that is simply set dressing and doesn’t do anything in the game. This is in reference to the dramatic principle, “Chekhov’s Gun.” (Alternate usage: refers to items you find in the game that you know will be important because otherwise the game will violate the dramatic principle.)

Funbi Sweep (noun, singular) – referred to as a noun (i.e. to do a Funbi Sweep) this is the action of running your hands physically around the inside surfaces of a locked container after opening it to make sure you haven’t missed something. Oftentimes you’ll notice an object front and center, and without a Funbi Sweep, you’ll miss another item hidden in the same place. The name is a reference to beloved community member Bill “Funbi” Chang.

We also added this term, that we use often in reviews:

Lock Mapping (noun, singular) – how puzzles (and/ or their solutions) are connected to locks. If lock mapping is poor, when players derive a code, they have to try it in multiple locks, deflating their momentum. This problem is compounded by many locks with the same digit structure.

In total, we added 30 more words/ phrases to the ERban dictionary. Enjoy!

Thank you!

Thank you the REA Team members and Patreon supporters who helped us find all the new terms for this piece. Also, thank you to the REA writers who use these terms every day. I combed through all their reviews to find the language we use repeatedly to critique escape rooms.

Click the button below to see the full ERban Dictionary.