Good Job, Brain! - 203: The Great Escape

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

We're busting out! Escape movie quiz, but really, how well do you know your Stephen King movies! Chris spills secrets of escaping handcuffs and straightjackets from the Houdini Handbook. Planning on a lavish escape to Orlando? Well, then buckle up your seat belt as you pass through BUGGZ, BUNIE, TWETY and BURRD; learn all about the system of invisible waypoints your plane has to travel through and their insanely punny weird names. How does fat leave the body after weight loss? And Let's celebrate the tenacious spirit and the creeptastic intelligence of the squiggly octopus, by regaling the tales of famous octopus escapes. And every tried an Escape Room - we give you our best tips. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. Hello, happy House of Hunks, hones, and heflumps, honing, handiness. Welcome to Good Job, Brain, your weekly quiz show and off-beat trivia podcast. This is episode 203, and of course, I'm your humble host, Karen, and we, are your excited exclaimers excavating excellent egg-corns. I'm Colin. I'm Dana. And I'm Chris. I want to start the show off with another fan listener question. I thought it was really good from our page on Facebook. Rachel Lazarin asked us, what fictional universe would you want to be thrown into? And would you be heroes or villains in that universe? While you guys think about it,

I'll share what I said. And I thought about it for a long time because I was like, there's so many cool universes I won't be in. But I'm actually really scared of danger. And so anything that poses like a life-threatening danger, I was like, oh, that's cool. I was like, I kind of don't want to live my life like that. That's good self-knowledge. That's good. So I want to be a third or fourth-tier small-time villain, like a super ridiculous-themed villain in the DC universe,

specifically in Gotham City So I'd be one of those Bad villains You'd be a henchman Or a hench person I would be like crazy quilt Oh okay Or a condiment king

Okay got it You know the really Bad fiend Villas Head of your own crew But like nowhere near like Joker On like Batman's radar Batman would it hunt you down

No Yeah Like I'm just there for flavor text But a super villain might try to get you To help support a plan Maybe. Yeah, but then they're kind of, they're facing the danger. Yeah.

I'm just there to maybe, you know, scare people or get in and push the button. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what that's what I think. Huh. I mean, I guess for me, I mean, the obvious answer is Star Wars. But again, as you say Karen, there's a lot of danger in that universe. Yeah. They just follow up planets without any forewarning in that.

And it's like, you know, if you choose good guy or bad guy, you have a lot of peril. And if you choose neither, then most of the worlds that we've seen is, a pretty crummy life. It seems like, you know what, I'm going to say I would go into these Smurfs fictional universe. Would you be a fool? I would be a bad guy and I would work with Gargamel because frankly, I want to find out if they do taste good. You look like his nephew a little bit. Apprentice. Yeah, yeah. And they hang out with his cat. I mean, he's a little abusive. With Asriel, the cat. And, you know, I mean, at the end of the day, no one's ever really in any mortal danger. That's true. That's a good answer. I would.

I would do Willy Wonka world. Ooh, I did not think of that. Because there's not really mortal peril. Stakes, yeah. But there is magic, and it's related to candy. I would like to be in the factory after Charlie takes over. Oh, wow. Not with Willie Wonka.

Now we're going to a... Yeah, you want to set up in the time period. Yeah, that's important. Not with Wonka, because he's cutthroat. Yeah, that's true. And I feel like that's going to be a stressful life. did you um i saw on the internet i thought this was the most this blew my mind

when i saw this on the internet about the willie wonka movie where it was like did you notice the boat had exactly enough seats for the number of people who were left on the tour because he knew that he was going to lose the gloops he was going to weed the weed it out at least two people the kid and the parent oh interesting like even like i was like oh wow hunkworts

and i was like wait a minute like the people die people die and stuff i think well again i think that you would say post-war Hogwarts I mean first of all I would say if you want to do that just go to Universal Studios

Yeah yeah yeah Would you be Would you be your age in the Harry Potter world After the war Or would you be a child Would you want to be a student? We're talking about

Going back to school And yeah They're wizarding tests And things like Yeah That's like it's still It still seems like You might audit a few classes

I don't want to go back To any high school and not even at Wizard of High School, right? I'm sorry we live there. Yeah, yeah. You could be the game teacher at Hogwarts. Oh, I could go and, I could teach.

Like, not, like, they probably have other games besides quitting. We're a pub quiz master at the pub. We're getting so specific. But again, this time period, but after this, but before that, and I'm in the pub, but I don't go outside, and I have this job. But, yeah. Oh, she has. Let's just avoid Harry Potter entirely and just go for the safe answer. Obviously, just He Man and the Masters of the Universe.

Oh, that's mortal. That's you, yeah. Well, you know, I mean, depend on. No, I'm not going to be messing with Skeletor or whoever. I'm just going to be hanging out, eating massive turkey legs. You know, it's keto. I think that would be good. There's also some good loins.

Everybody wears the same loincloth. So you have to decide what you're going to wear that day. A lot of topless men cruising around. Yep, exactly. And that's a good universe, because it's a simpler time and yet they have advanced technology. Yeah. Right, right. I love all of your answers.

Very good. Very good. All right. Well, thanks, Rachel, for that mind-opening question. I know. I was like, oh. Well, without further ado, let's start off with our first general trivia segment, pop quiz, hot shot. And I picked a random trivia pursuit card, and this is from a different edition.

I'm excited. It is Trivial Pursuit, Music Singles. Oh, okay. Not like single songs. Okay, yeah. I think they're just like one-off. Anyways. All, all music-related.

Yes. Buzzers at the Ready. Blue Wedge. What band is the folk rock duo created by Amy, Ray, and Emily Seleers? Cailiers. Colin. That is the Indigo Girls. Correct.

Indigo Girls. They sing a song about Galileo. Pink Wedge Which Shakira song Won record and song of the year At the 2006 Latin Grammy Awards Oh, is it the Hips Don't Lies song? No

Oh, now I have another guess Go for it Whenever, whatever No, it is La Tortura What? So it is Latin Grammys It is a Spanish language song All right, well

Makes sense There you go Uh, Yellow Edge, what group fronted by Will I Am won three awards at the 2006 American Music Awards? Everybody, Black Eyed Peas. Can you name the three other people in Black Eyed Peas other than Will I Am? Fergie. Taboo, Apti App to App. Yeah.

No hesitation. I saw them in the late 90s, like, before they were cool. Pre-Fergy? Oh, yeah, pre-Fergy. Yeah, they had a few singers. This was, this was on Pub Trivialized. Like, can you name other than Fergie and Williamian, name one of the other two? Yeah.

All right. Good job. Purple Wedge. What Puerto Rican-born rapper is considered to be the queen of reggaeton? Oh. Puerto Rican born rapper, queen of reggaeton. Man, you know what? This sounds like a familiar question, doesn't it?

Anyone else? No. Hmm. I'm just stalling. I don't know. I don't know. I don't have an answer. It is Ivy Queen.

I don't know. I don't know either. All right. All right. Well, now it's in the punch bowl. Okay. Green Wedge, what former frontman for the Cars helped produce albums for Weezer, Whole, and Bad Religion? I didn't know that.

Dana Buzzard First. I think we bought it. Rick O'Kasek. Rick O'Kasik, correct. Yeah. Last question, Orange Wedge. What 2002 John Mayer hit? About an afternoon Trist won him a Grammy for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance.

Dana. Your body is a Wonderland. Correct. About Jennifer Lev. She was in the video. She was in the video. But they did date around then. So maybe.

Your body is like a theme park. Yeah, it's weird, huh? Yeah. It makes you want to throw up. You eat too much popcorn Right spinny rides The zipper After a short time

You want to leave Your body is a traveling carnival Your body is a tilt-a-world Your body is a sack of clown After we were done I couldn't find my car Where is it? Beep-be, beep, beep

It's so dark Your body is a rigged ring-toss game Oh, my God. Your body is a fried aurea. What I've seen once was, and had was at the Salt Lake City, it was the Utah State Fair. I was there, you know, for a race, but just happened to be state fair season. And it was a cheese-stuffed hot dog wrapped around a whole dill pickle. Wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry.

Hold on. Hold on, hold on. A hot dog wrapped around? I mean, no, sorry, sorry, sorry. So if you're, concentric. Oh, oh, oh, oh, okay. Inside, cheese. Okay.

Next layer, hot dog all around. Wow. A whole pickle all around. So the hot dog was in the pickle. Yes. They hauled out the pickle to put the hot dog with a cheese. I was imagining a spear wrapped around it. No, no, no, no.

It was a whole dill pickle. Dipped in a corn batter. What? corn dog batter and then deep fried Did you try it? I did. I would try it. It's not bad.

It's really hard to eat. You don't say. It's like a burrito. Because none of those layers cohere with each other. You take one bite and then there's like six layers of cheesy pickle. You get cheese pouring out.

There's a surprising amount of pickle. It's a lot of pickle. Yeah. I really underestimated the contribution of the pickle this, yeah. Hot pickle juice. Your body is a

scalding hot. Corn dog pickles. Cheese stuff. All right. Well, today's episode, Colin, what's our theme? Oh, our theme for today is the great escape. Oskapes. I was watching a prison movie.

Just one of many, many. We don't need to get too into it. It may be on a quiz that one of you have. have in the show. Oh, I see. I was watching a prison movie, and if you're watching a movie that's set in prison, there's a better than average chance it's going to be about someone trying to escape from that prison.

And I got to thinking, like, oh, escape, what a perfect topic that would be for our show, of all its varieties, escape artists, escaping from prison, fleeing from whatever scenario you're trapped in. So, yeah, I thought that would be a good world for us to explore or get away from. This week we're busting out The Great Escape As soon you'll be finding You can't have an escape my own

You're like a big master You're like a big Harry Houdini You're like a big Harry Houdini fan I was You know This has been exaggerated, I think, over the years, but I mean, we have talked about, I think, on this show. I think we even tweeted out a photograph maybe at some point of me in seventh grade dressed up as Harry Houdini for the Wax Museum, which is the ridiculous thing that they did in seventh grade where they made us all dress up like historical figures and do research on them. But then literally stand there stock still as parents and siblings would come walking through the gym, witnessing you.

you haven't just stand there? Yeah, it didn't make any sense. They don't want to do any more plays. No, yeah, apparently not. But, yeah, I was Harry Houdini. And so I did a lot of reading about Harry Houdini. Fascinating guy. I talked about him extensively on the show on Good Job Brain before in his capacity as a myth buster.

He was a, he was a devoted skeptic. Anti-occult. Yeah. Indeed, in an era in which a lot of people were like, oh, yeah, you know, psychics and seances. He was real and stuff, and he really wanted to, yeah, bust that up. His day job, he was a magician. He was a magician, but he focused on a lot of escape routines and things of that nature. Houdini was a big mythbuster when it came to, like, seances and things like that,

but he was also totally okay with letting people believe, you know, that he was that he himself was always totally on the up and up with his assistant. escape routines, right? So I want to, I want to just talk about, like, three of Houdini's escape routines, things that he would do in public. What he would do is, so this is, by the way, this is all kind of like turn of the century, 1900s, 1910s, 20s, 30s. He died in the 30s. So he'd come into town, and it would be...

Do it for. Heardini is going to be performing at such and such a theater tomorrow night. But before he would do that, he would do some kind of display in public as a way of getting attention, as a way of advertising. And so that's when he would do some of these escapes and, you know, people would crowd around and they'd say, you know, sometimes he'd have like 50,000 people watching him do this stuff. One of the things that he would do was the milk can escape, where they would take a milk can, which is a sort of like a jug about half the height of a human being, you know, maybe a little bit taller than that. A man could fit in one of these things and he ducked down inside of it. But they'd actually, first they'd fill it with water.

So they'd fill it up with water. Yeah, in the canister. And he'd get into a canister full of water and then they'd put the lid on it. By the time they're putting the lid on this thing, it's as far as you can tell, full of water. And he's submerged inside this thing. Okay. And put the lid on and they'd use locks, padlocks to padlock the lid on this thing. And then they'd chuck it in the lake.

And then prior to this, they'd have people come up and inspect it. Right. Yeah. Yeah. False panels. You could look at it. Yeah, exactly. And then, you know, reassure yourself that there was nothing.

you know, no trickery with this with this milk can. Houdini would get inside. They lock it up. Remember, again, it's full of water, so he's already holding his breath. Then they'd put it in the lake. And then Houdini would come to the surface and he'd get out of this milk can. The way that this worked was that the milk can, the sort of the neck of the can, it looked like it was riveted on, but it wasn't.

Imagine the neck of a human being being the neck of the canister, right? It's loose in there, basically, but if you try to grab it and pull it up, just pull the collar, basically, of this milk can out, you can't do it. They'd grease it up, and, like, you wouldn't be able to get enough purchase on it to get it out by pulling up on it. But Houdini, when he was inside the can, could just push up on it. Once the cap was bolted on, just push up on the top of the, from the bottom of the cap, and then it would just. just slide right now with all the bolts and everything yeah yeah now was he holding his breath yeah houdini could hold his breath for a long time that was absolutely true so but with the time that they submerged him in water he was holding his breath and it would take like a minute or two

for them to even put him in the lake in the first place we had to hold his breath for a long time then after holding his breath for a long time had to just push up on the thing but once you had the leverage to just push up on it the thing would just pop right off right so that was a gimmick um handcuffs houdini would escape to handcuffs not just any handcuffs he would say to the people in the town, like, come in with, tell the police to give me a pair of handcuffs and put them on me and I will escape from them. First of all, if you gave him a crappy pair of handcuffs, he knew exactly, he, I mean, he studied handcuffs, right?

Yeah. Model and make. There's only so many handcuffs out there. Yeah. So he might know where to just slam the thing against the ground to get the spring to pop and to get the handcuffs to open. Okay, okay. He might, he might know how to pick the lock using whatever lock.

lockpicks concealed on his person, you know, to pick the standard pair of handcuffs. Because there's so, there's only so many standard pairs of handcuffs. He had a belt with all the keys on it. Man. Asking for the police cuffs is actually pretty smart because it actually narrows down to a more standardized set of, yeah. And Zendor was this gimmick, which is the, this is the best part. So if somebody brought him a totally bespoke pair of handcuffs where he doesn't have a key to these handcuffs on him, they're super big, so they're not cheap and he can't just pop.

them. He would say, well, I have to examine the key. I must examine the key to these handcuffs. So at this point, he would take the key for examination, looking at it, and his assistant would go into the back where he had a buttload of other keys in all shapes and sizes, and they'd find the one that looks the closest to the key, take that, get it to Houdini. Houdini would say, okay, I've inspected the key, hand the person back to the first. The big key.

While Houdini still has, the real key. Wow. That's good. Unlock it that way. So that's just, that's a magic trick. That's misdirection. That's part of escape artistry actually doing it, but also part that is just straight up a magic trick.

Yeah, yeah. Man. The thing that Houdini is absolutely most known for is his ability to escape a straight jacket. I may have mentioned this before on the show. I mean, it's really, it's really interesting. But this is the thing that he would do and draw crowds. Straight jacket is something. is something that they would use to restrain

prisoners and basically just imagine a jacket that goes on backwards and the sleeves are super long and your arms don't come out of them and the sleeves are like closed up. It's like you're giving yourself a hug. Yeah, they take those sleeves and forcibly wrap your arms around you with those sleeves

and tie them off in the back so you're giving yourself a hug. Houdini basically came up with the method. I mean, there's just a sort of standard method for escaping these. But the thing is he would say, and to make it even more difficult on myself. I'm going to escape this while I'm upside down.

Yeah. And they'd tie, you know, rope to his legs and hoist him up on a crane and he'd be dangling the spectacle of him, dangling up, you know, against the side of a building. By the way, Houdini, if he had his choice of venue for this and he came into the town, would make sure that he was hung up right next to the newspaper's office. Lots of videos out there that it's like right next to the office of the Houston Chronicle. I mean, he's not doing this for fun for marketing. The process was too full. The first thing was when they were putting the straight jacket on him,

Houdini would use a whole bunch of techniques to give himself a whole lot of space inside the straight jacket. You know, as they're sort of wrapping his arms, you know, you can sort of hold some of the cloth and pinch it inwards. And then when they, when you let go, now you have a lot more slack. He'd make sure to fold his arms over Like not just not put one arm more towards his head And one arm more towards You know his feet But to actually fold his arms over

So then stack his arms up And so then when he moves his arms He has more slack So you want to give you You want to basically make it so when they're putting the jacket Oh also take a huge breath Expand your body Make it as big your chest as big as you possibly can

To give yourself more space and slack to work with Then once the jacket is on, he would take his stronger arm, his right arm basically you just need to get one arm up over your head because then you can untangle the sleeves and get your sleeve in front of you. And so once you do that, then it's just

a matter of getting all the belts undone. So you want to give yourself as much slack as possible so that you can get one arm up over your head. Hanging upside down turns out that it's actually a lot easier. Because you have gravity. You have gravity pulling down your whole body

So to get your arm over your head, all your bones are sort of being pulled down. So it's way easier when you're suspended upside down to get your hand over your head in the straitjacket. And it also probably masks all the wriggling and, you know, clutching. Yeah, and he's crashing around and he's dangling and he's going left and right and it looks amazing. Yeah. There's a little bit of trickery in terms of giving yourself as much slack as possible and the methods by which you might do that. But, like, a lot of it was just, you know, practicing this series of moves and being able to be able to do it. Yeah.

Well, just the mental focus, too, of just to stay calm and not panic. Yeah. Well, that was, yes. So actually, I was watching a documentary on this, and my favorite people, Penn and Teller popped up and, and they had Penn Gillette explaining. And he was just like, a street jacket is meant to restrain somebody that is not in a good state of mind. and so if you're if you if you have to have a straight jacket put on you you are probably not going to be methodical enough to be able to execute a series of precise moves in order to get yourself right you're just like thrashing like yeah it's not yeah it's not yeah well Hannibal Lecter it's not yeah exactly no I'm saying like you're not you're not dealing with him yeah right right oh can I revise my uh fictional The world. You want to go all that?

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Okay, I have a quiz for you guys about escape-themed movies. Oh, yeah. I wrote it in the middle of the night. I called it Escapist Escapades, subtitled, Stephen King is the master writing stories about escaping from places that later become movies and a couple of other non-Steven King movies. It's a long quiz name. So your hint is there are a lot of Stephen King

King movies in this quiz. Let's do buzzers. All right. Buzzers ready. First question. A non-Steven King one. Harold and Kumar escape from here in the sequel to Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. Colin.

I think we all know it, but it's Guantanamo Bay. Yes. Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Where were they originally going? Oh, you know, I've seen that one once years ago. Where were they originally going? Amsterdam. Ah.

Which makes a lot of sense for Harold and Kumar. A young Elizabeth Moss starred in this TV movie based on a 1975 film based on a novel. Huh. TV movie. Based on a film based on a novel. Yeah. Carrie. No.

Wait, oh, do we know Stephen King or not Steve? No. This one is not Stephen game. No, I was just, I don't know. I'm front-loading the not-sadowing. Is this, oh, is this, is this sci-fi fantasy? And this is a young Elizabeth Moss. Oh, oh.

So like teenage or younger child even maybe. Right. And it's about escape. It's in the title. Escape from which mountain? Yes. Yes. That has been made into so many things.

It goes a novel. The movie. I didn't know there was an. I had it just about the original movie And then I was like Elizabeth Moss What? That's a good one. Mel Gibson is one of the stars of this farm animal themed 2000 animated movie.

Oh, I remember. Oh, Colin. Is that, uh, it's the chicken one, right? Chicken run? Chicken run. I thought I was like, chicken little is enough. Trying to escape from the, the barn. The chicken process.

I understand their motivation. This film starring Paul Newman popularized the line, What we've got here is a failure to communicate. I believe that is a cool hand Luke. Cool hand Luke. With the boss with the silver mirrored glasses. It's the prototypical Southern Chain Gang. Like, yeah, that's, yeah.

You know, so as English as my second language, I know there's cool as a cucumber and then there's cool hand luke and sometimes I would get them mixed up in my head and I think it's either cool as a cucumber as cold hand luke or the vice versa I was like oh yeah the cucumber movie starring I was think of it as the hard-boiled egg movie because he like has that contest where he has to prove a point he doesn't know how cool hand lucumber that's where that line respect my authority comes from Okay, this 1981 sci-fi action film written and directed by John Carpenter, it has a state in the name. Oh, it's about escapes? It's, yes. Oh, that is a escape from New York. Escape from New York set in futuristic 1997. Yeah.

When the president crashes into Manhattan, now a giant maximum security prison, a convicted bank robber is sent to rescue him. And then later he goes to the other coast of the country. Yeah, Escape from L.A. One more non-Steven King question. And then the Stephen King floodgates will open. Escape from Tomorrow is a horror film shot on location at this unique spot. Karen. There are two spots, actually.

It was shot in Orlando, Florida and in Anaheim, California, because it was shot in the Tomorrowlands of Disney World. or Magic Kingdom and Disneyland. That's right. It was a guerrilla movie shoot because Disney doesn't usually let people do that. And so I guess they didn't even ask if they could do it. That's the idea. Yeah, that was that I mean, that's part of like the big marketing hype is just the dude was so scared of Disney.

I mean, he did something, you know, not so cool. But then he was like editing the movie in another country just in case. He did it in South Korea. The actors had their scripts on their cell phone. And they were using like handheld family style video cameras to shoot it. So nobody would notice that they were making a movie. Have you guys all seen it? I haven't seen it.

I'm too scared. I'm a little bit scared. All right. This, now we're entering the Stephen King. The elevator opens and blood gushes out. In this 1987 film Arnold Schwarzenegger's character must survive a public execution gauntlet staged as a game show. I don't know. What is?

The running man. The Running Man. Actually, Dana, I believe that was written by Richard Bachman. Richard Bachman. Wow. Loosely based on a novel by Stephen King, Richard Bachman. Yeah. He still exists as Stephen King.

Yes, yes. He is that he has fully fast up. What's his legal name? Well, he's Stephen Kane. That was just one of his. Oh, okay. So Richard Boggman is a fake name. That's right.

Stephen King is not the fake name. James Khan is held prisoner by Kathy Bates, the original stand in this film based on a Stephen King novel. Karen. Misery. Misery. This 1994 film based on a Stephen King novella was nominated for seven Academy Awards. 94.

Oh. The Shawshank Redemption. Oh, but also prison. Also prison movie. But that wasn't escape, though. It's true. Right. Well, no physical escape.

What were you saying? Green Mile, but I was like, oh, yeah, Shawshank. Shawshank for that. I love that movie. It's been the number one movie on IMDB's user-generated top 250 since 2008. Yeah, it's been on the number one for a long time. For 10 years now.

Yeah, good job, you guys. There were more movies by Stephen King, and I was like, am I writing a whole quiz and then, hey, but. I have a fact. It's not a segment. Every time we record, I forget that I've learned this fact, and then I never, like, it's been like years now. Finally, I was like, oh, this kind of

fits and I wrote it down. I wrote it down. I was like, I'm going to share this fat. So for people who lose weight, how does fat leave your body? Do you know? How does it escape the body? How does it leave your, like when you, someone loses, you probably know. But like when you lose 60 pounds, where did the 60 pounds go?

Oh, how does it pass out of your body? Oh, I mean, not just like burned as heat. I see what you're saying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huh. I'm not sure I know. I thought it was just they shrink down. Yeah, that's what I thought too.

but I guess I was naive. They actually asked this question to a lot of, you know, diet coach and stuff. People had mistruths, basically. Some people say, oh, converts into muscle. Like, the cells become muscle. They're like, what? Some people are like, oh, you poop it out. Well, that's what you'll think is like, you poop.

You breathe it out. You breathe in. The vast majority is it gets broken down and it leaves as carbon dioxide. Really? So 84%. So say if you lose 10 pounds, 84% of that is breathed out, and 16% of that is water. I did not know that.

By way of, by sweat. Sure, sure. But you breathe out. Huh, fat breath. Yeah, fat breath. Well, so I admit when we were first brainstorming topics for this episode, like I was sure Karen was going to talk about what I'm going to talk about in a minute here, because it's animal-based, and I know you love animals, Karen.

I sometimes feel like I do too much. Yeah, I understand. I understand. Yeah, no, I get it. I feel you. I was watching the videos on YouTube. It's from a couple years ago, but it's, have you seen this guy? The guy finds this huge octopus.

Oh, on his boat. On his boat, right. And then, you know, he's kind of, you know, and then you see the octopus, squeezed through an opening. I mean, it looks like, it looks like as if, like, an elephant escaped through a coffee cup, you know? It's like, you're like, oh, my goodness. How does it do that?

I don't know. I just got, so I fell down a whole rabbit hole of octopus escapes. They are amazing animal What's that? Not an octopus hole Sounds like a different thing Yeah Shut your octopus hole

No I mean And maybe I shouldn't be surprised I mean like we I mean you know As trivia fans And I know we read a lot But they're smart I mean just octopuses in general

And the entire family of animals They are like Oh we're smart But they're smart Yeah Yeah I'm starting a new podcast Actually with three octopuses

Yeah man They're keeping them on my toes But, I mean, like, they're, this is a whole separate topic on its own. Like, we're really just finding out just really how smart they are. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, they may have active internal lives, you know. I mean, internal thoughts and it's getting, it's really people who work with and research and study octopuses, octopodes, if you prefer. I'm going to say octopuses. They all say, like, no, man, these things, they know what's going on.

There's a story about a researcher who would. was feeding the octopus, not fresh food. Basically store-bought octopus food, you know, not really store. Like you get a safe way. Yeah, you know, you go down to the pet store. I shouldn't say store-bought, but prepared, let's say. And, you know, the octopus wants to catch fresh food. And so the researcher comes up to the tank, and the octopus, while making eye contact,

takes the old food and is shoving it down the drain of the tank that is in. As you're to say, here's what I think if you're not fresh food. Yeah. Yeah, it's a little unclear. Sassy. Yeah, how smart they are. And so in addition to not just physically being able to get their bodies into, you know, tight holes, because they're all muscle, based, or not basically, they're almost all muscle. They're smart enough to plan escapes and they're smart enough to really wait.

They're smart enough to plan their moment, take advantage of a moment, and then use their extremely weird physical gifts to escape. Yeah, because, like, half of the escape is, like, the physical execution, but you need the strategy and tactics for the other first 50%. So, you know, you might read, so there's stories of like, oh, you know, the octopus got out of the tank, like, lifted the tank up and popped it off. And you might think, like, okay, well, even like a really strong fish, a snake could do that as well, right. There are, you can go find videos of these. Octopuses can figure out how to unscrew lids. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. So there are, again, researchers that put, they screw the lid on and the octopus in.

They've got the suction cups. They're very dexterous. They can really manipulate, but they mentally can have the conception of, oh, it twists on in this direction. And I have to unscrew the lid from the inside in a very specific way and get out. So I've got two stories here of octopus escape that I just want to just quickly share with you guys. Coincidentally, or maybe not questionally, they're both from New Zealand, which, I mean, maybe it's not so coincidental. meaning they do a lot of octopus research there. Yeah. Yeah. So this was an incident from just a couple years ago, 2016, of Inky, the octopus.

Okay. You know, I got to say, it was clearly not put up for an internet vote because it would be like, you know, Inky make ink face if it wasn't a yeah. Right, right, right. Brain biology. It's short for Inkfurth, actually. Inkington. This was at the National Aquarium. The story of Inky's escape is almost like told in a forensic. They had to reconstruct what happened because he made it.

He's gone. Like, Inky's left, man. He was caught in the wild, so they don't know exactly how old he is. He wasn't born in the lab. So he'd already had some, you know, street smarts. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Some water smarts. Basically, his researchers came into the lab one day, found he was missing from the tank, looking around, can't find him, there's a wet streak across the floor, suction cup marks on the floor, eight feet away in the lab, okay?

So there's a wet streak eight feet away to a tiny little drain pipe. All right. Now, the opening to the drain pipe is just about, I don't know, four inches across, five inches across. And that drain pipe leads out to the ocean. Whoa. And what Inky did is Enky knew. Inky knew this drain pipe. Yeah, exactly.

They take their chances. They were in close to the trash. They came back. So basically, they came in one morning, found there was a tiny, tiny little crack in the top of the tank. Enki had pushed out, worked his way down the side of the tank, crawled across the floor. And again, I want to emphasize waiting until there's. there's nobody in the lab.

Like, they're aware of, like, oh, they're smart if not I'm going to get caught. Inched his way across the hole, squeeze his way into the drain hole, and then out to the, out, just out to the ocean at large. Yeah. And they had to kind of come in and piece together. What I was hoping for was that he left the squishy trail to the drain pipe, but that was a red herring. Yeah, that he dried his tentacles. When the two of them were looking in the drain pipe, that's when he came out and walked out the front door. By taking their car keys

And their badge Their ID badge I think the Aiki stole my car I love the image of him getting in the car And all at once One tentacles adjusting the rearview mirror One tentacles getting the seat adjusted The other one's popping

Yeah so just just gone And it made the news of course In New Zealand And then ultimately got picked up by the wire services around the world Yeah, yeah, the Octa News. See, they didn't have a video camera. That would have been amazing to watch. Security camp.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I mean, I... You would have disabled it. Yeah, exactly. You're right, you're right. They're like, wait, this is on loop. I'm going to squirt in some ink and this is all like it is. That's all name, really.

It's a fake tape. It's a reconstructed lap. Like loops in a weird way. There, well, so speaking of tape, I found... It doesn't say Bellagio. Exactly. This is from eight months ago. There is a story.

there was another octopus who the researchers kept coming in the morning and the lights over the tank would be shorted out and worked out and basically they did a little video busting of the thing and what found out is that the octopus would come up and intentionally squirt water

up at the lights just just to like didn't like him or whatever he's like I'm going to take care of these lights and put them out they have a lot of agency they have a lot of agency it kind of freaks me out it's all he's fighting the lights Another incident in New Zealand. This was at the end of 2008 into 2009.

This was at an aquarium in Dunedin, maybe. Dana is our resident New Zealand expert, yeah? That's the way I've heard it before. We'll go with that. This was an octopus named Sid. And Sid was in the aquarium for about six months. And I guess Sid was, in octopus terms, kind of old. So the senior aquarist came into the aquarium one morning, and Sid's gone.

So look around. Can't find them anywhere. And unlike the other lab, there's no drain that leads out to the ocean or anything like that. Yeah. They're looking in cabinets. And, you know, again, apparently, like, in the octopus researcher community, it's like, oh, yeah, you got to look everywhere. They can crawl inside a bucket. They can crawl inside something and pull the door shut behind them. And they can just be, like, hiding there. They just need a baby proof their labs. They know. Five days later, they found Sid had alive. alive had sort of similar had gotten into a drainage system that he didn't have open access to was blocked just was basically holding himself in there whenever people would come by I mean again we can't really get inside his mind but they were looking everywhere for him and he was hiding out in the tube and they think that he was trying to escape out a door and just knew that he was going to get caught just plug himself up in the drain and just had this sense to hang out there

and like, no, I can't be, I can't be seen out in the open. Like that scene in the fugitive. Exactly. Just living there for five days. So they put him back. And a few weeks later, they found the door open again to his tank. He found, so they found him hiding again someone in their lab. So he made several more attempts at escaping.

Sometimes even when they were people there, like he was pretty brazen. They were coming to clean it and he would try and escape. I guess his species of octopus, they try to mate when it reaches. the end of their lifespan. Why are they that unhappy? Yeah. So they were thinking like, oh, you know what? He's probably trying to mate and get back to the water.

So they took pity on poor Sid. And they decided to release him back to the wild. So this is quoting from an independent article is yesterday afternoon, Mr. Crane, the aquarium surpriseer. Sid. Yeah, he goes, well, you know, the British publications are very formal. I know. Mr. Crane, I acknowledge his agents.

Yesterday afternoon, Mr. Crane transferred Sid to a plastic bucket and carried him to the water's edge, 300 yards away. Even during that short walk, Sid was trying to lift the lid off the bucket. He was like the whole time, he's like, let me out. I'm going to escape. And then he was dumped in the ocean. They said they watched him swim away, and he was a good, healthy color, and he was quite happy. And so, yeah, he became in the New Zealand press anyway. They were, he was a, Sid, the lovesick octopus.

I'm never going to keep an octopus as a pet because it's... I don't feel like they should... Yeah, I mean, of course these are labs and, you know, doing research and stuff. It's not like... They're not holding them to eat them or something like that. Oh, man. They're amazing, amazing creatures, uh,

and they will flee if you give them half a chance. Book Club on Monday. Gym on Tuesday. Date night on Wednesday. Out on the town on Thursday. Woo! Quiet night in on Friday. it's good to have a routine and it's good for your eyes too because with regular comprehensive eye exams at spec savers

you'll know just how healthy they are visit specksavers.cavers.cai to book your next eye exam i exams provided by independent optometrists and speaking about escapes my favorite escape is probably traveling I love traveling oh yeah and of course traveling to far places in airplanes and we've had a a segment before about airport codes, Colin. It was your quiz. I love airport quote. They're so, for the ones that you find out the origin, why is this airport code not like the city name and you need to read about it? We talked a lot about this in a previous episode. But I found out another interesting thing about air trafficking and airports and airplanes traveling. There are waypoints in the sky, in the air, basically along a route. And that's where

the plane will maybe turn a little or go down or go up or go down. So those are kind of the fixed points. Standardized. Especially important in arrival or departure procedures of planes landing or taking off. So you have a whole procedure like, okay, you're this plane and you have to go to this next checkpoint, this next checkpoint, or like if you're about to land, hit this checkpoint. If you're going to do this runway, then you have to kind of follow this route with these points. and that's where you turn the plane and you descend and whatnot. All of them have five-letter names.

Interesting. This is the important thing. And I want to credit Captain Ken Hoke, whose article I stumbled upon talking about these airway waypoints. They're called fixes. So the points are called fixes. How these names come to be, the local FAA for their airspace will suggest names. And there's like a larger central aeronautical information management that kind of approves them. And so they have to be pronounceable, that'd be unique, obviously, and can't be controversial or bad word.

Yeah, right. And the fun part of this is that depending on where you are, they theme it. They theme it to the place. A lot of air traffic controllers, they have a sense of humor. They really come up with things that might spell out a sentence or they're unique to, you know, the location or the city or the airspace that they're in. I've compiled some interesting ones, and what I'm going to do is quiz you guys. I'm going to read out five-letter fixed names, and you tell me where you think it is. Okay.

So the pen and paper, you can write down the place, but also to help you if you want to write down the letters as I'm reading it to you. Okay. All right. So first one, there are two of them. H-A-V-R-D. second was Y-A-A-A-R-D H-A-V-R-D

Y-A-A-R-D Where do you think these waypoints, these fixes are located? What city? Answers up. Chris, you said

Cambridge, Massachusetts. Dana says Boston. Colin says Cambridge, Massachusetts, Boston. It is that area. Yes, I'm looking for Boston. Cambridge is fun.

COVID Yad. COVID Yard. All right. Next fixed point, I'll give you one. L-E-B-R-N. Ha. L-E-B-R-N. All right.

Answers up. Chris says, Cleveland. Dana says, Ohio, Cleveland. Colin says, Cleveland, Ohio. You are correct. LeBron. There's also different variants of different Cleveland sports. I am proud of myself for getting a sports one.

Yeah. You know what? Let's take a step back. There's a little bit of a shaky. I was like, I'm pretty sure. I think it's Cleveland. No, let's, well done. Of course, came after LeBron James, King James, who plays for the Cleveland Cavaliers.

It's a good basketball man. Yeah, he is like, he plays the basketball. all. Next one, I'm going to give you two fixed names. You tell me the city. H-K-U-N-A. H-K-U-N-A. And the second one is M-T-A-T-A.

M-T-A-T-A. Okay. If we're doing a city? A city. Okay. Ooh, man. All right. Okay.

Okay. All right, Chris says Orlando. Dana says Orlando. I was thinking to Nairobi. Nairobi. No, Orlando. Orlando is probably more sense. It is Orlando.

I was like, what city in Africa? Africa is for sure not a... It's like, why would they care about Disney's marketing? Yeah, yeah. Hakuna Matata. Also in MCO, Orlando's airport, there's also Piglet, Tigger, Jasmine, Jafar are all waypoint names. So as you're, and also they have Looney Tunes and Universal characters as well.

So as you're a plane and you're descending next time into Orlando's airport, every of those fixes has like the, the Piglet procedure of landing. Now passing through Piglet. I was going to broadcast that over the TV. I know. Well, United used to have that channel

where you can listen to the pilots air traffic control. I don't think they have anymore. But like, that'd be funny. That'd be really funny. No, much in Piglet. Next one Tell me the city or the area I'm going to give you two

First one M-A-K-R-Z M-A-K-R-Z The next one M-A-A-A-R-K M-A-A-R-K M-A-A-R-K Two

The city, huh? City or area I mean there's a smaller city and there's a larger city and larger city would be easier. Yes. All right, answers up. Chris says Kentucky.

Dana says Nashville. Collins says. Louisville, but then Kentucky. Louisville is good. Yep. Makers mark or Makersmark. Also in that area, there's barrel, mash, distil, and bourbon.

That's good. Maker's mark, of course. a famous Kentucky bourbon. So basically these all sound like wonderful startup names. Yeah, they kind of, when you read them, it does. They look so funny. Totally. All right.

And of course, we're getting harder as we go. This is great. I had no idea. It's so interesting. I had no idea. This is fantastic. All right. I'm going to give you three.

First one, T-Y-D-Y. That's T-Y-D-E. Okay. Next one. G-R-T-F-L. G-R-T-F-L And the third one If you didn't get it yet

D-E-D-H-D D-E-D-H-D What city can you find These in I'll wait for Chris All right answers up

Chris says Berkeley Dana says S-F San Francisco And Colin, you said, San Francisco. It is San Francisco. S-F-O.

Yes. Tie-dye, grateful, and dead. Dead head. Dead head. Yeah. Named after the famous San Francisco band. All right. Next one.

What city? G-I-N-I-S. Wait, say that one more time. G-I-N-I-S. Okay. To me, they're just, like, license plate, like, vanity when you're trying to, like, sound out. Oh, that's all we get.

G-I-N-I-S. G-I-S-A-S-A-S-C-Y? Yes. Huh. She did say they're getting harder. G-I-N-I-N-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-N-R-L-L-L-N-L-L-London. It is Dublin. Oh, Guinness.

Guinness. Guinness. I was like genies. Like, I dream a genie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes much more sense. Yeah. All right.

Yeah. All right. Last one. Give you three. Okay. First one, F-R-Z-N. F-R-Z-Z-N. Next one, T-N-D-R-A.

T-N-D-R-A. And the third one. I don't even need it. F-A-V-R-E. F-A-V-R-E. Three waypoints, three fixes in this general city, located above this general city. I guess cities can own the airspace. The airspace, yes, yes, yes.

I'm not sure. Answers up. Chris says, don't know. Dana says Antarctica And Colin says Green Bay, Wisconsin Colin is right Frozen Tundra

And Fred Frette Fribe The Fribe is Brett Farrard So that was a sports one where I was like I don't know But Frozen Tundra Maybe our insert Yeah

The Lambo Field Where the Packers play It's for years and years It's the stock phrase is The Frozen Tundra of Lambeau field and it's just like it's yeah it's it's like a stock phrase at this point yeah baseball it is it is yeah and then uh one last one's not a quiz it's just i thought it was funny copenhagen one of the fix points is called it sucks but like i don't think it's like i don't think like someone named it because

like i t s ux i think maybe they're just like you know something to say but just but just see it in all because they're on all caps it's like it sucks that's really cool that's a that's a Great than a tribute. And, you know, one last thing. What I did was I looked up all our names also to see. We have what cities, what cities our names fall above. Well, you and I have five-letter names. Yes.

So, you know, I kind of. Me too. Oh, yeah, you're right. I have a short one. So Dana, I use D-A-N-A-H. Okay. Okay. Dena, but like Dana.

In Dana Point, Orange County, California, USA. And then, Chris, you are in, or you are above, the Sheldonville, Nebraska. Wow. I got a good one. Chris. Yeah. That's not like Christmas Island. Colin, you have Erica, Virginia.

Okay. Look, it's really fun. Seems like that would be Erica. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Erica could be. Yeah. You know, because there are multiple.

Oh, okay. Got it. There are multiple fix points for an area. Okay. Multiple. So it could be, you know, and then, uh, and Karen is in, uh, Benefit, North Carolina. Oh, that's a nice. Yeah.

There you go. I like this. I, you know, I encourage everybody to go look up to see your name or your last name or spell different things and see what's available. Yeah. Awesome. No frills delivers. Get groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC optimum points on your first five orders.

Shop now at nofrills.ca. And we got one last escape. segment. I don't know where you're going to do, but... Well, immediately, what jumped to my head was, okay, so, I mean, Karen, you and I, there's a dividing line and a good job brain. There is a dividing line. There's people who do not play escape rooms, and there's people who play a lot of escape rooms. Like a lot. Like a whole lot. Like all of them. You and I love to play escape rooms. We have our own hardcore team. I did. I had no idea that escape rooms would become this

popular. I mean, of course, there's many, many, many different kinds of escape rooms, but they generally all boil down to. You and a team are put into a room, and you have to solve puzzles with the things in that room in order to, in general, you have to, you solve some final puzzle that will give you a key that lets you escape the room. That literally let you open the door. I mean, no matter where you go, there's probably an escape room in that city, even if it's a small city in the United States, there's probably one or more or 20 different escape rooms that you can go and do anywhere. Virtually all the knowledge I have about escape rooms has come from you guys.

I've done it a couple times, but I'm not hardcore, like, you guys. But Colin, you have just been like, not my thing. It's one of those things where I almost would like it too much. Like, I think I would get frustrated by it. I mean, Karen and I talked about that before, but it's, I, maybe, maybe, you know what? Now that I'm a dad, you know, my taste are changing. Yeah, exactly. I've never seen you're frustrated by the same.

So that's why I would have to imagine that there's a lot of good job brain listeners out there who do escape rooms or might be thinking about doing escape rooms. I feel like it would be a nice idea to pass down to you guys some of the escape room tips that we have learned or had to learn the hard way in our time doing escape rooms. So here we go. Your Good Job Brain, Escape Room Tips segment. I'm going to break this down to a few categories. First category being before you even start the escape room. Number one, don't get drunk beforehand. A lot of people think, they think, oh, well, yeah, let's do some pre-gaming.

Let's have some drinks before we go in. It's a festive occasion. It's fun. Hang in all friends. Yeah, you're not going to have a good time. This is asking you to actually, like, do puzzles. and test, you know, your mental ability. Like, you don't want to...

Because of it. Yeah, clouding. And usually, if not always, under a timer, too, right? Yeah, exactly. It's more like a sport. Like, you wouldn't drink a bunch before you play basketball. A big game. You're really supposed to be...

You have to be organized and methodical to do these. Like, and you're not organized methodical. So don't do that. It's probably not a good idea. Drink after. Whether you win or lose, you'll want to go and drink. So just do it then. Consider having a team.

Consider getting, you know, a bunch of friends yet. I mean, the first time I ever did an escape room, it's like a few of us bought tickets for the room. Then they put us in with six strangers. And it's, you need to be a functioning team to solve these things. And you can't do that when you're just. That was a big barrier. Yeah, because then you get kind of harped on on like, oh, I don't want to yell at these people. You don't want to yell at.

You have to, it has to be people you're okay with yelling at. I'm fine with yelling at Karen. You know what I mean? But I would, but you don't. But you don't want to be the overcompetitive jerk with somebody is just there to have a good time. It's going to be best if you book the entire room for just you and your group and find a group. Make a Facebook group. Get all your friends involved.

Figure out that kind of thing. You know, meet up beforehand, especially if you haven't done a whole lot of escape rooms. And if there are people who have done them, but there's people who haven't, you know, get together like an hour beforehand and talk and share and like, you know, strategize and go down the list of, you know, general good rules and tips and things like that. just so everybody's kind of on the same page as far as what's going to happen. You can't anticipate the idea is you don't know what's in there. But like, you know, just talk about it beforehand. Also, schedule some time for afterwards, whether you go out drinking or not. Like, everybody's going to want to debrief.

Everybody's going to talk about it. That's the fun part, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So schedule that time for afterwards. Do puzzles outside of escape rooms, you know, like learn how to do puzzles and things like that because even if that exact puzzle is not in the exact room, being able to think in terms of puzzles. this is advice for becoming a championship level escape room team imagining my parents being this hardcore

and we like to win you see the pieces and you go oh I know what this is or you'll be able to look at something and be like oh this is going to be a Sudoku board you know once it's all filled in that kind of a thing so once you get in there okay you get in there timer starts I mean again all escape rooms are different but like in general, the first thing you want to do is search the room thoroughly, thoroughly, search the room.

You want to look up high and you want to look way down low. If it's not bolted down, pick it up. Well, they usually have rules. They're like, okay, the furniture is not part of the game. So please don't flip over the couch. Please don't unscrew the tables. Some rooms you do. Listen to the rules.

Some rooms is you have to break open this IKEA furniture and there's a clue inside the screwball, you know, like it's. It depends. You do have to, yeah, you do have to be willing to take stuff apart. I mean, here's what a rookie does. A rookie goes into the room, sees a chest of drawers with two drawers in, like an IKEA nightstand or something. Lots of IKEA furniture in these rooms all the way. Seas, sees a nightstand with two drawers on it.

Opens up drawer number one, looks inside. There's nothing in there. Opens up drawer number two. Looks inside. Oh, there's a, there's a key in there. Takes a key out, you know, puts it on the table, closes the drawer. Sounds good, right? No.

Horrible. Horrible, horrible. What you need to do is we need to take. the drawer and remove it entirely from the chest of drawers and then take the second drawer and then remove it entirely because the problems you've now caused are number one if you open up the drawer look and put it back if something is taped to the underside of the thing you're not going to find it if something's taped underneath the drawer you're not going to find it if something is on the floor covered by the bottom drawer you're not going to find it so you have to take the drawers

out. The other thing you've done, if you look in there and you close the drawers, how do all of your other teammates know to not come over? Waste time. They'll waste their time one by one by one, opening up the drawer, looking in, and closing it again. So take it all out. Look at everything. Get on the ground. Stick your head in the now empty chest of drawers. Look up, look down, look all around. Look behind it. If there's a big sign saying don't move the furniture, if they tell you before you go in, don't move any furniture, fine. But if they don't tell you that, take the thing and pull it away from the wall or maybe something behind it. Look underneath.

Look on the underside of all the drawers. And then, for the love of God, don't put it back together. Leave it all out. There's two kinds of errors, right? There's the seven people all ignoring it. But there's also seven people all finding the same thing, which is also a waste of time. Yeah. My solution has always been yell really loudly everything that you're doing.

Maybe that's not the best thing for everybody. Talk through. everything that you are doing everything you find if you find something if you find a combination lock on a safe in something be like everybody i found this safe with a combination lock on it and i'm putting it here in the table and the combination lock is four digits you know like talk it out because there's so many times when somebody will find something and then not say anything and then like half an hour later you know somebody's like did anybody figure out where to put this combination and somebody's like, oh, yeah, there's a keypad and it's a, you know, right?

And you're like, what? You got to tell us all. You know, you really have to share all of the information with everybody and make sure that not only are you listening to everybody else, but you're also talking through everything in a way that that nobody can say, well, I didn't know that was going to hear that. Which is sort of, I mean, related to our general rule at public quiz, too, which is talk it out. Don't just say it out loud. Make sure at least one other person on your. team heard you say it. Yes.

Like, was I looking in your eyes? And did you see my mouth moving when that happened? I said that. Yeah, yeah. Be really neat and organized. I mean, one of the things that we kind of developed immediately was have a discard pile. Like if something is just a red herring, you know, is not something that's a clue or just some piece of junk, like put it all in one corner into one pile.

Also, I mean, again, if they give you pens and clipboards, there might be stuff in the pens. You know what I mean? There might be stuff on the clipboards. There was one game he went into where they, you know, put name tags on all of us. And there was stuff in the name tags, you know, that kind of thing. Brute Force is also something to think about. What I mean by brute force is if you have three digits of a combination lock, you know, you can just try the other ones. If you have two digits of a four-digit, you know, of a four-digit dial-comber thing, it's only 100 numbers you have to go through.

you can do that in two minutes. Right. Like, just have somebody who's not solving the puzzle. Just try it. Yeah. Try to do it because maybe you can open it up. And also, just keep the big picture in mind. Like, always ask yourself, like, what is it that we're trying to do?

Somebody should, at least one person should be looking at what's called the meta puzzle. You know, because typically you go into the room, there's all kinds of stuff. And you're going to find, like, solutions to six different little puzzles that you're going to enter into a grid. you know what I mean? And then you're going to put them into a grid and that's going to give you one big, you know, solution. And that's going to let you get into maybe the second room or something like that. Think big picture. Think about what you need.

What is it we are trying to do? Right. And that's something that you will just figure out through experience. There's a lot of things you're going to learn through experience. What is a good bit of lateral thinking and what is way too much? You know, like what is a good like, oh, this grid is the same size as that grid and this grid has circles in it. And that grid has letters in it. And then we're going to overlay them in the circles to be on the letters.

Like that's great. That's really smart. But then some people who are just like, okay, we need a five-letter password and there's a hundred books on the bookshelf. So I'm going to look on page five of every book and pick the fifth letter on page five. It's like that's not possible. A couple other things. If you're working on a puzzle and you're having a hard time, you know, give up.

Like just let somebody else do it. Don't get so ingrained in working on this one puzzle that you're not. able to solve, that you can't just pass it off to one of your teammates and say, hey, why don't you look at this? The corollary to that rule is if one of your teammates is like 85% done solving a puzzle, you do not need to stick your nose into the process so that you can feel, well, well, I helped solve it too. It's like if they're off to the races, just let him finish it.

Go do something else. And this is where knowing your team, know your, know your teammates. The thing is like at almost every puzzle room, you're kind of being taught. lost into the unknown. And usually there's like seven puzzles to do at the same time. And it's not a linear, oh, we do this one together and we do this one together. Teams break off. Two people work on this. Two people do that. Two people do that. And it's like it's all happening at once. And so there, you know, there are times when like you don't know what the other team is doing, but it's fine. They're on it. Yeah. That's if you trust your team. Well, you have to. Yeah.

And you have to trust your team. And you have to really, you also really have to develop it. That's why you have to build your own team. Yeah, you do. You must do this. Family members aren't always like the best puzzle solvers. And honestly, I mean, here's the thing. Escape rooms are exploding in popularity. Not everyone who designs an escape room.

Right. Should. There are some puzzles that are like, okay, I could explain to you why this is a bad puzzle. And it's not just the fact that I didn't get it. Like, there's some issues with this puzzle design. So sometimes you do want to do hints. If you all get together and you agree that you will ask for hints, you know, during the process if you get stuck, the best tip about hints is just make sure you kind of do it earlier.

If it's early in the game and you're stuck on something and you're really feeling frustrated about something, just ask for that hint a little bit earlier. Don't wait until five minutes, you know, before time is up to ask for your first hint because it's going to be too late at that point. And you're going to be frustrated. Yeah. But yeah, so those are just some of the things that we've learned. I know how to use a tape recorder or a tape, tape player. A cassette tape player. That happened to you.

Yeah, my friend James, we did a rando room. Like, we thought it was just going to be us two in a room. We're like, that's fine. Then we got paired these 15-year-olds, very sweet kids, very smart kids. But at the end, for the meta, you have to play a tape. You unlock a tape player, and then you had this tape you found earlier. They didn't know how to use it because they've never encountered a cassette tape before. And it was very.

cute and they're putting it on a different way and we're like no it's okay well we'll put it in you're like we don't know what this is we're like it's okay well it can i mean so basically escape rooms are designed so that you you should not have you do not have to bring in any like esoteric outside knowledge i hope that you also we're really intense if you're super intense we're we don't do them with us like it's not like when you're like we don't like to ask for hints it was like easily could have guessed that that was that was that was that going to be the... We're pretty intense.

All right. Thank you guys for joining me. Thank you guys, listeners, for listening. I hope you'll learn a lot of stuff about escaped rooms, about octopodes or octopuses and octopies, escape movies, and also fixed names. Make sure to look up where your fixed name is in the air, in the sky. And you can find us on iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify, SoundCloud, and on our website, goodjobbrain.com. See you. you soon.

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