TotW #16 - Difficulty - Seven-Segment Displays
This is the 16th Tip of the Week on real-life escape gaming (and our rating rubric). For today I'll look at the various ways seven-segment displays work their way into escape rooms. If you don't know what seven-segment displays are, click here.
One fairly common puzzle that can often stump players is the seven-segment display. I've come across them several times already, in the upside-down fashion. The interesting thing about upside-down seven-segment displays are that they can easily form words. For example, h could represent a 4, E could represent 3, etc. Words like BELL could be 7738.
However, if the word BELL was written on a wall, it would not immediately occur to the player that the word needs to be flipped. In such cases a clue is usually provided hinting at the necessary procedure. Nonetheless, sometimes a string of letters written in a very angular form may give the answer away. Look also for the lowercase 'h' embedded in capital words because that is a big hint (it's not just badly written!).
Also, pay extra attention to words formed out of only the following letters: O, I, Z, E, h, S, q/g, L, B and b/G (in order from 0-9) and especially if Z/S are written in the seven-segment style.
Besides the upside-down puzzles, there are also the overlay puzzles where multiple different sets of the seven segments are overlaid on each other, usually adding up to a number. For these, there is usually an indication of how the sets of segments are to be mixed, whether by matching labels or other indicators like colour.
Such overlay puzzles are often also somewhat guessable since certain segments only allow certain numbers. For example, the bottom-left segment is only active in 2,6,8 and 0, and the middle segment is only inactive in 1,7 and 0. So, with one set of segments known some possibilities can already be ruled out.
Seven-segment display puzzles are usually not the most difficult of puzzles, but the upside-down ones may time quite some time to recognise. In such cases they may contribute to difficulty slighlty.
Stay tuned for more!
-xTheBHox
See a list of the past TotWs here.
