Boda Borg
I decided to put on “Boda Borg Columbus”, based on our fun experience at Boda Borg Boston earlier this year.
Boda Borg is somewhat like an escape room theme park crossed with a videogame. There are a bunch of “Quests”, each of which is composed of a series of 3-5 rooms, with a different puzzle in each room. As a team of 3-5 players, you have three minutes to solve each room. If you don’t solve the room within the time limit, you are kicked out, but you can start over again in the same Quest or a different Quest as often as you have time and patience for. The lines were not long when we went, so we could typically go back into a Quest immediately, or after waiting for just one other group.
The quests involve both mental and physical challenges, and always require teamwork. Failure is expected and built into the system. When you fail a Quest, you try to figure out why you failed, and iterate for a follow-up attempt.
Boda Borg Columbus - 2019
Here were the rooms:
1 - Twister Trivia
Players had to step on tiles on a twister mat corresponding with events from 2019, without stepping on any of the white parts of the mat. They had to put the events in order.
Some of the events were:
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| Jan 3 | Chinese probe lands on far side of the moon |
| Mar 24 | 4-page summary of Mueller report released |
| Apr 10 | Black Hole Photo Released |
| Apr 15 | Notre Dame Fire |
| May 24 | First Asian government Legalizes Same Sex Marriage (Taiwan) |
| Aug 28 | Greta Arrives in America |
| Nov 21 | Cybertruck Revealed |
| Dec 18 | Trump Impeached |
| Dec 20 | Episode 9 released |
2 - Malizia II
Players had to recreate Greta Thunberg’s transatlantic voyage in the carbon-neutral Malizia II. There were three small cardboard boxes on one side of the room, each with a slot for a battery. To power the boats, players had to “store energy” in the batter from one of three green “power source”. This meant either hydro power (spinning a small “generator” in the sink), wind power (spinning a small “generator” with a hairdryer), or solar power (holding the battery under a lightbulb). Once all three energy sources were powered up, players could put the batteries in the cardboard boats and cross the room.
3 - Black Hole Imaging
Players had to collect data from the “Event Horizon Telescope” (EHT). In the basement, I suspended three long cardboard tubes from the ceiling, and labeled each with the name of one of the telescopes in the EHT. Each tube had a light inside of it. The lights were turned off in the basement. Players had to go to each of the three telescopes and simultaneously point them at a “black hole”. When the lights from all three telescopes were on the black hole at the same time, a chime sounded indicating players could move to the next stage. From there, players had to remove flash drives from each telescope and bring them all to a computer in the center of the room. After plugging all three flash drives into the computer, players were rewarded with a picture of the black hole, and the stamp!
Stamp
Players could stamp the 2019 stamp into their Boda Borg passport after completing all the puzzles! Note that I’ve reversed the image of the stamp, so that it can be read more easily.