My palms are sweating. My pits are sticky, and my heart is racing. I'm in a Burlington basement holding a black light. There are ropes and rings, locks and keys, and riddles wrapped in mysteries. I strip off my gray sweater, anxiously eyeing a timer on the wall. The color of my cardigan aside, this is no Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy. It's reality at 4 p.m. on a recent Friday afternoon on College Street, at one of Vermont's first-ever "escape rooms." (The other one is Escape Room 60 in Williston.) Called Esc4pe, the Burlington business promises a "live-action puzzle game" that traps players in a 250-square-foot room with a series of complicated, espionage-inspired riddles they must solve in 60 minutes to get out. "It's a unique combination of a maze, a scavenger hunt and a play where you're the actor, but you don't know the plot yet," says Mike Garber, the 42-year-old entrepreneur who opened Esc4pe on June 10. "When some people first hear of it, they aren't sure what to think, but after people play, everyone gets it." Invited to experience Esc4pe, I have no idea what to think, either, but I know which friend to recruit: my former adventure-racing partner, Tyler. We once spent 26 hours lost in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and still managed to cross the finish line in second place. If we could get ourselves out of that mess, I figure, we can escape the Esc4pe. Our game begins at 3:45, but we show up a few minutes early to sign waivers and descend into a dungeon-like space where we meet our team: a gang of four 14-year-old boys celebrating a birthday. They're even more excited than I am, wearing beanies and bouncing off the walls of the darkened entryway. "You guys are going to make a good mix," Garber says, "because you and Tyler are going to bring a different set of skills to the room than these guys." My skill set, I will soon discover, is seriously lacking. But first, Garber ushers the six of us into a bank vault that serves as the waiting room and post-escape photo booth. Dimly lit and decorated with black wallpaper patterned with safe-deposit boxes, it's been set up to "increase the anxiety" before a game of Esc4pe begins, jokes Garber. The escape-room craze began in Japan and raced across Eastern Europe before crossing…
My palms are sweating. My pits are sticky, and my heart is racing. I'm in a Burlington basement holding a black light. There are ropes and rings, locks and keys, and riddles wrapped in mysteries. I strip off my gray sweater, anxiously eyeing a timer on the wall. The color of my cardigan aside, this is no Fifty Shades of Grey fantasy. It's reality at 4 p.m. on a recent Friday afternoon on College Street, at one of Vermont's first-ever "escape rooms." (The other one is Escape Room 60 in Williston.) Called Esc4pe, the Burlington business promises a "live-action puzzle game" that traps players in a 250-square-foot room with a series of complicated, espionage-inspired riddles they must solve in 60 minutes to get out. "It's a unique combination of a maze, a scavenger hunt and a play where you're the actor, but you don't know the plot yet," says Mike Garber, the 42-year-old entrepreneur who opened Esc4pe on June 10. "When some people first hear of it, they aren't sure what to think, but after people play, everyone gets it." Invited to experience Esc4pe, I have no idea what to think, either, but I know which friend to recruit: my former adventure-racing partner, Tyler. We once spent 26 hours lost in the Sierra Nevada mountain range and still managed to cross the finish line in second place. If we could get ourselves out of that mess, I figure, we can escape the Esc4pe. Our game begins at 3:45, but we show up a few minutes early to sign waivers and descend into a dungeon-like space where we meet our team: a gang of four 14-year-old boys celebrating a birthday. They're even more excited than I am, wearing beanies and bouncing off the walls of the darkened entryway. "You guys are going to make a good mix," Garber says, "because you and Tyler are going to bring a different set of skills to the room than these guys." My skill set, I will soon discover, is seriously lacking. But first, Garber ushers the six of us into a bank vault that serves as the waiting room and post-escape photo booth. Dimly lit and decorated with black wallpaper patterned with safe-deposit boxes, it's been set up to "increase the anxiety" before a game of Esc4pe begins, jokes Garber. The escape-room craze began in Japan and raced across Eastern Europe before crossing…