i had a friend invite me along to enjoy one of these rooms in nyc

the puzzle layout was such that there were some 30-40 individual steps that needed to be taken that would culminate in a four digit combination

you then use the four digit combination on a lock securing the lid of a box that contained a button that opened the exit

the lock was a wheel lock where each wheel had 7 faces, 0 to 6

about halfway through the game the group had found the first 2 values of the combination

i explained to my friend that math could get us out

at 7 faces and four wheels your looking at:

  #!/usr/bin/env python3
  import itertools
  len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=4))) #2401

but we were down to only two wheels left

  len(list(itertools.product("0123456",repeat=2))) #49

all we had to do was try the 49 different possibilities for the lock, essentially brute forcing

my friend was ecstatic and encouraged me to do it, but when i went over to the lock and started trying the different combinations a staffer came up to us and stopped us asking:

  'do you really want to win that way?'

my friend and i laughed at the indirect math shaming and returned to the group looking for clues

eventually the timer ran out before the group could solve all of the riddles to find the last two digits of the combination

edit: copypasta err