Orienteering - not escaping but still actively puzzle solving!

Although I hadn't initially thought of this as connected to Escape Rooms, as it is a kind of puzzle it might be useful to other teachers. I learned of this kind of ice-breaker from a colleague at my university who had used it in Chemistry to enable new lab groups to get to know each other. It has the added advantage of allowing students to get to know the rooms they will need on campus. It requires some forethought but once you've made it you can re-use it as it is only for students who are new to campus.

You prepare the number of clues you want as A4 pictures or word clues. A tip I was given was to make the clues arguable so that the group would need to discuss with each other. For my puzzle the participants would need to know the definition of a fruit, an insect, a European country and the difference between a language and a script. My intention was to make it something that would be easier for non-native speakers if they had a native speaker in their group (and all groups were arranged to be mixed accordingly). I had 16 clues (see below) which I added to a Word Document, printed and laminated. They were then stuck up on 16 different rooms around campus which had been chosen because I knew students had classes timetabled in them in the coming week. It didn't matter which picture went on which door.

This is how the activity went. At the Welcome Lunch students were put into groups with some students from each level and each nationality in each group (I used Triptico's random group function for this which worked well). After lunch they were given the orienteering task. They had a bingo card of 16 rooms (it was useful to have them in a different order for each group because that meant they did not all start in the same place). They needed to find these rooms around campus and work out the three digit solution. There was a prize hidden in a white suitcase which had the combination lock. The first group to crack the code got the chocolates! The suitcase was to be at the start (where lunch was held) for them to return to, but when I played it this year it was pouring with rain and I realised students would probably take a couple of days to collect all the clues and crack the code, so the suitcase was relocated to a central office. The person from whom I originally got this activity used to set aside an hour for students to go out orienteering then and there. That would ensure all groups take part. Unfortunately for me (due to the weather) only a few groups actually did the activity. But those that did loved it and found it very useful for knowing where to go the following week. Hopefully next year it will work better.

This is the set of bingo cards I used  https://myfreebingocards.com/bingo-card-generator/results/bvjvuk (This is a very useful website for quick and easy Bingo games!)

Here are the images I used (it was originally all in Word - I have captured these as jpg to embed in the blog). Can you guess the combination??