Every person who knows me, knows how much I enjoy riddles.  Thinking back on my life, this is not something new for me, as I do recall not only how I gravitated to games like Zelda, but also ploughing through lateral logic books, rebus puzzles and anything similar I could get my hands on.  Math was something that I many times over enjoyed in school, as it presented the same brand of exercise for my brain.  I didn’t like that I had to ‘show my work’, explaining so many times how I got to the answer, but I certainly enjoyed and thrived with the processes that happened internally in figuring it out.   Then, some ten years ago now I do recall entering my first escape room.  It was an experience that immersed me into the world I had up until then only read about in pages of a book, I lived vicariously through a little elf in green clothes on a screen, or imagined as I worked my way through math class.  Instantly I was hooked and while I write of it now, since that fateful day, I have ventured out to well over 100 different games across Ontario, and. while they may vary in quality, complexity, and creativity, the brain in my head is always stimulated in a way that leaves me wanting more.

30th of March, 2017; a day of significance for me, you can mark my words.  For those who may not know, this was the time in my life when myself and three close friends who became business partners decided to open our own escape room business in Waterloo.  Our goal was to create something family-friendly, high quality, and whose room and puzzle designs would be the perfect balance of different methods of thought and problem solving.  I am very proud of what we delivered to the world and there are many, many days in which I miss having that business to flex my creative thinking, hence why I now try to deliver weekly riddles through this site.  Selfishly I am creating them less because I want to entertain and more because there’s something in me that needs the challenge and stimulation that comes with developing them.  That said there is a particular audience that is starting to pay attention to these weekly offerings; this brings me great pride to see my two kiddos put on their thinking caps and approach these puzzles in only the way a child can.  Hence why I continuously post. these puzzles weekly.  It was the same when we owned the business – children have incredibly talented brains and their creativity, bravery and fearlessness when it comes to trying is what is most often only put to rest when us “wiser” and “more experience” adults tell them that what they are doing is ‘wrong’.  Just because we have a higher number of birthdays to our name, doesn’t make us adults right.

Word/number.  Colour/pattern.  Information is all around us and there is great joy and, perhaps even more, there is hope for the rest of us in the fact that kids will interact with their environment, toss out ideas, and make observations that I think we as adults wish on our lucky stars that we could do, but quickly catch ourselves and relent for fear of being judged.  We don’t want to look like we don’t know exactly what the heck we are doing in front of our peers or, worse yet, we don’t want to look silly.  How ashamed or embarrassed we suddenly feel, and exactly just how red would our faces turn if we make a mistake under pressure?   Fortunately, in my opinion we are human and are capable of making errors…I feel we need to lock. down the idea to be more open to accepting them.  Embracing and creating safe environments where ideas can flow will drive us toward better collective ideas.  I can not add up or think of any scenario in which inventions or ideas were perfected on the first attempt, and if Thomas Edison, or Ada Lovelace, or Elle Woods gave up the efforts of their pursuits for fear of looking silly or learning from their mistakes then I tremble to think of what type of world we’d be in today, or numbers of opportunities we’d have missed.

Means to an end, for some, I do fully respect that puzzles aren’t for everyone.  They can be stressful, headache-inducing, pressure-cooker situations, together with others, that many do not enjoy.  I am not here to judge that at all.  There are countless popular activities that I neither excel nor take pleasure in, and I’m not ashamed to admit that.  Activities such as ice hockey, ball hockey, road hockey or shinny.  While I do enjoy a cup of Tim’s alongside my poutine,  any type of butter tart except raisin, and ketchup chips, perhaps my aversion and lack of talent for moving a puck along the ice paints a great big target to all that think I’m not Canadian enough; that doesn’t stop me from getting out on the road with my family to engage in an afternoon of road hockey.   While I’m a total amateur at handling the good old hockey stick , I get to see my daughters engage with their Mom in something she does have a talent and passion for, and at least they can laugh at me while I try to figure out which hand goes where on the stick.  As I try to remind them often: throughout your life, the important thing to remember is that to laugh at yourself is to love yourself.

Something I believe in completely, but I digress – point is: we all have talents, no end to ideas and thoughts.  While we gain knowledge throughout our lives, there is no prescribed age when those thoughts and ideas become right.  My two children, who are currently of a 6th of my age are teaching me new things everyday and I do my best to embrace that whole-heartedly.  They encourage me to try, they remind me the importance to being silly, and push me to think differently.  I am in awe at how their talented brains operate and will do everything I can, including here on http://www.philbean.ca/ to foster an environment that makes them feel safe and unafraid to share in all their beautiful ways.  Though I miss the escape room business and may one day address. opening another one here in Elora or Fergus, in the meantime I do my best to create fun activities throughout our daily lives.  There are patterns, shapes, numbers, and then infinite pallets of colours all around us with which we can make puzzles and our own little escape adventures, which I take great pleasure in.  We have explored multiple hit games and we’ve even gone so far as to make escape room style challenges in the middle of Algonquin using nature and the gear on our backs.  I will return. my desire inward by continuing to create weekly riddles, which I hope bring some joy to at least a few people out there.  And I will certainly find other creative, ways to think myself clever and create little puzzles to solve and codes to crack….including doing exactly that right within this very post you are reading.     Wait, what. No?