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A three-row number pyramid with 12 on top, 5 and 7 below, and 2, 3 and 4 along the bottom, beside the cover of Escape the Giant's Castle.

Field Notes

Tool Doors: How the Inventory Works in Escape the Giant's Castle

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You are small, the castle is a giant's, and every door is locked. In Escape the Giant's Castle you play beside Bobbin, a castle mouse, and the Castle Mice lend you tools on the way up. Each tool has a letter and a number, and you write the number in your Inventory, a box on the Route Log page. This is new in this book: some doors open only when you add a tool's number.

The rule in one line

Here is a made-up example, much smaller than the book's locks. Say the door shows the Thimble, and the mice lent you the Thimble worth 6 earlier on.

The lock

An ordinary number pyramid

The door's lock is a three-row pyramid with 2, 3 and 4 along the bottom. Every brick is the sum of the two below it. The top brick is the door number.

Step 1

Fill in the middle row

2 + 3 = 5 and 3 + 4 = 7.

Step 2

Reach the door number

5 + 7 = 12. So the door number is 12. A plain door would send you to page 12, but this is a tool door, so there is one more step.

The tool

Add the tool's number

The door shows the Thimble, worth 6 in this example. 12 + 6 = 18, so you turn to page 18. Forget the tool, or use another one, and you land on a dead end that tells you which tool you missed.

Two things to remember

  • You never lose a tool. Its number never changes, so write it down once and use it whenever a door shows it.
  • Tools are added, never taken away. Subtracting the number is a common slip, and the book has a dead-end page for it.

Higher up, more tools

High in the castle a door may need two tools: you add both numbers to the door number. At the very top, a door needs all six, and you add your Tool Total. With made-up numbers: a door number of 15 and tools worth 4 and 9 sends you to page 15 + 4 + 9 = 28.

Side doors and the Spectacles Case

Two more tools wait behind optional side doors marked with a star. No door on the way up needs them, but the giant's Spectacles Case at the Tower Door needs all eight. If you collect them, the mice can lower his spectacles to his nightstand, and the ending is a happier one.

How a page looks in the book

The Tools and Tool Doors page of Escape the Giant's Castle: the six tools with letters, a worked tool door example, and three things to know.
The rules page for tool doors.
A chamber page of Escape the Giant's Castle on the Kitchen Floor: a row of drawn door, the lock rules, an empty number pyramid and a Next Door box.
A chamber page: read, solve, turn to the page in the door brick.

A low-resolution page from Escape the Giant's Castle, so you can see the layout. Nothing on it is solved.

Books mentioned

Escape the Giant's Castle cover

Escape the Giant's Castle

A puzzle adventure gamebook: collect the tools, open every door, and climb nine locked floors to the Pyramid Tower by dawn. Tool doors are one new idea in it, on top of its 15 kinds of lock.

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