Red Herring Escape Rooms, University City

At Red Herring Escape Rooms, the goal isn’t to go fast—but if you do, you’ll be rewarded. As with other escape rooms, you and your team must work together to gather clues, communicate effectively, and solve problems in order to escape within 60 minutes. However, Red Herring adds an incentive to move quickly: you'll receive up to five free clues, but if you choose to not use them, each one subtracts a minute from your end time, upping your chances to memorialize your adventure on the facility’s leaderboard. Read on to see if you have what it takes:

• The Oval-ish Office: You only meant to see the White House—you didn’t intend to become a national hero. But in a terrifying turn of events, an enemy's nuclear missile is headed straight for Washington, and the president is trapped in an elevator enroute to the Situation Room. With only an hour to spare, your group must find the anti-ballistic missile launch codes hidden throughout the Oval Office, and then get out in time to neutralize the threat.

• The Deadly Inheritance: Your dear uncle has passed, but you don't have a second to mourn. Time is of the essence, as his career as a ship captain put him in the same circles as deadly pirates. And now, it's up to you and your group to find his estate’s stash of diamonds before the greedy pirates arrive to claim an inheritance of their own.