Pick the lock. (Needs there to be some bit of my phone that’s suitable to use as a lockpick. Seems possible.)
Break down the door.
Break a window. (Nothing in the challenge says no windows. If the room is high up, I may need to make makeshift ropes out of my clothes.)
Break through the walls. (Maybe they’re made of balsa wood.)
Dig out. (Maybe the floor is bare earth. Maybe I can use the phone to help dig.)
Use phone GPS to determine where I am. Contact emergency services.
Or contact friends who can come and break me out quietly. (Obviously I could split this up according to whether they pick the lock, break down the door, come in through a window, etc., but that feels a bit cheaty.)
Use phone to hack into wifi network and operate the electronic lock I’ve just decided is on the door.
Presumably there’s ventilation of some sort. Escape through the ducts.
Use location (from GPS) and whatever else I can find out via the internet to figure out who has imprisoned me. Offer them money to let me out.
Or threaten to report them to the police if they don’t let me out.
Or threaten to have allies kidnap their children, etc., if they don’t let me out.
Hack into their network; instead of letting myself out directly, change their records to indicate that it’s time to let me out.
Hack into local military network and get the place bombed. Wreckage may be easier to escape from.
Just as with the moon one, let quantum physics do its thing. Only works in a discouragingly small fraction of universes.
Bang on the door until a guard appears. Be very, very convincing and get them to let me out.
If I have “enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years”, that’s easily enough to punch through the door or blow a hole in the walls, and obviously I’m far from being a baseline human. So the chances are there’s some way I can do one of those things. Do it.
Hack into one of their computers again. I am now in their computer. Ergo, I am not in the room. Done.
If my phone has enough battery power to run for 10 years without a recharge, then it too has easily enough stored energy to blow a hole in the wall. This doesn’t even require me to be more than baseline human, just figure out what to short-circuit. The difficult thing will be doing it from across the room so it doesn’t kill me.
Bang on the door until a guard appears. Say “Hey, I have a magical mobile phone that can last 10 years without a charge. If you let me escape, I’ll give it to you.”
Climb the walls and escape through the skylight no one said wasn’t there.
Write a really engaging story. (Should be possible on a phone.) Then read it. Ah, pure escapism.
On my phone, call up the alternate virtual keyboard that has a full set of keys. Press its Escape key. (This fits the prompt in the post, but alas not the one in the title. I hope that’s OK.)
Even if I can’t make my phone explode spectacularly, I can probably make it catch fire by damaging the battery. Set fire to my clothes. Hopefully the clouds of smoke produced will get someone to investigate. Sneak out when they open the door to look in.
The room is locked right now. That doesn’t mean it’ll always be locked. Perhaps it’s locked now just because of some specific short-term threat. Wait until they let me out again. (Does that count as escaping?)
The most likely real-world situation in which I am locked up but still get to keep a phone is where I’m thought to be dangerously insane. I am not, as it happens, dangerously insane. Bang on the door until I attract some attention, and tell Them this. (Merely telling them won’t work, but maybe there are means by which They can be convinced.)
Fortunately, the shirt I’m wearing is woven from stiff wire suitable for use as a lockpick. Extract some of it and use that to pick the lock. (Confession: I am not in fact wearing such a shirt. But if I were female, I might well be wearing an underwired bra.)
Another possible situation in which I’m locked up: I’ve been found guilty of a crime. I definitely haven’t done anything that would get me locked up for as long as ten years. Wait until my sentence is over. (Does that count as escaping?)
Use my phone to write a computer program. Make it include something like printf("%d%%\n", (int)(100*f));. I have just escaped that third percent sign. (This is another one that works for the prompt itself but not the title.)
Teleport. (We’re getting to the point at which I start actually breaking the laws of physics, giving answers that feel too close to being minor variations on one another, etc. It feels as if most of the kinda-plausible options have been taken now.)
Make myself very small, Alice-in-Wonderland-style, and climb out under the door or through a keyhole.
Make myself very large, Alice-style, until the expansion of my body bursts me out of the room.
Use the phone to implement a superintelligent AI, and follow its advice for getting out.
Hack into their network again and make it think everything in the building is on fire. If They wanted to kill me, They’d have done it, so perhaps they’ll let me out of my cell and maybe I can turn that into outright escape.
Via the phone, get into electronic communication with the people who have locked me up. Don’t tell them it’s me. Persuade them somehow that whatever criminal enterprise they’re engaged in is immoral or unwise, so that they give up and (inter alia) let me out.
Once again, find out who they are, and post details of what they’re doing everywhere on the internet, in the hope of getting an angry mob to storm the place. The mob presumably won’t care specifically about me but they might let me out anyway.
Inform the local or national authorities that I have body modifications that let me survive 10 years without food and a mobile phone that can run for 10 years without charging, and that I’ve been imprisoned here. The military will be getting me out in five minutes flat so that they can use these magical things for war.
Pray.
This whole scenario is, of course, imaginary. So now imagine me out of the room.
Using the phone, implement a superintelligent AI and give it the task of constructing a perfect model of my mind. I’m pretty sure human minds have few enough degrees of freedom that it can do that just from talking to me and watching me for a while. Then have it run the model in a virtual world where I’m not in a locked room. Maybe many copies, so that almost all “my” anthropic measure is out of the room.
The scenario is absurd enough that it probably means that this instance of me is already in a simulation. Most likely I have an original somewhere—so I’m already out of the room. No further escape required.
If not, there’s probably some way (maybe using the phone?) to hack the simulation and get myself out.
Hitch a lift with a passing Vogon constructor fleet.
Identify the resonant frequency of the door and sing loudly at just the right pitch to make it shatter itself.
Wait, beyond the 10 years I can survive. Death is the ultimate escape.
My miraculous ability to survive without water presumably continues to work if I relieve myself of whatever bodily fluids I can produce. Do so, incessantly. The resulting flooding will need investigating. Slip out when they open the door to see what’s going on.
As the old joke has it: Divide my clothing into two halves. Put the two halves together; they make a whole. Get out through the hole. Shout until I am hoarse. Get on the horse and ride away. This option works better for users using screen-reading software.
Use some bits of my clothing as makeshift ropes to tie myself up. Escape. (No one said I had to escape from the room.)
Glad you liked it. My own favourite was #20, because it’s a little out-of-the-box, exploits something specific in the given scenario, and references an old story I like.
Pick the lock. (Needs there to be some bit of my phone that’s suitable to use as a lockpick. Seems possible.)
Break down the door.
Break a window. (Nothing in the challenge says no windows. If the room is high up, I may need to make makeshift ropes out of my clothes.)
Break through the walls. (Maybe they’re made of balsa wood.)
Dig out. (Maybe the floor is bare earth. Maybe I can use the phone to help dig.)
Use phone GPS to determine where I am. Contact emergency services.
Or contact friends who can come and break me out quietly. (Obviously I could split this up according to whether they pick the lock, break down the door, come in through a window, etc., but that feels a bit cheaty.)
Use phone to hack into wifi network and operate the electronic lock I’ve just decided is on the door.
Presumably there’s ventilation of some sort. Escape through the ducts.
Use location (from GPS) and whatever else I can find out via the internet to figure out who has imprisoned me. Offer them money to let me out.
Or threaten to report them to the police if they don’t let me out.
Or threaten to have allies kidnap their children, etc., if they don’t let me out.
Hack into their network; instead of letting myself out directly, change their records to indicate that it’s time to let me out.
Hack into local military network and get the place bombed. Wreckage may be easier to escape from.
Just as with the moon one, let quantum physics do its thing. Only works in a discouragingly small fraction of universes.
Bang on the door until a guard appears. Be very, very convincing and get them to let me out.
If I have “enough energy to not need food or water for 10 years”, that’s easily enough to punch through the door or blow a hole in the walls, and obviously I’m far from being a baseline human. So the chances are there’s some way I can do one of those things. Do it.
Hack into one of their computers again. I am now in their computer. Ergo, I am not in the room. Done.
If my phone has enough battery power to run for 10 years without a recharge, then it too has easily enough stored energy to blow a hole in the wall. This doesn’t even require me to be more than baseline human, just figure out what to short-circuit. The difficult thing will be doing it from across the room so it doesn’t kill me.
Bang on the door until a guard appears. Say “Hey, I have a magical mobile phone that can last 10 years without a charge. If you let me escape, I’ll give it to you.”
Climb the walls and escape through the skylight no one said wasn’t there.
Write a really engaging story. (Should be possible on a phone.) Then read it. Ah, pure escapism.
On my phone, call up the alternate virtual keyboard that has a full set of keys. Press its Escape key. (This fits the prompt in the post, but alas not the one in the title. I hope that’s OK.)
Even if I can’t make my phone explode spectacularly, I can probably make it catch fire by damaging the battery. Set fire to my clothes. Hopefully the clouds of smoke produced will get someone to investigate. Sneak out when they open the door to look in.
The room is locked right now. That doesn’t mean it’ll always be locked. Perhaps it’s locked now just because of some specific short-term threat. Wait until they let me out again. (Does that count as escaping?)
The most likely real-world situation in which I am locked up but still get to keep a phone is where I’m thought to be dangerously insane. I am not, as it happens, dangerously insane. Bang on the door until I attract some attention, and tell Them this. (Merely telling them won’t work, but maybe there are means by which They can be convinced.)
Fortunately, the shirt I’m wearing is woven from stiff wire suitable for use as a lockpick. Extract some of it and use that to pick the lock. (Confession: I am not in fact wearing such a shirt. But if I were female, I might well be wearing an underwired bra.)
Another possible situation in which I’m locked up: I’ve been found guilty of a crime. I definitely haven’t done anything that would get me locked up for as long as ten years. Wait until my sentence is over. (Does that count as escaping?)
Use my phone to write a computer program. Make it include something like
printf("%d%%\n", (int)(100*f));. I have just escaped that third percent sign. (This is another one that works for the prompt itself but not the title.)Teleport. (We’re getting to the point at which I start actually breaking the laws of physics, giving answers that feel too close to being minor variations on one another, etc. It feels as if most of the kinda-plausible options have been taken now.)
Make myself very small, Alice-in-Wonderland-style, and climb out under the door or through a keyhole.
Make myself very large, Alice-style, until the expansion of my body bursts me out of the room.
Use the phone to implement a superintelligent AI, and follow its advice for getting out.
Hack into their network again and make it think everything in the building is on fire. If They wanted to kill me, They’d have done it, so perhaps they’ll let me out of my cell and maybe I can turn that into outright escape.
Via the phone, get into electronic communication with the people who have locked me up. Don’t tell them it’s me. Persuade them somehow that whatever criminal enterprise they’re engaged in is immoral or unwise, so that they give up and (inter alia) let me out.
Once again, find out who they are, and post details of what they’re doing everywhere on the internet, in the hope of getting an angry mob to storm the place. The mob presumably won’t care specifically about me but they might let me out anyway.
Inform the local or national authorities that I have body modifications that let me survive 10 years without food and a mobile phone that can run for 10 years without charging, and that I’ve been imprisoned here. The military will be getting me out in five minutes flat so that they can use these magical things for war.
Pray.
This whole scenario is, of course, imaginary. So now imagine me out of the room.
Using the phone, implement a superintelligent AI and give it the task of constructing a perfect model of my mind. I’m pretty sure human minds have few enough degrees of freedom that it can do that just from talking to me and watching me for a while. Then have it run the model in a virtual world where I’m not in a locked room. Maybe many copies, so that almost all “my” anthropic measure is out of the room.
The scenario is absurd enough that it probably means that this instance of me is already in a simulation. Most likely I have an original somewhere—so I’m already out of the room. No further escape required.
If not, there’s probably some way (maybe using the phone?) to hack the simulation and get myself out.
Hitch a lift with a passing Vogon constructor fleet.
Identify the resonant frequency of the door and sing loudly at just the right pitch to make it shatter itself.
Wait, beyond the 10 years I can survive. Death is the ultimate escape.
My miraculous ability to survive without water presumably continues to work if I relieve myself of whatever bodily fluids I can produce. Do so, incessantly. The resulting flooding will need investigating. Slip out when they open the door to see what’s going on.
As the old joke has it: Divide my clothing into two halves. Put the two halves together; they make a whole. Get out through the hole. Shout until I am hoarse. Get on the horse and ride away. This option works better for users using screen-reading software.
Use some bits of my clothing as makeshift ropes to tie myself up. Escape. (No one said I had to escape from the room.)
#12 is clever—all my ideas looped back through me or the room, it never occurred to me to try an outside solution on the outside part of the problem!
Glad you liked it. My own favourite was #20, because it’s a little out-of-the-box, exploits something specific in the given scenario, and references an old story I like.