Escape Room and Trump Rally

We had scheduled a family outing at a downtown escape room, only later realising that the Trump rally was only 4 blocks away, at the same time.  Parking was difficult, but we all made it in time. You will be shocked to learn that the people walking to the rally, and then away from it when we got out later, were quiet, cheerful, relaxed-looking folks.  There were Trump shirts and hats, and a fair bit of flag-themed clothing.  I saw no truculent t-shirts. The downtown sidewalk restaurant crowd tends to be generally young, pierced, tatooed, and multi-hued hair, and thus I presume tending liberal but not unanimously so.  They were also p[resent, and there were no shouts or confrontation anywhere.  One restaurant had an anti-Trump sign, but it was largely obscured by it's own menu.

We completed the escape room with fifteen minutes to spare and received no hints.  It was a group of 11 including 3 children, so it was a little confusing at first in the small initial room. In the post mortem we only had a few things we should have done better if we had just thought a bit more clearly. I have a bit of advice that I have not seen on any of the sites about escape rooms.  I could have used headphones to block out the noise of the others on the first puzzle I attacked.  It was math-based, a logic puzzle of a type I have seen a few times before.  I kept getting distracted by people coming and trying to be helpful, asking "Is it like a Sudoku?"(No) or "I think that last row is supposed to go in alphabetical order."  (Not remotely true.) But mostly just distracted by the general noise.  I kept losing my place and having to start over, even with a whiteboard.  Uninterrupted, I think I could have done it in about four minutes, but I took more than twelve.  So if you are distracted by the noise of others, bring earplugs or something.  Not everyone should, because much of the solving is people building on each other's ideas. I think these words go with the numbers on the cards in the other room...some of the names are the same...I think we have to figure out what order to put those numbers in...the different colors might each mean a number.  But you should maybe bring a couple of sets of headphones for a large group, just in case, and have people be aware if they are distractable that way.