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How a YouTuber Makes Millions by Solving Puzzles

For people stuck at home and self-isolating, puzzles can be a satisfying pastime. For Chris Ramsay, they’re also a business.

Released on 05/14/2020

Transcript

[chiming music]

[mysterious music]

[Chris Ramsay] You know, when you were a kid,

and you were given a treasure map,

it's super crazy to even be given as a kid,

you're like oh my god and we can actually

go get this treasure so it's that same

child-like wonder, I think, puzzles bring to people.

You go through all sorts of crazy emotions,

trying to solve it, that when you get to the end,

there's this feeling of, ugh, overwhelming elation.

Ugh, so sick.

So with puzzles there's so much to discover.

It's kind of a never ending journey.

Puzzles are the perfect fit

for anyone stuck inside right now,

that they can just kind of goof around on something.

After the pandemic they found, I don't know what it is,

I don't know what it does,

but I'm sending it back in time to you.

Good morning.

I got back from a trip on March 12th,

from Las Vegas and since then I've been in quarantine.

You know, particular area in Quebec, where I'm at right now,

they've got roadblocks set outside of cities,

and you'll get fined if you try and leave

or come in without a good reason,

so, it's really been tight lockdown here.

My job allows me to work alone or from home.

In this case, the office, which is next to my house.

So, I'm very fortunate in that sense.

Since quarantine and lockdown,

we've been posting probably about four to six

videos a week, I try to put one out everyday,

if not every other day.

You know, by doing this, it's kind of fun

'cause a lot of people, all their doing is

kind of watching videos anyway so.

I think that a lot of people are turning

to things that they can do in their home right now,

one of those being puzzles or board games.

[Nicole Louglin] About to finish

another quarantine puzzle.

For one, you don't need anyone else,

you can do it by yourself.

Two, I think it is kind of stimulating for your mind,

the fact that you are forced to think creatively

and critically, in a way that you would normally

not think, so, if we're on our phones,

or if we're doing anything, that's sort of automatic,

you're on kind of an autopilot,

so this really forces your mind to think about one problem

in different ways and to really try and figure it out,

have fun in that way.

All right, so here we are.

I like how you kept the place clean.

Yeah. Yeah, someone's got to.

This is the studio.

I was working for a magic company creating

and selling magic tricks, and at the same time

I was building up their social media platforms,

I was building up my own, puzzles didn't come

until a few years later, where I was at the showroom once,

and I saw this lock on a shelf,

and I asked them what it was,

and they said it was a puzzle,

which struck me as a little bit off,

because that's not normally how you see a puzzle.

And, sure enough, it was an amazing piece,

it came apart and there was tools

within the lock that helped you open the lock,

and it took me like four hours to solve,

and I did it on camera, not expecting anything,

I thought I'll just film my process and see what happens.

I'm a magician, for those of you who don't know me,

so the idea here, today, I'm going to use

that magician's ingenuity and my personal intuition,

to try and solve this particular lock puzzle.

First couple puzzles I put up,

eventually just really popped off.

It escalated really quickly, went from like 100,000

to half a million, to 2 million,

to now 3 and a half million subscribers, roughly,

which is crazy, I think the lock puzzles,

for one, at first, were really, really pickin' up

because I think it's just such a normal, regular item

that providing a key and a lock,

and telling you the key doesn't work in this lock

but it still has to somehow open it,

that's just a weird mystery.

Probably one of the most famous

lock puzzle creators is Rainer Popp.

He's a German locksmith, I believe,

out of Munich, Germany, and his passion

was to restore old locks, but I guess he also

grew an appreciation for how they worked.

So it does take several different degrees of difficulty

before one of these locks are created.

Which is, I think, why they're so rare.

Why they're hard to come by,

'cause they're not milled in a factory overseas,

they're done in somebody's garage or basement,

and he only makes so few of them before his hands get tired.

This guy makes these locks every year,

they start from T1, to T2, T3,

now one to T11, I think, we solved.

We're gonna be solving the T7 lock.

This one, particularly, has no key,

which is interesting for a lock, right?

'Cause it doesn't have a number combination,

doesn't have anything of that.

So, it just looks like a close lock.

Kind of going in blind, I'm excited to see how it opens

and see if I can open it at all.

[whistles] There you go, the T7 pop lock.

[timer beeps]

Sometimes, things go according to plan.

For the most part, the puzzles that we do here

tend to be difficult and they tend to take a long time.

A lot of the puzzles that we do,

we either have custom made,

or we find them at auctions at auctions are very pricey,

so it's not something you can go out and buy.

But you still want to enjoy that solving process.

It's not only how the puzzle is made, or how it's solved,

but you're watching someone go through it,

and I think people really connect with that.

There's definitely an ASMR factor to it.

What's the technical ASMR, is it audio stimulizing...

Hey Siri, what is ASMR stand for?

[Siri] I find this on the web.

Autonomous sensory meridian response.

So I guess there's a response somewhere in your brain,

that reacts positively to stimulating sounds.

[lock clicking]

There's something calming about it,

I am calm during these puzzles

but, internally, sometimes,

there's an immense amount of frustration.

Because I'll be on a puzzle for, like, 4 hours, right?

I feel like I have better things to do.

Most of it is just kind of trial and error.

Oh, that has to go down first, there we go.

I think people are attracted

to watching other people go through shit.

Whether or not it's with a puzzle,

or whether it's with anything else,

I think it's just fun to see

someone actually go through a thought process,

because it kind of is self-reflecting on yourself,

and how would I do that, how would I approach that?

A lot of these puzzles have internal mazes,

with objects dropping around

or slapping on each other on the inside of the puzzle,

and for everyone else at home,

I have to kind of translate that.

So that's what the inside looks like.

There's a bit of an internal maze, just as I deduced.

You're watching someone go through it,

and, I think, people really connect with that.

It definitely does feel like a story.

So, most of the puzzle that I do are sequential puzzles,

which means that you have to solve them in sequence,

and you'll figure out the next step,

once you've figured out the first step, right?

So you might be stuck there for an hour,

two hours, days, who knows?

Whatever you know about locks,

usually won't serve you and that's the whole point.

Is that, they want you to go in there

knowing about something, and finding out

that that's exactly how it doesn't work.

You know, so now your left without any knowledge

and starting from scratch,

I think that's the interesting part.

Boom. Done.

T7 lock solved, boom.

The puzzle community is interesting,

because it's not unlike the magic community,

I'll tell you that, there's a gathering every year

that happens called the IPP,

the International Puzzle Party,

and it happens in different places in the world,

this year's in Israel, last year's in Japan.

I haven't been yet, I've been asked by friends of mine,

who are members, to go, and it's like an initiation thing,

it's kind of strange.

To partake in the puzzle party or the puzzle exchange,

where they hand each other puzzles,

you have to make a certain number of them

for everyone in the group.

I think the first year you can't actually

present a puzzle, you just have to know someone

who's presenting and help out.

But I think it's super interesting.

But that's all I know, I don't think

that there's a massive community,

and I think that that's what made

the videos I do so popular, is that,

people were finding out that

there were other people interested

in this super niche hobby

and it could literally appeal to anyone.

You don't have to be a expert puzzle solver

or whatever that is, or a puzzle maker collector

to enjoy a puzzle, so I think

the community that I've established, on my channel at least,

is a community of just everyday people who enjoy puzzles.

I mean, it's the same people who enjoy board games,

I think, or people who enjoy playing card games

with their friends and family.

It's something you can do and put back down,

and come back to a year later.

You don't have to finish it now.

There's no boundary there for anyone to enjoy that

and I think that's what's really appealing about it.

This is probably the funnest part

of the entire thing, for me.

They did not make this easy on me,

that's for sure, there we go.

[puzzle beeps]

Videos like mine don't talk about the virus.

It's not that I'm not trying to address it,

I have addressed it, it's good for everyone to

kind of find something that really, like I said,

takes them away from screens right now,

because I feel that, in self isolation,

a lot of people are going to turn to their phones

or their computers, a lot more now,

and I think it's good to keep your mind busy

with other things, maybe a little more bit more positive,

in the mean while, while you self-isolate.

A little bit harder than this one though.

Anyways, outro.

Starring: Chris Ramsay