They are inside a cube. A cube has six sides. Four are covered by the pneumatic presses. One is a solid floor. Leaves: the ceiling. And as we could see from the overhead shot, the ceiling is basically open (there is no structural floor above them). Disable the fan, stack the bookcases, and climb out.
The TC was wrong. There almost certainly was a ceiling (I haven't seen the movie), but he/she is otherwise correct. The walls are stronger than the ceiling, because they have to be strong enough to take the pressure of the pneumatic presses. The floor is probably as strong as or stronger than the ceiling, & even if it was weaker than the ceiling, there is the chance that there is nothing but solid ground underneath it & zero hollow area. That leaves the ceiling as the most likely weakest side of the room. Stack the bookcases, attack the ceiling with things (example -> books) until you make a hole in it, & climb out.
Or you could take everybody else's attitude here & just sit around & twiddle your thumbs. --- IF I want your opinion, I'll GIVE it to you.
That's all you have in the room. How can you escape in an hours time while doing high level equations, riddles? Get it wrong and the press moves closer.
Yes I agree with you, there was NO ceiling! It's not just the overhead view which shows this. There are a few shots in the room where the angle of the camera clearly shows dark above the walls, ie the room is built in like a big warehouse or saw mill or something to have room to place the presses around the room. You see this when they get out too.
So, as the OP says, pile the furniture and climb out! Simples.
Where are you getting that it was "incredibly hot" from? It was certainly never mentioned by the characters.
It wouldn`t matter anyway, as a fan would only move this theoretical hot air around, not cool it, so it would make no discernible difference to people in a small hot room.
Sure, it's only the friggin' internet, but we can still be kind human beings, can't we?
Another question that occurs to me is for all of those who think that the ONLY/BEST way to get out of the room is to solve the puzzles.
Those questions are these. Remember that I haven't seen the movie. How did they get into the room? Could they just use that way to get back out? If no, then why not? --- IF I want your opinion, I'll GIVE it to you.
Dude, it's in a giant warehouse at night (if not winter, too!). It wasn't sealed on all sides, there were plenty of cracks in between the walls as you can see every time they showed the corners closing in. Four people's body heat doesn't heat up a room that fast. It's not going to get hot.
And what do you mean, hard to breathe? It's not hard to breathe when it's hot. You're thinking of people stuck in elevators who are claustrophobic - they have a hard time breathing because they're freaking out, not because they're hot.
There is a ceiling and it is obviously holding a fan.
But I agree that probably the weakest side of the room could have been the ceiling, so instead of trying to leverage the presses against each other it may have been more viable to leverage two or all of the presses against the ceiling using diagonally placed bookcases. This could have crushed out the ceiling.
An easier way would have been to short-circuit a power outlet/lamp hoping that it would jump the switch and disable the electrically-powered presses.