Welcome!

Jan. 13th, 2013 -

“This site is devoted to the genre of the immersive puzzle,
but until there is another like MAZE, this site stands as a testament
to the brilliance of Christopher Manson, who, in one stroke
launched and mastered a new genre of literature.”

   -  White Raven

 

maze cover

 

Welcome to the MAZE community where fans of Christopher Manson’s MAZE can come together to share ideas, hints, clues, tips, tricks, solutions, observations, etc. to the multitude of MAZE puzzles that have gone unsolved in the public sphere.
Be part of the solution to MAZE.

Welcome to the Abyss!

THE MAZE FORUM >

MAZE, an Introduction >

The History of MAZE >

 MAZE Reviews >

554 thoughts on “Welcome!

  1. A few new blog posts up at Mazecast dot com > User blogs > Aria’s blog, including a Mazey take on a holiday classic and a v. important video from Hello Gregor — you’ve got homework this holiday! Merry Mazemas, everyone.

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  2. Abyssians,

    With the tentative upgrade of Room 22 to 4/5, there are now no rooms less than 3/5 remaining.

    Solving MAZE is now 79% complete (according to the solutions I am aware of, assuming that the amount of new solutions found that I am unaware of continues to be consistent at about 20%, yada, yada, yada).

    Incredible job everyone!

    White Raven

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    • Personally, I think that we can do this in 8-9 months. Even though you guys are much more clever than I am, I will continue to post ideas I think of. Go team!

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  3. Although we have not made much progress on the Guide Puzzle or anything else of late (obviously), the Mazecast crew has been keeping busy nevertheless with other fannish Maze activities.

    I’ve started a blog on Mazecast dot com (click on Aria’s blog), and the latest post features three original songs created and performed by Hello Gregor and inspired by rooms in Maze.

    Also, I don’t want anyone to get TOO excited, but we are working on another Maze-related song WITH video, performed by Hello Gregor and penned by vewatkin, with various involvement from the rest of us.

    Hope you enjoy! As always, we’d love to hear from you.

    Especially if you know the answer to the Guide Puzzle.

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  4. Abyssians,

    44 of 45 rooms are now 3/5 puzzle points or above!

    The exception is the unfathomable Room 22 which hovers at 1/5.

    9 months 23 days till the counters come down so if you have an idea toss it out soon.

    White Raven

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    • Mantis,

      Welcome to the Abyss!

      Yes, it is time to toss your hat in the ring!

      White Raven

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    • Aria,

      I’ve got nothing. The only reason the room has one puzzle point is that Manson said that the “red herring” solution wasn’t entirely wrong.

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  5. Abyssians,

    We just passed 6000 comments!

    Special thanks to our recent contributors:
    Aria
    Shelley
    515
    vewatkin
    sp
    Factitious
    Beelzebibble
    Anchorperson Smith
    Kon-Tiki
    MIT10
    Owen Hammer

    And newcomers:
    Nine
    Bill M.
    Woodcarver88
    Katherine
    Njorl
    Yojo
    Tetra
    PA Prof
    etc
    Seven Sisters
    TR
    abc
    Nefarus
    Rob of the North
    LoMoody
    Tiberius Prime

    MAZE is now 78% solved (not including the Guide, according to stuff I know, void where prohibited, yada yada…) good job everyone! 315 days to go!

    White Raven

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  6. Fellow Abyssians, Mazecasters, Mazeheads…

    This is the eleventh hour.

    More accurately, it is the eleventh month, but the meaning is the same: we are running out of time.

    As of today, we have only eleven months left before White Raven removes the puzzle point counters and stops interacting with the site except to approve new members.

    What this means is that we have only eleven months left to pry from White Raven’s head everything he knows about Maze. Eleven months left to find out everything we can about the Riddle of the Guide. Eleven months left to ask the notoriously reclusive Manson about his creation through White Raven and the Ask Manson feature on this site.

    We have lost some steam and some people over the past few months, for various reasons, but that is no reason to give up. Whatever you may think about individual puzzles or solutions, this site represents a golden opportunity that is not likely to come along again.

    This is a plea to the silent community out there. Post your ideas. Suggest questions for Ask Manson. Contact Mazecast if you have an idea for a video or if you just want to join in. There’s lots left to figure out and not just the Riddle of the Guide. For example, WHAT is going on in 35? We still have no idea. Help solve it! Let’s keep this thing going until the end of the line.

    There is not much time left. Future generations of Maze fans will never forgive us if we squander it.

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    • I’ve been reading this site from the beginning, its time I say something.

      I want to know if there are any other hidden phrases like “you bear it upon your shoulders.” I also would like it if Manson described in detail what we have right and wrong in one room you folks have gotten five stars on. Like room 1, 29 or 45. He might do that!

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    • Thanks for coming out of the woodwork, Yojo! You might want to put those suggestions in the Ask Manson section so they don’t get overlooked.

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  7. Okay so that is all the gems on the top of the dumpster where I have tossed years of solutions. Please oh please I hope that at least something is right.

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    • LoMoody,

      Welcome to The Abyss!

      I won’t have time to respond till tomorrow but I thought you would want to know that, yes, you got your name on the board.

      White Raven

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  8. Abyssians,

    It is time for the big reveal…

    When I made this site I did so with a time limit in mind, 45 months.

    This site will be 45 months old September 13th 2016 at which time I will remove all the solution meters and no longer add new solutions to the solution summaries. Come September 13th 2016 my only involvement with the site will be to approve new members. So if you want a solution confirmed you have 1 year 2 months and 3 days remaining.

    Tempus fugit,

    White Raven

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    • i think most people are interested in the solution to the riddle of the guide, and we are not any closer than we were a few months ago. myself, vince, and aria have a few ideas that i think we’ve elaborated on here, but nothing you have confirmed.

      mazecast season 2 will be at a slower pace and i will be doing one or two documentary style episodes on artists similar to manson or perhaps influencers, and see how that goes, but nothing related to clues. other than that i haven’t touched maze in a long time, and will probably pick it up again closer to winter. vince is on haitus. brent expressed wishes to do another mazecast, so there’s that happening.

      WR, when or if you decide to stop wanting to pay for this domain, if you want, i can encase this site in carbonite and make it an archive similar to bailey’s site on mazearchive.tk with no further commenting or edits.

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    • sp,

      At some point I may take you up on carbonite freezing, for the foreseeable future I would like to keep The Abyss active. Thank you for the offer I’ll keep it in mind.

      I’m looking forward to your docs! Is it going to be about writers and visual artists (like Verne and Gorey), other puzzle books authors, or just any MAZEish puzzles? I would watch regardless, I’m just curious.

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    • off the cuff, piranesi, dore, rembrandt. i’ll look into the artists you mentioned.

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    • sp,

      The art of Edward Gorey is a good candidate for a precursor to MAZE but Manson has not confirmed it. Two influences he has confirmed are the novel by Jules Verne “The Mysterious Island” and the drawing by Max Ernst “The Loplop and The Fair Gardener”… yes it’s the one with the woman carrying a bird.

      Manson is a fan of surrealism, as am I, as I assume is everyone who loves MAZE regardless of whether solutions are found or not.

      I am a fan of Gustave Dore, I used part of one of his images as the header for the Guidebook page, and I had one of his paradise images as my desktop pic for a while.

      I’ve not heard of Piranesi before but if his work is anything akin to Dore and Rembrant I suspect I will be a fan soon.

      Any idea yet when you are planning on doing the artist episodes?

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    • i guess i SHOULD talk about gorey, although i am not a fan myself, i would be remiss to exclude him. in terms of surrealism, i definitely see the influence of magritte, specifically the back of man’s bowler hat.

      i can’t tell you when these will be complete but i’m pretty busy with work right now, i’d say nearer the end of summer. piranesi is one of the prolific geniuses of the 1700s. he was an architect and artist, and specifically in relation to maze, his work on dungeons (carcerri in italian) is extremely relevant to maze, in my opinion. i think it would have been near impossible for manson to not know this guy and his work.

      i think aria has a good handle on keeping people interested with meta-maze, when i won’t be available i will encourage/harass her to direct some episodes.

      i am definitely a maze ‘lifer’ and can’t justify quitting this book till it’s time to toss me over the cemetery wall, it is an abyss of clues and mystery, both intended and not.

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  9. Abyssians,

    As you all know in the past when you would add a link a comment would be held for moderation. I have changed it so all comments with links are immediately blocked, they simply won’t post.

    I did this because the number of spam comments was getting ridiculous. This last month I was receiving about 15 spam comments AN HOUR. Blocking links also blocks spam, solving the problem.

    If you would like to direct people to a website just leave out “http” and the “www” in the address and it will post.

    Thank you for your attention. :)

    White Raven

    LIKE(1)
  10. Abyssians,

    We just passed 5,250 comments!

    Special thanks to recent contributors:

    sp
    Aria
    vewatkin
    515
    Carl Koffman
    Spark of Life
    Beelzebibble
    MIT10
    Anonymous Smart Person
    abc
    mike
    Moleman

    Not including the riddle of the guide and based only on solutions I know of (I’m sure there are more) you all have gotten MAZE to 74% solved! A quarter to go!

    White Raven

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  11. Here to comment on the guide puzzle but I wanted to say how much I like the changes. The site is easier to navigate and the maps are essential. Nice.

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    • White Raven, the site looks great on my phone and table. HOWEVER the maze forum drop link just takes me to the forum main page instead of letting me pick a drop link from the list. Can that be fixed?

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    • Carl Koffman,

      The MAZE Forum link is now cell phone friendly. Thanks for the suggestion!

      White Raven

      LIKE(1)
  12. Abyssians,

    I am making some minor changes to navigation in anticipation of following through on a request by Manson that is now a couple years old. I am adding a simple play-thru, basically MAZE online, using the images I am already using, with copyright information and a link to Amazon on every page.

    So the forum is no longer under “MAZE” but is now under “MAZE Forum.”

    A request: Is anyone here a wikipedia editor? There is a unauthorized online version of MAZE by a duo called Dreadful and Sinister in which they modified the text as a vanity piece. When I am done with MAZE-online could someone delete the link to D & S and replace it with this version?

    White Raven

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    • looks like they just stole the link map code and images from the original online archived version.

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    • SP,

      Yep, looks like they just did a little copy and paste, and then changed the names of some of the characters to themselves. Cheeky devils!

      The version I am working on is fresh code, hot off the keyboard! Actually, as I am sure you know, there is a lot of copy and paste going on in fresh code as well. The creative, fun part lasts for about an hour, then it is 8 hours of… [clone page] -click- -click- -click- -click- copy>paste -click- -click- -click- -click- copy>paste etc.

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  13. Hmm. Well. Either this is not THE thing or I didn’t name enough of the things. It still may be A thing anyway so maybe we should try to spot “things”

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  14. Abyssians,

    I’ve added a few whirly gigs to the site.

    1. The room pages can now be navigated by clicking on the doors in the illustration.

    2. The room pages now have a map reference below the solutions.

    3. The Trap, Loop, and Path index pages now have clickable navigation maps.

    Let me know if anything doesn’t work properly.

    White Raven

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    • Nicely done! The click-maps must have taken a coon’s age to make. For those of us who don’t have the maps memorized this is a god send. Thank you!

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  15. Gentile, Vewatkin, SP,

    I removed Gentile’s comments from Room 22 but then the comments from all three of you after his comment then made no sense so I deleted these comments as well. Since they didn’t include possible solutions I figured you all might forgive me for this.

    White Raven

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    • I don’t know that I can endorse a policy of deleting my comments just because they make no sense, but I’ll look the other way this time.

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    • LOL! Imagine how many posts I would have to delete if I made that my policy! Thank you for your understand…this time. :)

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    • That’s fine, I assume if something’s not maze related it might get truncated.

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  16. Abyssians,

    We just passed 4,500 comments!

    Special thanks to recent contributors:
    Beelzebibble
    Dave G
    Dnutz
    Eule
    Factitious
    515
    Friendly Floyd
    HupeHupe
    Jessica Miller
    Justin J
    Marianne
    SP
    Vewatkins

    I have recovered from surgery but my heart condition remains problematic. I apologize if I drop out for periods of time as I struggle through.

    Thanks! :)

    White Raven

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    • If we weren’t mostly a bunch of godless heathens we’d pray for you. Since we are mostly a bunch of godless heathens, though, I’ll just note that you should probably choose someone to bequeath your secrets and identity to in the case of your death, and they can pull a Dread Pirate Roberts with the site. I guess the honor should probably be 515′s, unless he/she can be unseated before your passing.

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    • Heartwarming.

      I do not think I will be kicking the bucket just yet but if I do I’d rather do a Knights Templar than a Dread Pirate Roberts.

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    • In all seriousness, I hope everything works out and you feel better soon. If you need anything of any of us don’t hesitate to ask, though I can’t imagine what that could possibly be.

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  17. Abyssians,

    You may have noticed a lack of participation on my part recently, I had heart surgery and I am having a slow and difficult recovery. I will catch up with comments when I am able.

    By the way, we just passed 3,500 comments!

    White Raven

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    • As soon as he’s back on his feet we’re going to have a boxing match for charity.

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    • Mary, vewatkin, sp, Marianne and those of you wrote me emails, such kindness, thank you!

      Hmm… back surgery vs. heart surgery… in a boxing match… I doubt either of us would survive round one, but what the hell, it’s for charity. :)

      White Raven

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    • I don’t see my previous comment here. I probably pushed the wrong button again. But I really do hope you get well soon. Both of you.

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    • Best wishes for swift recovery, all of you who have had your bodies invaded for corrective surgery! You think Christopher Manson invented a maze? You ought to see the inside of your body! Now, *there* is a maze!

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  18. HELLO. I’m only just become a teenager, but I’ve had the Maze for as long as I can remember and I like to think I’m intelligent enough to help solve things and whatnot with the rest of you! I came to this site when I saw that my older sister was reading The Cask Of Amontillado for school, (which I had already read on my own time last year and saw how page 39 referenced it) so I had decided to look up more things about the book, deciding that I wasn’t quite done with it. That happened a couple of days ago but this is the first time I’ve written something on here, since it is now the weekend and there’s no homework. I’m hoping to become a regular visitor to the site, although I’d have to do it on my own since my inbox is so full (a thousand-something unread!) that I’ve stopped checking for new e-mails.

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    • Welcome to the gong show! We’re glad to see this small community grow from all walks of life.

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  19. To all readers of this site:

    Based on a review of site statistics, removing all the spiders, hotlinks, accidental visits, one time visitors, and even casual visitors, The Abyss has at present a community of about 162 readers who check in more than twice a month and seriously read the material.

    I have heard from many of you in emails but I thought it would be nice for the hardy solvers to hear from their public.

    If you are a reader of this site please reply to this comment and just say hi. If you don’t want to leave an email address, just write in your nickname @intotheabyss.net and I will approve a one time comment.

    If you want to say a bit more, perhaps mention how you came to be a fan of MAZE.

    We look forward to hearing from you!

    White Raven

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    • It wasn’t until I saw Dave’s comment and reread the post that I realized the request for salutations applies to the regulars as well. Hi!

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    • Hi White Raven, Dave and Vewatkin! You guys rock!

      I got my book as a gift from a weird uncle. Years of looking over the book and now I am weird too.

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    • My roommate died and inherited the book which just adds to the creepiness. Greetings to you all!

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    • Hey all you maze fans! My book arrived after an odd experience. I was driving alone along a long stretch of highway and suddenly a bright light shown down on my car. Next thing I knew I was home 200 miles away with the book in seat next to me and an odd scar on my abdomen. Been a fan ever since!

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    • I have been a fan since I was 15. It is great to see that people recognize that this book is genius.

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    • Hey everyone! You are all way smart and us dummies appreciate it.

      Raven, thanks for not spilling your beans all at once. This is awesome.

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    • Told to me by Sam the girl (with permission to post):

      How I got into maze…Someone left the book in my room in college. My roommate and I kept the door unlocked so I am sure someone just left it in there. I held on to the book in case someone came asking for it. I decided to play through it once before throwing it away. Now it is my favorite book. I have the strangest feeling that if I can understand maze I can understand life.

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    • Hi! When I was a 7 or 8, I’d visit my Dad every other weekend. He lived in a small apartment that had very few books. One of the books he did have was this book “Maze”, which he left underneath his coffee table and seemingly had 0% interest in–perhaps he received it as a gift? My favorite book at the time was “the 11th Hour” by Graeme Base. It’s also a sort of a picture-mystery book full of riddles, red herrings, and luscious illustration. The difference was “The 11th Hour” was solve-able. “Maze,” it seemed, was not, and I think I can share with this forum and say that I spent many hours as a child flipping my way through that book and attempting to grasp it. Like, really: attempting to grasp it. I never did. Now, in my 30s, I have purchased a used copy from Amazon and keep it in my bathroom where still it haunts me…but not because I don’t grasp the riddles (I don’t. At all.) It haunts me because I get the feeling that even if I did learn or solve “Maze”, it would still be a mystery.

      For fans of “Maze” who may also be into science fiction or fantasy literature, I’d recommend Gene Wolfe’s “New Sun” series, which presents a similar level of high-mystery and inspires its own lively, dedicated discourse. Thanks for reading.

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    • Hey everyone, great to hear from you all!

      For me Maze is a childhood fetish that will never end.

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    • As I approach my 70th birthday anniversary, I look for more puzzles to solve, keeping what remains of my mind active and healthy. Christopher Manson has captured my imagination! I don’t know that there is a *single* solution to the puzzle–there could be several, depending on the attitude and mindset of the player. Still, I enjoy the play!

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    • Scrolling thru old comments, found this, and figured I may as well… I’m new (obviously). “Hi”. Got into Maze when I found it hidden in a corner and slightly behind on one of the shelves in my ELA classroom after being employed for shelving as an “unpaid intern” by a fellow classmate. Got into the storyline, figured out that there were riddles and clues after 3 weeks of picking doors at random and 1 week of attempting to escape the trap. Finally gave up and looked up Maze riddle answers on the Internet, this came up, I joined in. Btw, sorry my comments are all so long. I’m a rambler :)

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  20. Abyssians,

    The last three weeks has seen the granting of one puzzle point but that one put us at 66% solved (based on the solutions I am familiar with, not including guide stuff, void where prohibited).

    One third to go!

    White Raven

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  21. Abyssians,

    We have just passed 2,500 comments!

    Special thanks to our recent contributors:

    Anchorperson Smith
    Beelzebibble
    David Gentile
    Hello Gregor
    Hidden Mystery
    Kyle Stedman
    SP
    Vewatkin
    Wanderer

    LIKE(4)

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