Ask Manson

Ask a question.   Affirm a question.   Or just read and pray.

Will he answer?   Won’t answer?   Who can say?

- – - – - – -

Possible topics: (+ Votes in favor. – Votes against.)
You may vote for or against each topic. Simply list you vote in the comments.

[5] Main Solution Summary: Is the solution summary by John Bailey correct? Is there a rationale for choosing “awl” over “nun”?
+ Vewatkin
+ Aria
+ 515
+ MIT10
+ SP

[3] Inspiration for The Minotaur: What was your inspiration for the characterization of the Minotaur? “House of Asterion”? “The King Must Die”? Classic mythology? Popular culture?
+Aria
+Vewatkin
+MIT10

[2] Room 8: Does the laughing clown clue the anagram TEETH ROW = TWO THREE?
+ Aria
+Vewatkin

[1] Room 36: 11 bricks &12 midnight solution – Is this correct?
+ Aria

[0] Room 45: The Riddle of the Maze, the plethora of solutions, the contest.

[0] The Path: The Riddle of the Path, the word “shoulders”, extra letters, deeper meaning.

[0] Technique: Is there an over-arching technique or way of thinking or intuiting that would help one always make the right choice?

[0] The Sequel: How seriously is he considering it, what would it be like?

[0] Difficulty: The difficultly of the puzzles, how did he decide the various difficulties, does Room 45 stand apart in difficulty.

[0] Room 22: Are we there yet?

 

329 thoughts on “Ask Manson

    • Nova,

      Your votes have been added but if you want them to count I would suggest removing your vote for at least one of them.

      White Raven

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    • Ok…the difficulty one and the errors one. I’m just trying to get it solved before the deadline, and I got over excited. Those seem less… important. Sorry.

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    • Oh my gosh, in my in embarrassment I completely misunderstood your previous statement, WR. I thought you meant that you’d make my votes not count unless I did, but now (3 minutes later) I realize that it it literally WOULDN’T count, as the difference between the options would be the same. My bad. When posting the original comment, I got over excited and didn’t think it through. Again, sorry.

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    • Nova,

      No problem, I like your enthusiasm. Your votes for “difficulty” and “errors” have been removed.

      White Raven

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    • Perhaps in January?

      I am not stopping the Ask Manson sessions when I back away from The Abyss. As long as people keep voting for questions, I will keep asking them. I have received several requests to keep this going and so I shall.

      So while I will be checking into the site far less often, I will keep an eye on the Ask Manson page.

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    • Might the Millennium question be fairly broadened to, “Are you aware of any unintentional errors, typographical or otherwise, in MAZE? For instance, ‘millennium’ is misspelled in Room 13.” I doubt we’re going to net any more information that way, but it seems like we might as well sweep a bit more broadly.

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  1. You can add a vote from me to:

    -What do we have right and wrong in any single room of your choice (except 45 which is covered by another ask Manson question)?

    There are a lot of good questions up there, some that I haven’t voted for yet, but this one seems like it would be the most interesting answer…well, maybe. Maybe not, if it’s like the analysis of Room 22, which was essentially, “It’s not entirely right or entirely wrong. Well, it may be entirely wrong.” THANKS A LOT, MANSON.

    Hmm, when I think about that, it kind of makes me question placing this vote, so I’ll stop thinking about it.

    While I’m at it, I’ll try rephrasing a question that Manson declined to answer, though I’m not sure it ends up substantively different enough that he’d consider it. Manson previously declined to speak about puzzle points and whether they correlate at all to how well we have understood the rooms. This question was perhaps an overbroad question that concealed the real subject of controversy within it: Is the Maze full of interpretive puzzles that do not give clear answers even upon full understanding of the elements, or is the Maze full of puzzles with concrete answers that have simply proven too difficult for readers to solve?

    That may be the most concise wording of the issue, and the question is probably immediately understood by WR and the regulars here, but I’m not sure that Manson would follow what I’m getting at without examples; though, problematically, I fear that as soon as you get into listing examples he’s going to feel like you’re just looking for a list of solution confirmations. Independent of that, having written it out, I don’t think it looks like the kind of thing Manson is likely to answer. Yet, I think it’s somewhat unique among the broader-reaching questions in that it would tell us a great deal about the success of our efforts without being discouraging either way.

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    • Maybe hypothetical examples that aren’t tied to particular rooms could be given? Just to explain what sort of things you have in mind when you talk about interpretive puzzles.

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    • This would get a vote from me, it’s a great question. But I don’t know if it’s something that really can be answered. Or maybe the answer has to be interpretive. I think of it kind of like understanding the lyrics to a Bob Dylan tune, say “Like a Rolling Stone.” You could ask him who the tune was about, or who the heck the mystery tramp is, or what that whole thing about the chrome horse and Siamese cat is about, and he might or might not tell you. But unless he’s going to sit there and explain it line by line, your understanding of the song has to be interpretive.

      Of course, Like a Rolling Stone was not billed as a puzzle contest. But I guess my point is that Maze is a work of art too, and I don’t think one could ever totally and concretely reverse engineer Manson’s thought process.

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    • Vewatkin, Factictious, 515,

      I love it when Mazeians get philosophical, very insightful comments!

      I believe I can answer this point to your satisfaction, but if not, I would be happy to ask Manson to clarify further.

      Before I made this site, I spoke with Manson a few times, most of this was just working out the legal agreement, talking about other books, or me geeking out, but once we had a conversation just about the puzzles. The ground rules included that all the solutions discussed had to come from me. After we discussed some of my solutions I asked if he had intended for MAZE to be as hard to solve as it is. He said yes, mostly. The main puzzle was more difficult to solve than he intended, it was for a contest after all, but he wanted MAZE to be unusually difficult.

      I explained the first part of my puzzle theory, specifically, quantitative and interpretive puzzles (I left out qualitative puzzles because they don’t apply to MAZE). Then I asked if I was correct that most of the puzzles in MAZE are of the interpretive variety. He asked me some questions, than said yes.

      So we are on the same page, an interpretive puzzle has a single conceptual solution, Even though the solution is a concept, it can’t mean just anything. Every solution has a single answer with a range of correct ways of describing it. This is my definition of an interpretive puzzle from the “puzzle theory” page:

      “Rarer still, are interpretive puzzles. These puzzles have a specific solution, however that solution is a concept, and therefore must be interpreted by the solver. By nature, concepts have a range of acceptable ways of capturing the idea. So several fairly different descriptions of the solution may all be correct in capturing the gist of the concept.”

      Lastly, I said to Manson that it seems as if when you use a simpler logic (quantitative) puzzle it stands alone, but when you use a metaphor as a solution (an example of a riddle-type which is likely to be interpretive) you reinforce it in multiple ways. He said yes, it would be unreasonably difficult otherwise because you wouldn’t know if you had the solution or not.

      Sorry for the length, I hope this was a clear explanation.

      White Raven

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    • When I first wrote the question, I was two or three paragraphs into explaining what I meant with examples, and then I felt that I was overexplaining something we had talked about a million times and deleted and just wrote what I wrote. I may have misstepped.

      I terms of arriving at a solution for a puzzle, I don’t think that Manson would ever be likely to say there are no interpretive puzzles, regardless of how the facts we don’t know stand. Even the solution to Room 1 is in a way metaphorical: the text speaks about the eloquence of silence, and the correct door is the one the word above which is not alluded to in the spoken statements in the text, but it is still not literally accurate to say that the words are any more silent than each other, or that “eloquent” means correct. So even in the simplest of matters here, there’s some amount of non-literal interpretation necessary. But that is not the kind of thing I mean to ask about.

      Rather, my question is about whether a puzzle solution, once “decoded,” should clearly indicate a door or will still leave you in a state of ambiguity. Using Room 1 as an example again, while it takes some amount of non-literal interpretation to solve the room, it does not leave any doubt thereafter as to what the correct door is: the puzzle, once understood, distinguishes FABLE from the other words, and FABLE is plainly associated with Room 26.

      But contrast, say, WR’s Room 39 solution, regarding the trowel pointing at one door and wine pointing at one or both of the other doors. The solution concludes that the trowel marks the way Montresor left and the wine is what led Fortunato to his doom, and therefore we follow the trowel. But that last step, taking the accumulated information and saying it points to Room 4, is far from clear, before or after you’ve heard the reasoning. You might as easily suppose you should NOT go to Room 4 because a dangerous murderer went there, or that you should follow the bottle pointing to 11 because the bottle is empty (i.e. no wine) and both wine and trowels are dangerous items in The Cask of Amontillado. And on and on, probably. It’s not just a puzzle that requires non-literal reasoning to solve, but one that never produces a clear statement of which door the puzzle is pointing to but instead requires, even in the final step, rather freeform interpretation of the elements.

      Is that a clear line, though, or even a clear concept? Undoubtedly not. I’m not sure Manson could give us a clear answer even if he wanted to, without some fairly extensive back and forth clarification and qualification.

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    • Vewatkin,

      Ah, now I see what you mean.

      Perhaps the best course would be your original idea…vote for the question, “Room Reveal: What do we have right and wrong in any single room of your choice (except 45 which is covered by another ask Manson question).”

      Then, if he answers this question, we can try to deduce his methods from his answers. Then, if necessary, we could ask follow up questions during the next Ask Manson.

      I’ll bet you are right that Manson could not answer your question outright, but perhaps we can divine our own answer this way.

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  2. On another page Yojo wrote, “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!”

    Yojo,

    I put you down for voting for “Blind Spot: Is there a significant riddle type or multi-room riddle that has not been discovered by this group?”

    And I have added a new question, “Room Reveal: What do we have right and wrong in any single room of your choice (except 45 which is covered by another ask Manson question).”

    I don’t think he would answer this question but it wouldn’t hurt to ask, I would just ask him another question if he said no.

    Sound good?

    White Raven

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  3. Here’s a big one with far-reaching consequences, but maybe one CM won’t be willing to answer for that reason: Is “millennium” deliberately misspelled in Room 13?

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    • You could just ask White Raven. I’m sure he knows. And even though i’d really like to know the answer to that one it sort of feels like cheating. Plus we have no way of knowing it has far-reaching consequences. It could just be for this room.

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    • Well, if the misspelling is deliberate, confirming that essentially gives us a puzzle clue, which I don’t think CM will want to do. If the misspelling is accidental, the implications are far-reaching in the sense that it becomes more difficult to rely on the care Manson took in constructing the details of these rooms.

      WR probably can’t authoritatively answer this question. If he’s unaware of any reason for the misspelling, that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. If WR has a solution that involves the misspelling, it would have to be an unusually convincing one for us to assume it to be correct.

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    • ” If the misspelling is accidental, the implications are far-reaching in the sense that it becomes more difficult to rely on the care Manson took in constructing the details of these rooms.”

      I don’t mean to suggest that this effect would be massive; a single spelling error wouldn’t mean that we conclude “1 x 1 = 2″ was also an inadvertent mistake, for instance. But it would contribute a pervasive doubt, however small.

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    • Do you think he’d ever admit to that if that were the case? I doubt it.

      “If WR has a solution that involves the misspelling, it would have to be an unusually convincing one for us to assume it to be correct.” He just might; but since when is that a pre-requisite for belief? It seems everybody comes around to accepting these solutions sooner or later ;)

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    • I don’t know how Manson would address it. I have feeling that if it is an error, when asked, “Did you deliberately misspell ‘millennium’ in Room 13?” his response would be something like, “What?” or “How did I spell it?”

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    • Well,considering that WR hays never said that he too was puzzled by Millen(n)ium, which he is quick to do when he’s not sure of something, speaks loads…..

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    • So it’s missing the word SECOND and the SECOND M? There is no doubt in my mind it was intended.

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    • SECOND is missing, and the second N, and N is the 14th letter, 14 is the last day of a second week, it’s the sixth hour of the second 12-hour division of the day, something about the second skeleton, second schmibble, the second gufuffleflipflap, flupplipplydupdidfupupply

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    • (I was being sarcastic in the first comment)

      “But “H + OO” was a mistake, Alex?” – vewatkins

      Depends on what he intended with it. If he meant it to be a rebus for water I’m gonna throw my hat on the ground.

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  4. [2] The Path: The Riddle of the Path, the word “shoulders”, extra letters, deeper meaning.

    –As far as I’m concerned, and for better or worse, the “shoulders” letters are figured out, and this is no longer a necessary question.

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    • vewatkin, aren’t you the one forever telling us not to waste questions on the path or room 45?

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    • Yeah, that’s what I just did. The question I quoted is already listed above, and I was noting that I don’t think it’s a good question. (I suggested at least part of it a long time ago, and am listed as voting for it, so I was attempting to retract that vote with a word of explanation.)

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    • sp & vewatkin,

      Since I broke the questions up would you like to vote up both of Kon-Tiki’s new questions or just one of the two?

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    • Oops, sorry, missed your question here. I’d stick a vote on “Is there a significant riddle type or multi-room riddle that has not been discovered by this group?” with the understanding that you’re part of the group.

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  5. I think it would be a good question to ask him if there’s any other major thing to find in the book that hasn’t been found yet by anyone including white raven, i mean things other than the 16 step path, the identity of the guide and the clues pertaining to that, the riddle of the path, the clues in each room for correct door choices…

    and does he think that if someone else had created this same maze, or for some reason he got total amnesia just concerning this maze, would he be able to navigate his way perfectly through it. I mean can he, or did he, conceive of an “ideal” reader being able to make the right choice each time? And is there an over-arching technique or way of thinking or intuiting that would help one always make the right choice? I guess that’s a lot of questions…..

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    • Kon Tiki,

      Great questions, I would vote for them if I could!

      There appear to be three questions in here:

      1. Is there a significant riddle type or multi-room riddle that has not been discovered by this group (myself included)?

      2. Is there an over-arching technique or way of thinking or intuiting that would help one always make the right choice?

      3. If someone else had created this same maze, or for some reason he (Manson) got total amnesia just concerning this maze, would he be able to navigate his way perfectly through it. Did he, conceive of an “ideal” reader being able to make the right choice each time?

      I’m putting the first two questions on the list, the last one I can answer myself as I feel I have a very good grasp of this topic from Manson’s response to related questions and my interview regarding the history of MAZE.

      The ideal reader isn’t a puzzle master but a person who appreciates the challenge and the mystery of the book. Manson did not intend MAZE to be a contest, he meant it to be a journey, a surreal and original experience. The puzzles give the book meaning and challenge and thus MAZE is more than just a piece of surrealist art but it is also more than just a puzzle book. Manson made MAZE to delight, confound, disturb, confront any reader who picked it up.

      The contest kind of messed this up. This is the role of publishers, to take a thing of beauty and screw with it to sell more copies. I don’t know how the contest changed things but in some fashion it did.

      Manson made MAZE in such a way that if he hypothetically got amnesia about MAZE he would not be able to solve the book easily. It is meant to be the world’s more difficult (yet potentially solvable) puzzle. No one could make the right choice each time. Some puzzles are easy but others are way too subtle to be solved without a fairly deep understanding of how MAZE operates.

      Excellent questions!

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  6. Abyssians,

    This afternoon I spoke with Mr. Manson and asked our questions. I’ll post this info on the relevant pages.

    First off I asked two small questions:

    1. “Did you in fact confirm the Room 23 O.K.+zero+O’clock=”O” solution?” He said yes.

    2. “In Room 2 over the sign for 29, are those three figures female or are they people wearing neck capes, are those arms or wings, and is that halos around their heads or hats?” At first Manson was surprised because he thought I was fishing for hints, but when I said it was a publishing issue and that we just can’t see the details well enough to do anything with it, he checked the image, saw the issue, and relented. Manson said the figures are women, those are arms raised in the air, not wings, and around their heads are saintly halos. Thank you Mr. Manson! …even though that sinks our theories…

    In regards to our questions, as you will see it was a good thing that it was a five-way tie.

    First, I asked if he would be willing to talk about wood grain for seven hours while vewatkin listened, he laughed and said no.

    Second, he declined to speak about puzzle points but did say he recently visited the site (a rare occurrence), was impressed, and also mentioned that he recently watched a MAZECAST for the first time.

    Third, he declined also to speak about how MAZE was constructed. When I was interviewing Manson for the History of MAZE page he was shy on this subject then as well. It is difficult to envision how MAZE was constructed, and for Manson it is a secret worth keeping.

    Fourth, regarding the question “is the “red herring” solution we have for Room 22 correct” he said no but that all the parts are not entirely wrong either. I described the solution to him in its entirety so there is no way to tell which aspect(s) are correct. Hmm…

    Lastly, the time warp question turned into a treasure trove. It probably won’t take anyone by surprise that the base 8 theory is incorrect, but he did say that various times of day are represented in various rooms via the illustrations. I raised the question of the time warp + mismatched door between Rooms 37 & 10, asking, was it an oversight or part of a riddle. Manson said it was neither, it was a hint of a structural anomaly central to MAZE.

    The following phrases in quotes are paraphrases, the best I could do.

    Manson said, “Primary to MAZE are two structural anomalies, contradictions.”

    “The door [between 37 & 10] is impossible, what does that tell you? Here what is concrete and what is abstract is inverted. What is real and what is imaginary?”

    “The second contradiction built into the structure of MAZE which is partially understood but has yet to be articulated pertains to the path to the center and back.”

    …and thus ends the second Ask Manson.

    I cleared the votes from the questions. Feel free to vote again, no need to change your votes if you choose not to, just re-post. If you have a new question please toss it out.

    White Raven

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    • WHOA!!!! So much to process… very exciting! That time warp answer is going to give us a lot to chew on…

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    • That’s some pretty darn cryptic stuff.

      Well, there are two major anomalies in the Maze in the spatial and temporal realms. The temporal one is easy to notice, is fairly evident in 10/37 and is alluded to in 13 and etc. Time works differently in the Maze.

      The spatial one is less clear. That the Maze is not mappable in two dimensions doesn’t mean that it exists in some kind of weird paradox space; it just means you need a third dimension and some implied hallways or stairs or whatever between rooms. And that’s how we’ve pretty much always been assuming it worked.

      But really (and I don’t know why this never bothered me before), if you’re reading the text of the rooms as leading into each other, which they do, these winding, sometimes one-way-sealed, passages between rooms don’t seem very plausible. When you remove the ellipses and read

      “Holding their ears they ran out the door to a narrow space where one wall boasted half finished carvings and another some sort of carnival poster,”

      [that's 26 to 38, just as an example]

      it doesn’t seem to be a fair reading that there was any kind of intervening hall or passageway. Many of the transitions are of this sort–they seem to suggest direct movement from one room to another. But not all of them!

      “We passed down a long flight of stairs, through some sort of pantry, and on into a much warmer room.” [3 to 18]

      “Leaving the center of the Maze we found ourselves in an old and ruinous part of the House. Turning a corner the music we had been hearing became louder and at last we saw the musicians themselves.” [45 to 36]

      “Ducking behind a curtain and hurrying down a passageway we came out in room number 13.” [18 to 13]

      Etc. Other connections are simply ambiguous as to whether anything came between the rooms or not:

      “We went down the only way open to us and came to the foundation of the Maze.” [6 to 40]

      “Gratefully leaving the room behind we walked all the way to a place of unlimited darkness.” [11 to 24]

      ETC. There’s probably some room for debate about which transitions belong in which categories, but my main point is that it’s not as obvious as I’ve assumed it to be that we can just put whatever connectors we want between rooms. If many or most of these rooms are implied to be directly connected, the Maze may indeed became spatially impossible to construct.

      10/37 is particularly implied to be an immediate connection. I haven’t tried figuring out which rooms seem immediately connected yet, but in terms of mapping, this connection seems particularly likely to be problematic because it’s a Loop/Path connection that would seem to put these circuits on the same level, which makes mapping complicated (to say the least).

      10/37 is of course additionally strange because what seems to be a single door between the rooms (based on the narrative) is depicted as completely different kinds of doors on either side.

      Probably not what Manson is getting at, but this does create some confusion as to how we view the doors. Are they abstract symbols pf passageways, not meant to literally depict the barriers and entrances between rooms? But they’re banging on the door and trying to open it! And they’re making noise in the adjoining room by doing so! It is literally there then, right?

      Meanwhile, what does this say about the narrative? Is the narrative “real,” even in the sense of…even…well, I don’t know how to phrase it. But in terms of navigating the Maze, can even the narrative be interpreted as literally happening?

      There are places where the narrative doesn’t seem to work on a literal level. Any time you re-enter a room, for instance, which includes Room 4 on the 16-step path, the resulting narrative doesn’t make a lot of sense. Whatever “we” are, the reader, we are not the group of visitors moving through the Maze, and the 16-step path doesn’t seem to be the story of visitors either. And yet, clues that suggest which way the group went do tell us which way to go. (E.g. if the group pushed open a door, we shouldn’t choose a door that’s already open.)

      So, in that sense, in whatever sense I’m trying to describe with all that, 10/37 does seem to create a collision between our envisioning of the Maze as a literal structural in real space with our envisioning of the group’s narratives as literal events happening in actual time.

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    • Nice interview! It is great that Manson will answer our questions. I wish he would have answered the how did he construct it question but the anomaly stuff is awesome.

      VWs theory it makes some sense. The doors, house and events are all illusions. But what then is really real?

      I vote for the same ones I did before, room 45 and the path. I want to know about all the others so I am not voting anything down, but not so much that I want to vote them up.

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  7. I vote for
    the path, the most important question there is
    room 45, second most important
    door count
    room 22
    construction

    I vote against
    sequel, we will get an update anyway why waste a question
    difficulty, this question is sort of snotty

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    • LoMoody,

      Your votes have been counted, it is now a FIVE WAY TIE. Thanks a lot… [Previous phrase mean to drip with sarcasm]

      White Raven

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    • LoMoody is a great name by the way, you and Whitey Ray Ray should release an album

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  8. soooo with the news of the site dormancy, how many ‘ask mansons’ do we have left? i think if he lets a little bit go there might be a better chance of a resurgence of interest for a sequel! it’s possible his audience is even bigger than before.

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  9. Abyssians,

    To the question:

    “Time: The base 8 theory, angles of the sun, time warping in MAZE.”

    I’ve added:

    “The reason for the Room 37 & Room 10 time warp event and the double doors, single door difficulty.”

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    • Manson has said he will not give hints of any kind but he will speak to us about solutions. So we could ask, “Does that fact that a hurricane has an eye the answer to the QUICK-cane riddle?” I’ll fall of out of my chair if he says yes to this but at least it is something he would respond to.

      I’ll give you my two cents on this, yes, the QUICK-cane riddle is informed by another riddle. There are plenty of difficult puzzles left to solve in the book but the QUICK-cane solution, given what you all already know, is easy. I say this so you won’t hate me when you get it.

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  10. Votes updated. Presently Wood Grain and Time are tied for first place. Oooooo, the tension!

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  11. -1 for me “Room 22: Is the red herring solution correct?”
    -1 for me “The Riddle of the Path: The word “shoulders”, extra letters, deeper meaning.”

    +1 for me “How many rooms does Manson think we really understand based on the information listed here?”

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  12. Put me down as a plus for each of the four questions from “How did Manson construct Maze?” to “The difficulty of the puzzles.”

    Minus for “Time keeping in Maze”. Sorry, the topic’s never really interested me.

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  13. Come on, everybody, wood grain! Wood grain!

    Hee hee.

    Seriously though, I would just like to add to the sequel question: what, specifically, would it take for him to commit to doing it? Like, how much do we need to raise on kick-starter? How many names on an online petition?

    (How many of us camped out on his front lawn?)

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    • WR somehow neglected to auto-vote me for my wood grain suggestion.

      THAT SAID, I’m only in favor of the question if Manson in fact agrees to answer the question for seven hours.

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    • Seven hours of wood grain sounds awesome! A vote me in! Wood grain ties for second!

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    • +3 for seven hours of wood grain…but I’ll only ask it Vewatkin follows though on his promise to listen with rapt attention to the whole thing.

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    • I think we may be ramping up to the stupidest waste of an incredible opportunity that anyone in our positions could orchestrate. I love it.

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  14. My vote seems to have been lost… WR can you please implement the voting plug in to keep more accurate records?

    My vote was for the sequel. (Vote up)

    To hell with maze time and room 45! (Vote down)

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    • SP,

      Your votes have been added! Or recovered!

      I could not find a voting plugin compatible with this site that lists who voted for what. If you find a voting plugin that does this let me know I will check compatibility. Thanks!

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    • I’ll look into it, I know a couple, but failing that, there are ways to embed Survey Monkey into sites.

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  15. Abyssians,

    I have updated the Ask Manson question list to reflect who has voted for what so far. Please check to make sure your votes are accurate. I decided not to go with a voting widget this time since I think there was some voter fraud last time around, and this way you can lobby each other if you wish.

    I will ask Manson about anything you vote for (I felt like an idiot asking if a reader can escape from the trap but I did it anyway!) but this does not mean he will answer the chosen question so the runner up question is important as well.

    White Raven

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    • Vewatkin,

      I put in a vote for you on every topic you came up with, which is almost all of them. Let me know if you want to change any of those votes.

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  16. The only thing I want to know about 45 is, why 45? He used the number in both of his other books as well as Maze… what’s the significance? (If this has already been answered somewhere, PLEASE TELL ME.)

    More questions to come…

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    • Argh, sorry, I now see this has been asked and Manson declined to answer. Maybe it has personal significance.

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  17. Full disclosure here on my desire that more people vote:

    Anything Manson has to tell us about MAZE is great, and if you asked him to discuss the wood grain in Room 14 for seven hours I’d listen with rapt attention, BUT, given the possibilities, I’m really hoping we don’t submit more questions about Room 45 and the Riddle of the Maze or the Path. Obviously there are still questions to ask there, and the responses would be fascinating, and there are probably like twenty of those questions that are mine, but those are actually about the best understood aspects of the book at this point.

    So, please vote, and vote for something good! Cook up some good questions!

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    • I don’t care about the path and what letters spell shoulders and I am for asking new questions but if we don’t grill cm about 45 future generations will hate us.

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    • Well, what the hell do these no-good future generations want? Manson gave two sets of clues, and the answers!

      I know, there’s always more. But I think we have a level of finality and completeness here that seriously diminishes returns on similar questions.

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    • I like the Room 22 question, the solution has kind of bugged me, but I am coming around to it. Would be nice to know.

      I’d be on board also for some Room 45 stuff, especially what the deal is with awl/nun and if the question was supposed to work 2 ways (in his mind, obviously we know the contest answer).

      Also like the idea of asking if there actually is a coherent system of time throughout Maze, or if he was just having fun making things happen simultaneously.

      So, in short, I’m no help at all. Screw it, Room 22 is my vote!

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    • I would love to know about maze time as well — whether it is a carefully thought out thing or not.

      How many votes do we get? :)

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    • 515,

      I put in for a vote for you in favor of Room 45, Room 22, and time warping. Correct me if this is wrong.

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