" (People who don't see a bull, look away.) The guide describes his life as a LONELY ONE. The chart has LONELY ONE letters up the centre, with the Y by its lonesome up there at the top. Sort of like the devil/bull's head on top... "

" It’s been pointed out that all the letters of the central column of the chart can be used to make “lonely one.” I have further ideas about this... "

" Ugh, this seems really silly now. I just really want to turn "LONELY ONE" into "ONLY ONE L." It made sense on paper... "

" *clever flippant remark* "

" You’d be better off using the superscribed version of CYN than you would NYC. "

" For the poster solution I had a different idea. The poster would have been clear “fit” meaning also without the arrow. I believe the arrow significant in that it shows (goes into round form: round as in O which is numerical for 15) the numerical... "

" A LONELY ONE is pronounced the same way as L ONLY ONE referencing the single L in the middle row of "women's jewelry." Sorry for the implausibility of this... "

" *light-hearted flippant reply* "

" Well, in retrospect, I thought it would have had something to do with “Atë”, since it did have a foolish face. "

" Yeah, I think I would agree that counting solutions aren't always the best. The 2+9 thing is just how I personally remember which door is the correct one here. It's probably not a real Manson solution. "

" Let me guess, it's the masonry "

" Anyone mentioned that IT also is numerically = 29 ? Sentence 1: A sound made them all turn suddenly (29 letters) (Made them turn to room 29) Sentence 2: (part sentence) Ran out of the hall (15 letters) (Ran out (way out) through room 15)... "

" Finding stuff to count isn't a good way to go. "

" at best "

" Is it a coincidence that the number 45 looks like the letter H (when inverted) and the letter S (HS), both of which just happen to be within 8 letters of each other, starting from A going forward or Z going backward? "

" Four, two on each side I mean "

" It looks like two H's on the top of the arch. (Stop making publisher references, Ritz!!) "

" One of the issues with this is that it used the two theme (the coin) and employs it to get a single answer instead of hinting towards both. "

" Did you adjust the time range? Up to 2000 (the default maximum year), NYS is still more popular. NYC surpasses it in 2003 and increases from there. An n-gram (according to Wikipedia) is a "contiguous sequence of n items from a given sample of text... "

" I don't know if this is supposed to be a good thing or not. "

" It downplays the condescension when you join in the insanity. "

" Truthfully, I like the no-pointer (red herring) and add em solutions F O U here best. Mine was a lot faster and simpler though, involving only the clock: F alphanumerically 6 F in clocks Position where the 7 usually would be Clock showing time(s) That’s... "

" Which plays into the two correct doors, and also a coin has 2 sides and there are 9 doors in the room for 29. "

" They're referring to the practice of using a coin with distinguishable faces as a randomizing tool. Tossing the coin in the air (usually accompanied by a spinning motion that causes its faces to rapidly rotate) and allowing it to land flat effectively creates a 50/50... "

" This doesn't account for context, though, right? I'm not familiar with this tool, I'm just checking it out now, but I feel like something is missing here. Does this look for those letter strings in isolation, or does it look for those sequences within other... "

" Perhaps when they said, “Shall we toss a coin?”; they we’re actually referring to a “quoin” and not a coin, as they both sound the same but are spelled differently. "

" I used a smoothing of 3 (the default setting.) According to Google Ngram, during 1985, NYS was actually more popular than NYC in terms of New York acronyms! Test it out yourself. In 2003, both spellings reached the same popularity. Ever since then, "NYC" has... "

" I like and agree with most of the ideas mentioned here. My own 2 cents (which might be a little shallow considering the depth of some of these puzzles) are these: Could Manson have used the number 22 for this specific room to indicate: “catch... "

" This room is barely a backdrop, or an exotic one at that, like you've been saying. Maybe he pulled up these themes to deliver specific messages. Being critical, being lonely, a play, a red herring, exotic decor, STOP. This room being called a backdrop might... "

" Maybe for the "it's curtains" connection. Or... the text the guide uses some weird words, they could give us some message? "

" Anyway, it still doesn't shed THAT much light on the backdrop reference in 22, because there still had to be some other reason to bring up backdrops in the first place. It's like if in some room the guide was like, "This room has always... "

" I think ritz raises a/the main issue: inter-room references are not necessarily the same as the path-suggesting clues mentioned in the directions. Pretending we have rules about how either category works is laughable. We only know they sometimes occur between rooms headed in the right... "

" I guess there's also the debate as what counts as an innocent reference to another room and what counts a false trail of clues. Looking at things backwards leading to meta-cheating jabs would be an interesting concept but then... the connection between 22 and 2... "

" Here is what WR had to say about this, after a discussion with Manson: Vewatkin, Okay, full disclosure: Manson and were talking about the red herring trails that appear throughout MAZE and he mentioned that the doll’s hair is yarn – no further explanation. According... "

" My point is, if you're imagining navigating the Maze as though you were a real visitor playing by the rules of the place, you can't peek into the next rooms to see if there might be connections. You have to make your decisions based on... "

" The synergy between the energy of this inner G. "

" But the ringing might have been misleading too. Wasn't that the guide's intention, to distract them with it? It carried through multiple rooms with no cheating necessary. The umbrella involved no cheating, yet it could be a red herring. I haven't really noticed a looking... "

" The important difference in Room 4 is that you have been there before. Rooms with connections where you have to look ahead mean you the reader are cheating and lead you in the wrong direction. The ringing you hear in Room 1 is an introduction... "

" "Sometimes, important messages are couched in ambiguous terms." MAZE is ambiguous but there are strong underlying messages and mindsets. I think the heavy layer of ambiguity over MAZE might dissuade people from it (e.g., the negative Amazon reviews) but it does have payoff. What I... "

" Occam's Mazer, well done. In that spirit: I'm skeptical that Manson really wanted people to focus on things like the bottle changing shape--I think he just re-drew a generic bottle without attending to the original very closely. Even with rooms 12 and 28, which seem... "

" Yes. And it's only changed to teach the reader how to navigate, most likely. You're something of an Occam's Mazer- even since first commenting in November I feel like I understand this book more. Sometimes the most logical explanations are the ones we ignore. If... "

" But, yeah. That theory cherry-picks misleading rooms connections while ignoring non-misleading ones. The props aren't even red herrings in the first place- their connection seems more like a tie-in than a trick. I think the prop connection was first discovered by Nova. I wonder if... "

" I don't think so. Red herrings are central to the book, and they take on a lot of forms. This would be a very, very narrow indication of a particular kind of red herring. I think it's more likely the obvious: the red herring is... "

" This is going to sound a bit strange, but maybe the changing Red Herring on the cover is a reference to this principle. The red herring changes to "the next page." Discrepancies between the next page are red herrings. This is furthered perhaps by the... "

" Certainly not all, though I do think it is notable that Room 22 references "red herring" very explicitly in the book, seconded only to the cover "