" But room to room connections aren't ALWAYS red herrings; there's stuff like hearing the hammering and chopping (presumably from 4) when you're in 39, and the bell-ringing-phone stuff that connected 1 with 20 and 26. So I doubt that the herring in 22 is meant... "

" It might be a more extreme example of what we see with the bottle in the prologue and room 1, which is presumably the same thing but drawn notably different in the two images. Not just incidentally different like anything would be when you draw... "

" And it leads straight to this room-! That is no coincidence. And it might work with the red herring turning into "the next page" in the opening of MAZE, if 1:1 room connections truly are false. "

" Maybe it's just a red herring connection to Room 2, where we see what look like sets from a play from the rear. "

" Oh right- I was just looking for places were Manson made reference to a door not letting them go back through. I guess this one isn't a good example. Oddly, it seems whenever a door is impassable and Manson makes reference to it, he comes... "

" Dare I ask if this room is related to some specific play? That seems like a risky rabbit hole... "

" I've noted before that this room actually doesn't look like a theatrical backdrop, so why the hell is he bringing that up...I wonder whether working in the words "back" and "drop" is just meant to relate to the proper reading of the signs IN SOME... "

" Not sincere my foot, "said with the hope of irritating Vince" does not mean "said without conviction." "

" This seems to be a case where the door is locked on only one side, though, since they are concurrently on both sides of the door--it doesn't seem like the idea here is that the connection between the two rooms disappeared, and the door is... "

" Aria said this room was a backdrop for the sly face, as one precedes the other. It wasn't really genuine though "

" In there, rather. How did this end up in the room 22 comments again? "

" The idea being that you'd be like, "Sly look? Oh, 'peek,' I see, the sign that says 'peek' is telling me to go through this door." But really, PEEK and PART are just encoded (reversed) indicators of your inescapable imprisonment. Maybe that's the only reason... "

" Well, we're beating a dead horse, which you aptly explained we shouldn't be doing, so perhaps we should just leave it at this, it's pretty obvious why it would seem meaningful if the signs spelled STOP, and it's pretty obvious that they don't, so anyone... "

" Manson COULD have done this: Drew scales, a tail, an "o" with the picture of a shin (ocean), and a pike, the weapon. These would all be coded messages about fish. He could have curated these fish messages to also spell "STOP" at the same... "

" The couch is PADDED with PILLOWS, and set on a PLACEMAT. "

" Scales are PLATES, a form of PROTECTION, in the context of fish. As a weighing mechanism, the scales depicted here symbolize Libra, Latin for POUND. The tail end of something is its POSTERIOR; in fact, "tail" is often used synonymously with "rear end." "Woman's jewelry"... "

" Aha, it locked behind you! ...well, like Vince said, I don't think Manson was necessarily THINKING of this as he wrote it, but it is a door you passed through only to have it described as "locked" moments later. This seems like a situation where... "

" Maybe in 2030, MAZE's 45th anniversary. It would probably take 10 years to lay out anyway- heh heh. "

" I think I have a decent enough understanding of graph theory to do an okay fan maze structure wise, but I can't do any form of art for beans and would probably need help forming hard enough puzzle. None of this has stopped me from... "

" That's a good name for them! ... All of this has got me thinking of some sort of fan MAZE, but I shouldn't get my hopes up... "

" Each of those rooms is described as a yard or courtyard in the text. I think of them as the courtyards. "

" Sorry about the silliness of that- I'm just shocked one person could make a book such as MAZE- in 9 months? To think all of it came from Manson's head, it's crazy... "

" Additionally: While we would be unlikely to exactly reproduce Manson's coding of "house," his manner of coding it is very similar to what many of us would do. In fact, if tasked with encoding "house" specifically in a pictorial fashion, one of us might in... "

" I think that makes sense. "

" People want a name for the little part extending from the loop, right? On Brent's Mazecast blog, he called it "the terraces." It's not really a flat descriptor like the other 3, but I really like it. They're all on the outside edge, like courtyards,... "

" The face is described as having a sly look because "sly look" is a phrase that means "peek." (Google "crossword clue 'sly look.'") "

" I don't really believe this, but: What if Manson decided on a theme of herrings and water for the four panels, then chose items from that theme set to spell a word? Except the problem is it doesn't actually spell it. The fact we have... "

" You're giving "precipitation" more credit than it deserves even while dismissing it. The craziest part is not using "H+OO" to mean "precipitation," it's using "precipitation" because you want a word that starts with a P and also can be related to a herring. Or is... "

" Not that the more eccentric posts are devilish. Sometimes, cool stuff is unearthed. I just don't think (concerning STOP in the scales tail etc) this is one of them? I can't find a way that seems rational to make it work. "

" I suspected as much but I just like to entertain the baitiest posts just to logically work through them. It's like the angel and devil on my shoulder... being critical of everything and still have silly ideas (to be critical of). "

" Sorry, I was mostly baiting Vincent there :P "

" It's just like- the entire aesthetic of this room is built off of a loose metaphor to a not-so discernible bull head? It could be a backdrop to the much more drastic Abyss, or maybe just the little breathing room- backdrop- in the trap. As... "

" No, I think it's almost certainly water. But I think we're looking for a P where there is none. All of the boards are vertical, so writing H + OO top-down doesn't appear notable. I only see three options: Precipitation, Poseidon, Peroxide. All are stretches... "

" Are you questioning the rebus translating to water? Because "H-two-O" is a perfectly reasonable rebus reading of that picture. And the rebus being read top-down correlates reasonably to falling. "

" But U + shoe makes perfect sense once you hear it. Precipitation does not. Manson's puzzles are badly made, as Vince says, in the way they are encoded front to back. Not the other way around. Putting house in those terms is weird but logical... "

" (Does the shadow of the table with the branch from the log in 45, which overhangs the horseshoe and shoe look like a house? A little? That's crazy isn't it.) "

" That's logical enough, I guess, but it was certainly done in reverse order. Room 38 must have been named that way because of the alphanumerical translation if it's truly accurate. That seems like a far ways to go for directions in the trap, and the... "

" And let's look at Room 45. If you wanted to clue "HOUSE" would you put a horseshoe and a shoe beside one another in a room crowded with other objects and letters and possible connections? No, you wouldn't. I wouldn't. But Manson did. "

" Isn't the whole point of (the supposed) sly face is its "sly"ness? The fact that it's so well-hidden? And yet the BACKDROP for the "main event" is extravagant and exotic, while the actual event is so vague many don't even think it is there? I... "

" There's also the idea that it's doing more than one thing. For example H = 8; O = 15 8 + 15 + 15 = 38 "

" When you want to clue "precipitation" you don't write "H+OO." This criticism also applies to my other proposals. If Manson wanted to give us "precipitation" he could have at least draw, say, rain. It's a leap to get from "H+OO" to precipitation, there are millions... "

" It's a backdrop to the main event, the bull's head in Room 43. "

" I don't know why everyone is so down on Precipitation. Precipitation is falling water, what's the problem? "

" The final poster gives us the answer. You're clearly missing the fact that P stands for Precipitation. The last 6 letters, "ation," anagram to "ion att" which can be assumed to mean "ion watt." Ions and net electric charge in molecules correlate to watts and... "

" Maybe the "woman's jewelry" in question is a necklace, and the signs suggest -scales -tail -neckless -water And there you have it, a fish. Why a fish? WELL. WELL, let me tell you. It's BECAUSE, you see [etc etc, nonsense, Wikipedia link] and there you... "