Comments on: Room 12

By: vewatkin

vewatkin — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 21:13:56 +0000

You have 39 “left” because you ignored the clear references to it! If “dark” is enough to shoo us away, it’s a problem that the passage to 39 is literally in the dark and described as being so.

By: KennRuss

KennRuss — Wed, 13 Aug 2025 04:51:18 +0000

From the text:

“Too dark” (2, dark) an indication of wrongness
“…they had been here before” (room 8) pointless to go back
“It would have been a relief to get outside” if the guide wants room 21, it’s wrong
That leaves 39

By: vewatkin

vewatkin — Fri, 16 Aug 2024 21:23:27 +0000

You raise good evidence. I concede that he is more ambiguous than I asserted.

By: ritz

ritz — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 23:47:32 +0000

My reading of the Guide is mostly just how I remember his demeanor, and the wondrous-yet-frightening atmosphere I picked up as a kid. I’m going to go back to see if I can substantiate that reading, though. Here are some instances of the Guide being neutral-to-positive towards the guests. (Obviously, these can also be read as insincere.)
Prologue: They think I will guide them to the center. Perhaps I will….
(Unrelated, but I think that the Prologue is the only example of quadruple ellipses in Maze, where they occur twice. Perhaps Manson wrote the Prologue first, and switched up his habits down the line, or used some sort of format for all the room pages. There are also two examples of standard ellipses in the prologue, though. This is 99% likely to be meaningless, but I feel as though you mentioned ellipsis disparities before, Vince. Maybe Room 13?)
Room 1: “It’s easy to get lost,” I said helpfully. “This can be a sinister place.”
(This is snide, but actually rather forthright as well.)
Room 15: Leaning on the sacrificial tripod I was suddenly moved to say, “Perhaps these numbers relate to each other in some specific combination…” Immediately I regretted this act of charity…sometimes I think, after all these years, that I don’t really know myself.
Room 19: One of them sat on a marble bench after I politely pushed some flowers aside. “Did you pick these for me?” she asked, looking me in the eye. I had to tell her the truth.
(Ambiguous and bittersweet interaction, but not malevolent.)
Room 37: “Sometimes, important messages are couched in ambiguous terms,” I said. “That net may help you catch the answer to your question.”
They looked doubtful. “We must look at this from all sides before we make a decision.” At last, they were learning.
(This is one the closest things to the “end” of the victorious path, with 20 being accessible so close to the beginning.)
Room 42: I assured them I would help them to return. “You can count on me,” I said sincerely.

Looking back, apathetic was the wrong descriptor. The Guide is never actively angered by the guest’s success, but he does try to prevent it more often than facilitate it. Still, he reminds me of a fat housecat who doesn’t need to eat the mouse he’s toying around with, but will if it gets close enough.

By: vewatkin

vewatkin — Wed, 14 Aug 2024 14:24:03 +0000

I read him as more malicious than apathetic. I can’t think of an instance in which he was happy about the group’s success, but their ultimate failure sends him into fits of laughter. Admittedly, we never see a group’s victory depicted (which incidentally is a very realistic decision), so we don’t know how the guide would react. But he doesn’t celebrate their small victories either.

By: ritz

ritz — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:42:35 +0000

Reasonable observations here. For me, though, the horror of the Guide comes less from a grand scheme malicious manipulation, and more being led through an unfamiliar, convoluted maze by an apathetic agent—one who gives you a fighting chance, but is entertained whether or not you escape.

By: Gabe

Gabe — Sat, 10 Aug 2024 04:53:03 +0000

My thought here is a continuation of my unifying theory that the guide’s job is to misdirect the guests, and that solutions can be inferred from the guide’s deceptive suggestions as well as his emotional responses to the guests behavior.

Much of the discussion amongst the guests revolves around the hole in the ground here. When they look to the guide for comment, he “volunteers an answer quickly”– indicating an overly hasty response– then immediately follows his answer with a contradiction, indicating that he may be second guessing his original response as too positive. He then immediately gets anxious having given too much attention to the correct door, 31, stating that it’d be a relief to get outside.

He’s obviously uncomfortable with the attention so close to the correct door, and desires to move them along to the outside door, 21, which is the worst door here, the only one that doesn’t keep us in the path.

By: Markco

Markco — Mon, 26 Dec 2022 20:01:27 +0000

Could relief refer to a work of art? The three wrong doors have artwork. Relief comes from Latin word to raise and the correct door is the one going down. The guide talks about going outside, but the one guaranteed way to not do that is to go down deeper.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 21:35:18 +0000

Man, I wish this site had been around when I was in high school. My best friend and I were obsessed with this book; we wore out two copies of it across years of lunch table discussions.

Anyway, with regards to the letters “U” and “D”, we thought that perhaps they also meant “decide under you” — with the “D” situated on its side and located beneath the “U” — to indicate the door through the floor.

By: Janice

Janice — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 05:17:17 +0000

It looks about the same here but I don’t have my book in front of me right now. The three looks a bit bolder? The nine looks the same I think.