Because apart from sand, the amphorae also contais the number 45 (see image on the door). In order to reinforce this idea, note that inside the am-four-ee is obviously a four. Sure the guide does not speak loud a hint and for sure shall pronounce it empty. Not a big braining. No need either.

I also think that children mock at him and guide starts threatening with the path riddle which is far more challenging. Providing an important clue while muttering himself. YO_UR_ choices are more limited than you think as there are probably None choices to that puzzle.

I have been looking for the missing five in the text but I couldn’t find it. (Yet :D).

Its like if the children got tired of the guide and told him “This is an easier choice to make (shut up pls)”

And then, the guide started threatening like “but YO_ UR_ choices are more limited than you know (good luck guessing you have to just read the sign on the wall without filling the gaps for the path puzzle.”

I feel pitty for the guide. Those damn childs got too far.

The texts in 17 and 23 are written to mislead, making it seem that you’re supposed to go from 23 to 45, and not go to 45 from 17. Including a short path from 17 to 1 helps further the misdirection, at least superficially.

The Guide says that one should never accept the obvious here. The “obvious” correct door for getting to the center is 45, but interestingly enough this is the only path room where The Loop is a faster route to room one than taking the path (and thus passing through 45).

Going along the Path to room one is ten doors: 17—45—23—8—12—39—4—15—37—20—1

Taking the door to 33 and taking the loop back is only nine doors: 17—33—3—18—13—25—34—10—41—1.

There is no other room on the path where taking the loop is faster than taking the path, and yet leaving the path and going on the loop can never be considered the “obvious” choice, so this may be why the guide talks about never accepting the obvious here.

Does this seem reasonable?

It’s weird to think that about how the MAZE community is different from many modern mystery-solving fanbases. Think about this- the MAZE community will realistically never enter the public in the way other, modern works have.
So following that line of logic, the fanbase will probably continue to exist, but always be unknown in a broader scope. This means that the same things might be discovered over and over if they aren’t pinned up (which this site more or less does… though it has no active moderator right now.)
MAZE came out around 35 years ago. Who says its community won’t stick around for another 35 years? Will people be rediscovering “flagon/wagon” or “f hour tree” in 2055? Will people ever get sick of it? Will people ever stop trying to crack it?

There’s a part of me that wants to believe that WR never knew Manson, and he really has just been lying this whole time… but I can’t bring myself to believe that. Like you said, nothing he says seems like an outright lie.

It just leaves me unsatisfied. This whole *book* leaves me unsatisfied. But I can’t quit it, because that would be infinitely more unsatisfying.

Now that I’m part of the Maze fandom, it feels like I can’t leave it satisfyingly until it’s entirely solved. But it also feels like it will never be entirely solved. I’ll always feel like there’s more here.

This might be a bit of an odd comparison, but the Maze fandom reminds me of the FNaF fandom. It’s full of questions and there’s no answer to those questions that fits all the information. You just have to spend the rest of your life deciding what you think is the best solution, the one that conflicts with the least of the other information.

Ritz said something once about everyone associated with Maze being part of it, being trapped in its rooms. I feel that deeply. It feels like we made it to 45, but took a wrong turn somewhere on the way back and fell into the Trap. Now we’re left to wander these six rooms, trying to make sense of a fraction of a fraction of the information in the book. The only out is Room 24 – Put the book down and find something else to do.

But even that isn’t an end. Aldabrachelys made another very good point on Room 24 about the cyclical nature of the Maze, how the text at the end of Room 24 leads into the words at the start of the prologue. Even if we put the book down, we’ll come back. As humans we have an innate desire for completion in everything we do, but we also have an innate fear of endings. It’s one of the many paradoxes of human nature, and one that Maze highlights.

Even the goal of the Maze references this. It’s not “reach the end.” It’s “reach the end and come back.” And that path, the one that can take us to the end and back, it’s shaped like an infinity, because it doesn’t even end there. After you reach the end, you reach the beginning, and then you’ll be back. You’ll be back to solve the riddle of the guide. You’ll be back to solve the riddle of the hatted man. You’ll be back to solve the guest’s path. “There’s another large, multi-room riddle.” Guess you’ll be back again.

I’ve been trapped in MAZE since I first saw it in my brother’s hands.

…That was a lot longer then I meant it to be! Sorry! Instead of either solutions or jokes you get a semi-depressed rant about the cyclical nature of this fandom!

As a middle ground, here’s part of conversation I had with Owen Hammer:

The Hammer
Tell me about White Raven. Was he just a liar?

Vincent
I don’t think so, and I hate to keep railing on my disagreements with him because I feel like I just keep heaping criticism on this guy who worked very hard to drum up interest in Maze, and is responsible for us having this little community, and he did some amazing things. And he certainly had contact with Manson. But, without doing a deep dive through his messages and the whole history of our interactions with the Abyss, I think it’s overwhelmingly likely that White Raven thought that Manson had confirmed aspects of his Maze interpretations that Manson did not mean to confirm. And, to put it plainly, that were wrong. [...] We don’t know much of anything, but–well, keeping in mind that I think White Raven is honest but mistaken, I’m willing to believe that unambiguous statements he claims Manson made are probably correct. Manson did say that there was another large-scale puzzle in the book that no one to his knowledge had discovered. WR did not think this was the Guide puzzle, because he thought he had found the Guide puzzle. But given that WR’s Guide puzzle is almost certainly a bit of gobbledygook mixed with some interesting observations, there could still be a Guide Puzzle in here on the scale of the Riddle of the Path.
But it could be anything!

[Whoops, that wasn't short and it didn't answer your question. WR reports that Manson confirmed the Guide's identity, but it was in the same breath that he confirmed the entirety of WR's guide puzzle theory, bull's face and all. You can make your own judgments about what likely happened, whether you believe all of it (Sara) or none of it (Alex) or etc. My point above is that I don't think WR is a liar, and based on descriptions of his conversation with Manson I can imagine his being mistaken about Manson confirming the steps that led him to the Minotaur, but I can't imagine him mistaking Manson confirming the Minotaur as the guide.]