Room 18

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… a much warmer room. Shadows danced across the floor to the fire’s music.

“Someone’s lost his hat.”

“Are you sure it’s the hat that is lost?” I asked reasonably enough. No one would answer me.

Ducking behind a curtain and hurrying down a passageway we came out in …

 - Images and text copyright 1985 by Christopher Manson
used with permission. [Purchase MAZE from Amazon]

 

Room Type:  LOOP     Doors:  3  9  13  44

Solution Summary: [COLLECTION CURATED BY WHITE Raven. SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTION PROPOSALS.]

● The notes above door 13 in base clef (as indicated by the base clef symbol to the left) are A & C, using alphanumeric substitution these read 1 & 3 = 13. These notes are over door 13 the correct door. The notes over door 3 are E G C & E in treble clef which do not translate into the correct door number. [Credit: Rebecca Sweat]

● The dragon’s head and tail are arched so that the dragon looks as if it may bite it’s tail but it is not. The dot (head) of the base clef doesn’t curve back to touch the rest of the symbol while the treble clef spirals in so the dot (head) bites the center of the symbol. Reinforcing this, the eyes of the face under the dragon are in the same position as the two dots in relation to the base clef. The base clef is associated with door 13, the correct door. [Independent Credit: LoMoody | White Raven]

● The chair that is lit up (from our perspective) stands in front of the correct door the frame of which is also lit up. [Independent Credit: Kon-Tiki | White Raven]

● The lit up chair’s slats slant downward at similar angle to that of the musical staff above door 13. While the darkened chair’s upward angle matches that of the wrong door’s musical staff. [Independent Credit: Vewatkins| White Raven]

● The lit up chair spells out the number thirteen in roman numerals moving upward from the “X” in the leg supports to the “III” in the chair slats. [Shared Credit: Beelzebibble & White Raven / A confluence of serendipity]

● The chair slats resemble a 3 and the bowling pin resembles a 1 and both sit directly beneath the C A riddle mentioned above which also produces a 3 and a 1. [Independent Credit: Beelzebibble / Vewatkins | White Raven]

[Note: The chair related solutions are incomplete.]

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206 thoughts on “Room 18

  1. Is the dragon here an ouroboros in the moment before seizing its tail? I know, an ouroboros not biting its tail is more commonly known as “just a dragon,” but the shape of this thing, and its seeming fixation on its own tail, seem to cry out for the comparison.

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    • It has a shape similiar to the bear rug in 7. But I don’t see more of the shape in the rooms I checked.

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    • VW, I’m pretty sure I mentioned that already. i know i went down that path but didn’t really get anyhere with it,
      or at least no reaction from WR or anyone else here.

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  2. I love this room… and anytime I think I make progress on it, I immediately second guess myself.

    I have a few ideas though, maybe somebody can run with them.

    First, and this takes a bit of music theory to understand, the intervals of all the musical notes add up to 13. An interval is the distance between 2 notes, but it’s not just measured in the number of notes… For example, E is four notes away from C, but the interval is called a major third.

    So, bass clef: C to A (as written above 13) = minor THIRD
    Treble clef:
    E to G = minor THIRD
    G to C = perfect FOURTH
    C to E = major THIRD

    3+3+4+3 = 13.

    Also, if you take all the notes together, you have C, A, E, G, C, E. Those notes, depending which is the bass note, would together form either a C6 chord or an A minor 7 chord. 6+7 = 13.

    All the above is probably just reverse engineering on my part, but pretty cool anyways.

    Now, the face… FACE is the mnemonic for the blank spaces in the treble clef. Also, a chord made of the notes FACE would be called an F major 7. Got nothing after that…..

    I agree with vewatkin that all of the notes above the doors are 8th notes.

    Totally unrelated to music, I thought I had cracked something with the O of the hat and the bowling pin = O-pin = open (curtain). I later saw that Hidden Mystery brought that up a while ago, and I’m surprised it’s not part of the solution.

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    • The interval stuff is cool. Same concern about too many things adding easily to 13, as with Marianne’s but maybe.

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    • 515 wrote, “FACE is the mnemonic for the blank spaces in the treble clef. Also, a chord made of the notes FACE would be called an F major 7.”

      I saw this comment and thought, “F” sixth letter of the alphabet + 7 = 13 !

      Hmm, probably not. – sigh -

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  3. Hi Aria…
    Didn’t originate chutes & ladders just added a lot along with everyone else-it sure was a fun room with so much going on.

    As for this room Narrative: “Ducking behind a curtain”, Duckpin bowling has 10 pins + 3 tries = 13.

    I don’t think the message in the room has to define the correct door…but musical chairs does contain 13 letters.

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    • I room a priori COULD represent anything, but one of the very few tools we have to separate random association from Manson’s intentions is that we know some of the things he intended to do – give us door indicators and tell us who the guide is – and the riddle thing. So the amount and type of evidence you’d need for something that *didn’t* do one of those things would be much much greater than for something the does do something we know Manson intended to do. All that said – now that you point out that musical chairs as 13 letters – that could even be a point on the board – we will see.

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    • But then – a lot of things could have 13 letters. It does fall out of the room easily, but still… hmm…. I’ll say not in WR’s notebook – uncertain about Manson’s head – more would help. I think we had some other letter counting or word counting stuff here in the past, if that was any good it would reinforce this.

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  4. For me, my solution that this room represents “musical chairs” is reinforced by the clue we were given “You’ll find two people in the roon, they must sit in one chair” ref to Rm 45. In musical chairs part of the fun of the game is when the music stops, 2 chairs-3 people = someone winds up on anothers lap as all 3 vie for 2 chairs.

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    • “Musical chairs” seems to fall easily from this room, so no issues there – but not a thing for me unless it does something – like show us to door 13. I also wouldn’t connect it with the clue from 45.

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    • It would be cool if every room represented a different game, in addition to everything else going on! I think you found the chutes & ladders reference in room 41, didn’t you Marianne? I loved reading that. It had never occurred to me but like all great observations was so satisfying and seemed so obvious once pointed out.

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  5. I don’t think I have seen this observation yet:
    The chairs themselves represent the notes above the correct door.
    -There are two of them.
    -Even accounting for perspective, the chair in the foreground is definitely “higher” than the other chair, just as the first note is higher than the second in pitch. (Look at the placement of the spacers on the legs.)
    -They even kind of look like notes with their high backs representing the stems of the notes.

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    • This is an interesting suggestion. I’m having trouble seeing exactly how they match the notes…unless we turn the page sideways, and think of the four doorways and the five pillars surrounding them as the four spaces and five lines of a musical staff. Then the chairs seem to be in the sams position as the notes over 13.

      Other possible parallels (without suggestion of how they’d work): the top-and-bottom twisted dragon and the treble clef, the face and the bass clef (turned sideways – think emoticon, though this was pre-emoticons); the top note above three seems to be not a quarter note but an 8th note, as you can see the tail or whatever the hell you call that thing coming down from above, and the bowling pin next to the top chair seems similarly placed (the pin does not connect, but the 8th note’s tail is not seen connecting either, as the connection exist beyond the borders of the placard).

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    • I like the chairs as notes, and the tuning it sideways, possibly – but then they seem to line up with the dividers, not the curtains. Interesting.

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    • So I guess what I’m saying is that the foreground chair — the first chair — is actually higher off the ground than the other one. If I sat in the first chair, my feet might be dangling, while if I sat in the second chair, my feet might be flat on the ground. (I’m exaggerating but you see what I mean.)

      The difference in height is not extreme and there’s perspective confusing things but if you look at the legs on both chairs in relation to the crosspieces connecting them I think it is there.

      I think I’m justified in calling the foreground chair the first one since it is the first one you encounter as you come into the room from our perspective — also it is the one on the left and you read music left to right.

      So the first chair is HIGHER, and the second chair is LOWER.

      Just like the two notes above door 13 — a higher (pitched) note followed by a lower (pitched) note.

      That’s my argument! :)

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  6. Haha, it somehow didn’t occur to me that the Guide is talking about THEM when implying something besides the hat is lost. I always assumed he meant the owner of the hat.

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  7. Moving the 18/44 thread from “ask manson” to here. These rooms also have this in common. Find open doors that could be closed. Everywhere else they are “too easy” false “easily led” clues. In 5 for example the only fully closed door is the best. But these two rooms are an exception. In both cases the open door is correct. And leading in to them both we have seemingly unneeded one way doors. In my book the only unneeded one way doors in maze. Texts are same size with same number of sentences. Door arrangement is the same. Both rooms mention an absent somebody.

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  8. All great thinking here…I would add that in Room #1 where we would logically start off, I always thought that the narrator defined how many followers are in the group as he states:
    -one said.
    -said another.
    -said a third.
    -said the first.
    “Said the first”, was the hook/clue for me that there is 3 in the group as the narrator defines here that the fourth statement made was by someone who already made a statement.

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  9. In 37 “We must look at this from all sides before “we” make a decision” (we italics mine) reads as one of them made this statement and is undecided so would’t be going one way or the other. The two that would be left could certainly then be half going one way and half going another…not the best statement but elusively acceptive coming from Manson.
    In 35 there is no reason why its not a 3 way conversation and one is a female. All good food for thought.

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    • Even if one were excluded from wanting to go one way or the other (which would contradict the narrative), it still wouldn’t be the case that half wanted to go one way and half the other. We would have to assume that “they” means “the guests minus the one guest who just spoke,” and there is no basis for that interpretation.

      Moreover, the indecision about which way to go is clearly attributed to the whole group:

      “They looked doubtful. ‘We must look at this from all sides before we make a decision.’ At last, they were learning.

      “They really couldn’t decide which way to go; half of them wanted to go one way, half another.”

      We have that
      THEY looked doubtful,
      THEY were learning,
      THEY really couldn’t decide,
      half of THEM wanted to go one way, half another.

      The suggestion that somewhere in there, without indication or grammatical basis, “they” changed from referring to “the guests” to referring to “the guests minus the guest that spoke,” seems like a pretty disingenuous way to cling to the idea that there are exactly three guests.

      Room 35 says that
      ONE spoke, then
      ANOTHER, then
      THE THOUGHTFUL ONE, then
      ANOTHER.
      While it’s grammatically possible that these four statements could be made by as few as two people without completely ignoring the meaning of “another,” the suggestion in standard English is that there are four different speakers. Again, this isn’t the nail in the coffin to the same degree as 37, but it’s problematic.

      (Contrast with Room 1′s identification of three guests speaking more than three lines.)

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    • How many “named” guests do we have again? “Thoughtful one”. “bold one”, a “she” not also called thoughtful one. Any unspecific “he”s? any other specific identifiers? I leaning towards four now myself. (Mentally I always pictured 6 for some reason).

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    • “he” in 40.
      “he” in 7.
      “he” in 15
      there is “she” in 19 of course.
      I think Occum’s razor give us 4 guests although clearly other numbers are very possible.

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    • The bold one in 33, who is probably the same as the one “bolder than the rest” in 12 and 28.

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  10. Musical symbols + chairs = The game “Musical Chairs”. This could be a clue that there are 3 people following the guide around. In the game there is always one less chair used than people so one is “left standing”… here we start off with, 3 people standing + a 10 pin standing = Door #13.

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    • YES! i like this one, i’ve talked with the mazecast crew at length about how many visitors there could be, and this fits nicely with the 3 theory.

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    • Room 37, in which half want to go one way and half the other, suggests there are more than three guests. I don’t think you have to read “half” literally there, but if two wanted to go one way and one the other way, that would not be even approximately describable as half and half.

      Room 35 suggests four different speakers among them, though the text admittedly could be perversely worded to imply a false number of guests.

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  11. I know I’ve been MIA doing other stuff but I woke up with a Maze thought today. Hidden Mystery had suggested the O + pin = open solution. PIN comes both from the bowling pin and the fact that the curtain is pinned back. And one pin points at the other.

    The “O” comes from the hat but also maybe from the huge mouth. So I thought about it saying “Oh”. Then I realized that if you play those two notes (and I did on a keyboard) above the door to 13 – C-A on the bass clef they sound a lot like one would imagine that big mouth saying “open” would sound like.

    This explains why the notes to correspond with 1-3 are C-A not A-C.

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    • That’s a plausible interval for the typical doorbell we’re all familiar with, the old BINGbong.

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    • I love the observation that these notes sound like a doorbell. They totally do.

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  12. Congratulations Kon-Tiki, Vewatkins, and Beelzebibble!

    > The post that started it all…
    Kon-Tiki wrote:
    “The backs of the chairs can be interpreted as 13′s also. In fact, the only numbers they (the backs of the chairs) can be interpreted as (using “all” of the parts of the backs of the chairs only once) is either 13 or 8.” “And the two columns on either side of door 13 are well lighted, as opposed to the others.”

    Vewatkins wrote:
    “I don’t know whether it’s problematic, but it seems to me that once we accept the chair as a three, we can reach the same conclusion by treating the pin as a 1 based purely on shape. Doing that even gives us an echo of the “C-A” in the musical notes above the door. ”

    Vewatkins also wrote:
    “What do you make of the fact that the staff over 13 slopes down, and the staff over 3 slopes up?
    If you compare it to the slats on the chairs, the chair in the light slopes up, while the chair in the dark (from our point of view, mind you) slopes down.”
    > Okay, you wrote it backwards but I assume you have it. – White Raven

    Beelzebibble wrote:
    “The diagonal weaving of the seat of the chair in the middle gives us the letter X. Follow up the chair from there and you reach the three slats: III. This gives us XIII = 13.”
    > You got me on that one Beelzebibble, good eyes! – White Raven

    See the solution at the top of the page and related images for how these come together.

    The chair solution has at least six more parts which round out the room (four of which lend considerable support to this solution).

    There is also at least one more part to the musical riddle.

    White Raven

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  13. The slats on the chair have been noted to look like piano keys. 10-pin and 3-keys. Keys and pins together suggest locks. With HM’s idea (or just with an open curtain), maybe even an open lock.

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    • Also, what key are we in on the staff? There are no sharp or flat indicators so it would be the key of “C”. Alphanumeric 3.

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    • Dave, you have to click reply to the post you’re replying to or it will confuse people into thinking you’re starting a new thread.

      Even as piano keys, there are 6 piano keys, so my previous line of questioning still stands in terms of the numbers being off. Vince mentioned that this is forgivable if you only count the chair closest to Door 13 but I still feel that doing this is an arbitrary decision.

      That being said, I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer here trashing the theory, I just think there could be a more complete explanation. For example, you could argue that “warm” is a bad thing in this room, since the pin and chair are further away from the fire and suggest your clue, while the other chair, close to the fireplace, points to 3… something like that.

      There’s also been talk about the piano key-like slats meaning something in terms of black or white keys (major, minor? flat? sharp? whatever…) Something relating to that… I don’t know much about musical notation but Google helped a bit… a “thirteenth note” is PRETTY CLOSE to what the note over 3 looks like, but is missing a few notes from it to be complete.

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    • Re: reply – yeah sometime I think I do that but it ends up being a new thread, so I must not.

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    • The absence of sharps or flats would suggest C major or A minor, which both further the alphanumeric hypothesis. But it can also be that he just left out the key signature. There’s also no time signature. By the way, A is the 13th of C, but I’ve always found this weak since the A is lower than the C and therefore it wouldn’t make sense to call it a 13th. and another thing of note: all the visible stems of the notes are 8th notes. there seems to be an awful lot of 8 in this room

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    • The 1/8 notes came up at the library too. Not sure I get anything at all from that. Er…8 is halfway between 3 and 13? Er….not helpful.

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  14. I hosted a Maze day at the local library this was the 3rd of 3 and here are some results:

    The pin is in the position of the 10-pin in bowling. The open passage which they hurried along could bring to mind a bowling alley. The 10-pin together with the 3 chair slats could be a 13 and both the pin and the chair point up at that door.

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    • It’s interesting, ducking behind a curtain and hurrying down a passageway does sort of describe the movement of a bowling ball when it reaches the end of an alley. To the extent you can place a position on that pin, it is a ten pin.

      I don’t know whether it’s problematic, but it seems to me that once we accept the chair as a three, we can reach the same conclusion by treating the pin as a 1 based purely on shape. Doing that even gives us an echo of the “C-A” in the musical notes above the door. That’s a 3-1 instead of a 1-3, unless you look at it upside-down for no reason (it would make the slants on the staffs consistent), but that still seems to be pretty solidly stating “13.”

      I don’t know whether that’s problematic, though. Maybe the better question is just how much we can buy that that’s in ten pin position. On the one hand, I can see it, and if we’re calling a position for it, it seems like it has to be ten. On the other hand, it’s JUST too wide to actually fit inside the frame if the doorway is the alley. If we don’t take that to be the alley, we have no point of reference to call that a ten pin. If we do take it to be the alley, why is the ten pin outside of it?

      I think it’s a great observation. I don’t know whether it means anything.

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    • I think the pin in pointing up and the “pin”ned back curtain, which might explain why it is slightly outside the frame.

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    • Nah. I would still stick with O PIN, as in open curtain. (I don’t see a ten position, nor do bowling alley’s have curtains. but, nice try at least.)

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    • It has been some time since I bowled, but at least some bowling alleys have coverings over the ball returns that block other objects from falling in and could be described as curtains.

      We do need to make sure that we all keep each other apprised of our lack of change in opinions, though. Good effort.

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    • Here’s an important point: go google “ten pin.” The term commonly refers not only to the pin in the ten spot, but any pin of the kind used in ten-pin bowling. There’s no need to agonize, David is right regardless of position: that is a ten pin, simply on account of its shape.

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    • If it came down to choosing one of the two theories, I do prefer O-PIN. The problem I have with combining the chairs with the pin is that it would seem stronger if there were 3 chairs (3 chairs + 10 pin), or if there were one chair (3 slats + 10 pin). But 2 chairs? That’s 2 chairs, or 6 slats. The numbers don’t add up.

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  15. Normally it makes a lot of sense to me why WR isn’t giving out points and in the past when he does and you look back at previous solution attempts it’s like, oh yeah that really was wrong. But given some of the awesome ideas put on this page recently I am surprised that WR hasn’t dished out points. Seriously, you guys rock. Maybe he’s just not caught up on comments?

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    • Mole Man,

      Several people have credit for parts which are related to a solution which involves almost every object in the room and which has not been mentioned yet.

      People that have credit coming to them are…
      Vewatkins
      Beelzebibble
      Kon-Tiki

      Confirming these parts would give away the solution so I am waiting for now.

      White Raven

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  16. Thanks Alex for posting the episode 19 link over in the general comments.

    To set in text a few of my thoughts:

    - Vince noticed a long while back that the downward-slanting stave over 13 and the upward-slanting stave over 3 might correspond to the backs of the chairs: the chair toward the fireplace has upward slats from our perspective, while the chair in the middle has downward slats. The slats of chair one are shadowed from our perspective, while the slats we see of chair two are bright. Possibly this just needs to be finished off with: “Light is good, dark is bad, therefore let’s take the door corresponding to the brighter slats.”

    - Potential reason for the C-A progression instead of A-C as we would expect over 13: a little shoutout to room 8? There we see a bowling pin sitting by the door to room 31. And this door, too, is literally marked “3-1″ even though it’s not a stretch for us to flip it to “1-3″.

    - My new solution: The diagonal weaving of the seat of the chair in the middle gives us the letter X. Follow up the chair from there and you reach the three slats: III. This gives us XIII = 13.

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    • Personally I think the reason it is CA/31 instead of AC/13. Is that AC/13 would be too obvious. I believe this is what we have been assuming up until now.

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    • I don’t think the “it would be too obvious” thing applies well here, where C-A and A-C lead to 3-1 and 1-3 by the same methods. It’s not as though having the notes go A-C would be any more immediately obvious; the only thing it would make more apparent is, after the solution is found, that Manson probably intended it. Adding obfuscation to make the solution harder to find makes sense; making the solution fit worse, so that we can’t tell whether it’s real even after we find it, does not.

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    • Said this in the chat, too lazy to clean up and retype:

      The bottom part of the face is missing
      Like the lower jaw, teeth, chin, you know
      Which is like on the bass clef, where the F (the bottom of FACE) falls below the staff
      And then there’s an extra line above the face (the dragon), just as in the bass clef there is a line above FACE on the staff
      I wish I knew a way to relate the dragon to that remaining space.

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  17. Why was so much gibberish posted here? The point was that the hat is an “o” and along with the pin, it makes “OPEN”. The door with the open curtain is pointed out. Some comments should be under ‘say anything’ .

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    • I’m with vewatkin and mole man, could be true, maybe not. The pronunciation difference between o-pin and open is slight. But the visuals don’t quite make sense. It seems a little messy compared to Manson’s usual fare.

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    • For a good number of English speakers, there is no noticeable pronunciation difference between “open” and “o pin.” I have no problems with that. I’m only a little uncertain of the unprovoked combination of objects here. But, as noted, this is exactly the kind of stuff that happens in 45. The Riddle of the Maze isn’t anybody’s favorite, but we have to remember it’s part of Manson’s output, one of the few confirmed solutions we have, so we have to take it seriously in determining what kinds of puzzles Manson is likely to use. I think we’d like to THINK that Manson wouldn’t expect us to combine objects arbitrarily like this, but we also know darn well he might.

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    • I think of 45 as an exception in many ways but I do see what you are saying, he did random combination once so it may occur elsewhere. A point well taken.

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    • Nothing “arbitrarily ” about it. These are the only objects in the room besides the chairs. The “O” has to have a purpose. I don’t think it is debatable in any way.

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    • Combining the only things in the room besides the chairs would also be arbitrary, but that’s sort of inaccurate as well. The room prominently features a fire, a fireplace, logs, a dragon, musical notation, shadows, and curtains in different states of aperture (and a black curtain).

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  18. I looked back at my page. Yes C/E is what I had called it there. But you’re of course right about it being a C-major inversion and that may be more important. The door goes to goes to 3=C but that is also “backwards” in 2 different senses – backwards in the loop and an inverted chord.

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  19. Hat and pin. Maybe just that they are the 2 unexpected objects in that room. It is mostly empty and chairs and wood are sort of expected things. A bowling bin? Not so much.

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  20. To add more confusion you can also name it a type of E cord – not E major but something I’ve forgotten.

    I like A/C….

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    • one could notate it as a C/E if that’s what you’re getting at, and also in figured bass notation (mostly used in the baroque and in analysis) as a 6 next to a note “E” (the 6 should be slightly under the “note” E and implies it’s a C chord in 1st inversion; not an E chord) .

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  21. Is there a good way to relate the “lost” talk to the face, and thereby to the treble clef? (FACE mnemonic, etc.) The hat is near it, but is that really enough? Did the face lose its hat? If the treble clef can be associated with being lost, we have a good counter-indicator for Room 3.

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    • Why would you be looking for a counter-indicator for 3? If you want one, i can provide one: the chord above door 3 is a C major chord in first inversion. This means that the “3″‘rd (E) is in the bass. Inversions are an important quality of chords and play an important role in music.

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    • I guess i misunderstood what you were saying. Forget what i wrote: it’s an indicator for 3, not a counter-indicator.

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    • A C major chord, eh?

      C major?

      C
      CEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

      I’ve not too knowledgeable about music theory. Can you explain what “in first inversion” means?

      Fine, I’ll google it.

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    • It’s not that complicated: a major chord (a triad) can be in only 3 positions (in regards to the bass): Root position, 1st inversion, and 2nd inversion. In a major chord (triad) there are only 3 “different” notes. It all depends which one is in the bass. Any better? but ultimately i doubt such knowledge of music theory is needed to solve the riddle. Manson never really uses erudition in his puzzles.

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    • Well, it was complicated because “inversion,” in regard to music theory, has a lot of different meanings, even in regard to chords. The concept itself, once identified, is explicable even to an ignoramus such as I.

      I can’t think, off the top of my head, of any really obscure information brought to bear on the Maze; the most obscure thing I can think of is the sacrificial tripod in 15 and its relationship to the Delphic oracle. Oh, Cleopatra’s Needle…

      Yeah, I don’t think naming the chord is too far from the ordinary here, especially since it’s obvious that we’re looking at musical notation. It’s kind of like how Manson couldn’t fairly expect us to know what “fata viam invenient” means, but can fairly expect the reader to identify it as Latin and try to find the answer.

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    • Well I don’t want to nitpick, but in regard to chords, inversion only has one meaning: that the “root” is not in the bass. The root is what gives the chord its name. In this instance C. it’s an inversion because it’s a C chord, but C is not the lowest note, at least if we count only the notes on the Treble (G) clef. by the way, clef originally meant “key”

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    • Well, I guess wikipedia only lists two meanings specifically under chords, and one is a subset of the other…that’s complicated enough for someone who knows nothing about it! And look at all those words…

      That it’s a C chord seems a relevant takeaway to me.

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    • So on the left we have C A, alphanumerically 3 – 1, seemingly 13 with reversed digits. On the right, a C chord, inverted, seemingly (if that’s not too strong of a word) related to 3. Why the reversal, why the inversion?

      I don’t quite have the stomach to advocate that the noted heat in the room is the opposite of AC.

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  22. The hat forms the shape of the letter ‘O’ .
    Add to that the bowling pin.

    O-PIN or “OPEN”.
    The door with the open curtain is the choice to make.
    (This is also backed up by the hidden number 5 and that one is lost or subtracted. Thus, 5 minus one = 4 = the sum of 1 and 3 (13).)

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    • Haha, I don’t agree with your methods, but you’ve infected me to such a degree that I saw the 5 – 1 solution before you stated it.

      The o-pin solution intrigues me. Even on its own, the pin might be tied to the curtain being pinned back.

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    • OPEN is a definite and I was startled that no one else had this already. (The music notes are a stretch to me.)

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    • Is there any impetus for combining those objects, though? It’s not any worse than the object-mashing in Room 45, and so I don’t think it’s out of the question or anything; I’m just curious as to whether there’s anything in the room or text suggesting those should be combined.

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    • HM wrote “OPEN is a definite and I was startled that no one else had this already.”

      Ahhh to be young and certain of everything. This solution seems mostly reasonable to me but I’m thinking that it is maybe not correct.

      In line with V’s comment above, why are the two separated? Also why not a hat and pen so it actually spells and sounds like OPEN? If we decide to combine these two I think “hatpin” is a more natural conclusion though what to do with it I don’t know.

      I’m not saying it is wrong but I am old and have my doubts.

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  23. What do you make of the fact that the staff over 13 slopes down, and the staff over 3 slopes up?

    If you compare it to the slats on the chairs, the chair in the light slopes up, while the chair in the dark (from our point of view, mind you) slopes down. Yeah, ok, so what?

    It seems meaningful, eh? I mean, Staffs shouldn’t be slanted at all, etc.

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