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…a bright room whose walls were in some disrepair. The floorboards creaked and groaned; the plaster made a gritty sound.
They studied the old frescoes for clues but missed the obvious signs.
“Are we on the right path?” they asked.
Keeping in mind what a relative term “right” is, I assured them they were, indeed, on the right path. As for the “correct” path or the “most appropriate” path…. Well, that might be something else.
Full of confidence now they marched out to…
- Images and text copyright 1985 by Christopher Manson
used with permission. [Purchase MAZE from Amazon]
Room Type: PATH Doors: 12 22 29
Solution Summary: [COLLECTION CURATED BY WHITE Raven. SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTION PROPOSALS.]
● The spear and staff war banners both point towards the Frescos and stand next to doors 12 & 22. The humble broom points to 29 – which is the correct door. [Independent Credit: Hello Gregor | White Raven]
● The text reads, “”Are we on the right path?” they asked. Keeping in mind what a relative term “right” is, I assured them they were, indeed, on the right path. As for the “correct” path or the “most appropriate” path…. Well, that might be something else.” The reference to right being relative draws attention to the bear, the door to the bear’s right, which the bear’s right arm is pointing at, is the “right” (as in “correct”) door. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven] The bear combined with the to-the-right riddle gives us “bear right” (from the point of view of the bear) as a way of phrasing the solution. [Credit: Dave G] The bear is looking upward at a ship/boat in the mural, suggesting travel, or more simply, “go.” This connection is reinforced by the accumulation of items in the room starting with the letter “B” (bench, box, banner, backdrop, bear) which helps us find the Boat. (See solution at bottom for a possible addition to this solution.) [Independent Credit: Vewatkin | White Raven]
● The first words of the text are “…a bright room…” “bright room” is a spoonerism of “right broom” the broom is both pointing at the right (as in correct) door and is also to the bear’s right (as described in the solution above). [Credit: SP]
● The symbol and the Byzantine art in the center panel suggest that the topic of the murals is Constantinople which was Byzantine and used this symbol as its coat of arms (see related images), by extension, the figure in the center likely represents Constantine I or Constantine XI. [Independent Credit: Vewatkin | White Raven (for the significance of the symbol)] [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven (for significance of the art)] The left panel shows the Constantinople soldiers in battle with the Turks, a battle which was lost resulting in the name of the city being changed to Istanbul. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven] There are two good ways of interpreting the rest of the puzzle:
The Fall of Constantinople Solution: All three panels are about the one of the most significant and horrific battles in history the fall of Constantinople. The left panel represents either the escape of the surviving leaders of Constantinople (sans Constantine IX who died), or the flight of several hundred soldiers before the battle began, who snuck out of the city at night and left by ship. Either way the solution to this riddle is to escape from the disaster of the fall of Constantinople by taking the ship. The bear looks to the boat (end of the trail of “B”s in the solution above) to emphasize the route of escape. [Credit: White Raven]
The History of Constantinople Solution: The left panel represents the city when it was called Byzantium by illustrating a significant event from that time period, the saving of the city by the appearance of a bright light or moon summoned by the three-person-in-one goddess Hecate. The center panel with its Byzantine style art represents Constantinople. The right panel represents the fall of Constantinople and therefore the transition to the city being named Istanbul. So the panels represent Byzantium, Constantinople, and Istanbul respectively. “Byzantine” panel is the end of the trail of “B”s (see solution above) and is therefore the correct choice. [Credit: Aria]
Alex noted, perhaps impressing me more than himself, that “a bright room” is a spoonerism of “a right broom.”
This is a repost of comments buried below:
SP wrote:
B+Right (Bright) There are many B’s in the room and B+right could mean “bear right”.
vewatkin wrote:
Hey, I overlooked this when you first posted it. It’s interesting, because this isn’t a particularly bright room, and it does emphasize “B” and “right.” I think you’ve got something here.
David Gentile wrote:
Yes, maybe “bright” = “B” (is) “right”. Like “Broom is right”.
I agree, I think you may have something here, let’s see where it goes…
over each room number there are a certain number of people in the pictures. 29 has 3 people above it, the other 2 doors only have 1. i can connect that to the text sorta as well… “are we on the right path?” – we… there are 3 dudes with halos above 29 but over 22 and 12, there is only a solo person above the two numbers. manson seems to pay special attention to making sure the 3 dudes over 29 are right over the number.
it should also be mentioned that the three amigos are walking left not right, which the way we should be going.
Ok, the crescent moon there on the hanging sign, that’s in the picture over 29. Spear, check, they have spears in 29. Pennant flag, check, pennants are flying from the ship.
Not the B-stuff, though, and not the chair.
You can’t see it, but there is a bear hiding behind the throne.
All the people in the king’s picture have little moon crowns. The sad little bear looks up at the moon and wishes he had one. He has a bear crown.
So let’s put the bear in the chair. Then he will feel like a King. And if we break the top of the crescent spear he can have a crown too. And he will look at the right door for us….
Or if we don’t break off the tip then the crescent spear after we put in on on the bear’s head – it would point to the box and the broom and the broom would point to the door.
And that big moon/star flag? Well let’s suppose the bear is the star – ’cause I dunno, he has 2 feet/2arms/2ears and the star has 6 points. And the moon is the crown we are supposed to put on him.
We’d almost have a little chain of spears/broom from the spear head by 22 down to the bear’s head, out to the broom and out the door to 29.
And then the bear bears arms because he has a spear, and he bears witness to the correct door.
Disappointing news. Manson e-mailed me a few bits. This is all we get though, no follow up questions, so read between the line as you will.
Dave wrote: there was a damn breaking insight on room 2 last night, and things seem to be taking a political turn.
My new final paragraph for room 2: (after finding “Left to bear witness to sweeping history of knight’s right to bear arms”.) We can now form ideas like “2-bear’s arms are right” vs. “right to bear arms”. And note that we are supposed to take the “Left” door in this political room. And we can reinterpret the text of the “right path” vs. the “correct path” to mean the Right is wrong about this issue. Room 40s wall can be read to be about “true rights” in part, and the 2nd amendment is not one of them it appears. Rather we should take away things like “respect for nature” implied in room 42, and “freedom from tyranny” and “unity of humanity” from here and room 26, and since Manson has placed Kabbalah’s Tree of Life in MAZE we should also take away the values we can infer from there.
Manson’s relevant sentence: I have no references to the 2nd amendment in the book.
Dave’s thoughts. It does not mean this is totally wrong. It just means it is taken too far if we do things like this:
“2-bear’s arms are right” vs. “right to bear arms” and things like “The Right is wrong on this issue”.
The main sentence I came up with was about the “Knight’s right to bear arms” and that is not technically the 2nd amendment. I also take lack of comment on the rest to suggest that at least he does not mind being associated with those ideas.
I’ll revise my page to reflect my take on this.
A couple other one line comment to follow, regarding other questions. But then as I said, no follow ups.
Bear arms is probably part of something here too
Haha, man, holy cow!
“Right”
Bear
Arms (weapons)
It’s all there! In Room 2, to correspond with the second amendment!
Typical rightwing Maze rhetoric.
The right to bear arms
The right (to bear) arms
The weapons to the right of the bear
Maybe Greg’s right; maybe some solutions are good enough even if Manson didn’t intend them.
There must be more too but that seems like a part of it.
Left to bear witness to the right to bear arms
Left to bear witness to nights right to bear arms.
Almost every word in that sentence has two meaning. At least.
Or, less literally, just some “right-bear-arms” thing, the bear’s arms being right, that is, left and right raised, like the folk in the fresco above 29; or, just, the arms to the bear’s right, not the weapons.
It’s another one of those clues you can take five different ways and get the same result.
How about: left to bear witness to sweeping history of nights/knight’s right to bear arms.
Like “right to bear arms” vs “2 bears arms (are) right”
Star and crescent are just “night” I think. Vs “knights” on right
There may not be 3 bears but there are 2 bears in MAZE and the is the “2 bear”. The bear in 42 is in the same corner as the bear in 2 and the savage animal ready to leap out roaring is an ironic pointer to here, I think. The “obvious signs” here are all the 2s. The is room 2 and of the 6 digits over the doors 4 of them are 2s. So on one side of the room we have “2-bear witness” and on the other “too bare witness”. We have “nights” on the left and “knights” on the right, we have “sweeping history” well on both sides but with different meanings.
Bear down…Chicago Bears…
The bear is barring witness to past events where people took earrings based on the moon and those events have a barring on today and we should follow the moonlit and broom.
Is the bear barring the big moon on his shoulder?
it looks like there are 29 people (including the angels I guess, but not the horse) in the frescoes. maybe this is what stuart the bear is looking at.
fellas, i was wrong! there are 30 people in the frescoes
B+Right (Bright) There are many B’s in the room and B+right could mean “bear right”.
I’m thinking that if we are supposed to get the exit from all the “B”s then the fact that an “A”rrow head points to one door, and a “C”rescent another, and a “B”room the third should give us the door. If WR is not counting that as a partial solution or whatever, it seems unlikely the large number of “B”s are involved at all in his thought here. Just guessing.
Hey, I overlooked this when you first posted it. It’s interesting, because this isn’t a particularly bright room, and it does emphasize “B” and “right.” I think you’ve got something here.
Yes, maybe “bright” = “B” (is) “right”. Like “Broom is right”.
this might be nothing but i can’t be too sure, there is a piece of plaster shaped like an upward pointing arrow next to the teddy bear. the plaster is given some attention in the text.
Alright, I think this is pretty good, so don’t hurt my feelings. Everyone notices the B-theme in the room, but we don’t know what to do with it. But do you notice the prominently featured BOAT in the leftmost fresco? How have we been failing to list that? I’m sure there are other objects you could describe with a B in the paintings (boots, uh, they’re in a building, uh, they’re human BEINGS) but that seems to be the only prominent and immediately identifiable B object in the paintings. And, it’s over the right door. And, the bear’s eyes are pointing to it; this is significant because the bear is very obviously only there as an object that starts with B, so the bear’s eyes serve as a connection/clue between the B objects in the room and the B object in the fresco.
Room 29, take it to the bank.
Yep, he does seem to be, most directly anyway, eyeing the boat. If I tie it in with my thoughts, boats are things that need barrings too.
I forgot to add: I don’t think that the bear could actually see behind itself to the painting in that position, but like so many things in Maze, its eyes serve as an indicator in two-dimensional space that wouldn’t really fly if the Maze were actually constructed. The bear’s eyes point to the boat; I don’t think we need to care whether the bear could actually see it.
I agree that it doesn’t matter if the bear can actually see it because it is a stuffed bear. If that’s a real room, Edgar Allen Poe posed the bear.
vewatkin,
The bear looking at the boat is correct. This is not the solution, just a part of it.
David Gentile, vewatkin, and others,
I believe the B words, Broom, Box, Bear, and Bench are a trail to lead us to see the Boat. My only hesitation is that while the other items have no other name that is more common, the Boat would more commonly be called a “ship.” If the word “boat” is critical to some larger riddle I don’t see it.
White Raven
Well, we’ll have to wait until we see the rest of the solution, though maybe the tail end of it here just splits us on interpretation? It’s hard to know, ahead of time.
I think it’s because we tend to think of the boat as a ship that it was overlooked in so many counts of the room’s B objects, but that’s also why the bear’s additional signalling is there, and why we decide the bear is looking there when it could be looking at a number of different things in the general vicinity. The boat isn’t such an obvious B object that it we would have connected it with Bs at a glance, but it’s not any stretch of common language to call it “boat.”
If we do not think of the boat/ship as a B, I’m not sure why a trail of Bs leads us there; something in the room could have been looking at it regardless, and it’s not as though having a bunch of B objects in the room in any way inclines us to follow the bear’s eyes.
All that said, there’s clearly another solution involving this same information, and it’s likely the superiority of that solution that will prevail to undermine this one.
If the Bs lead us to where the bear is looking, we at least then have arrived at where those soldiers are “marching out” to, indicating 29 over 12 with regard to the marching clue in the text.
Found the missing bit here. We have a bear “eyeing” the moon/night picture. Bear + eyeing = bearing. Then we can take a baring by the moon and the moon dust and follow the broom. And on the other side you get knights barring arms and banners, etc… “night over bear” works in its owe way, but not as well. Full write of up 2 later today on my page.
I still like my previous solution. But here is an also valid one I think.
2 of the frescoes have angels. One has a moon.
2 of the frescoes look up to the heavens for help. The other prays? To the moon.
The bear looks up at the Mon for help too in this room today. Help is here. The floor is coated with white dust. Like moondust. And the broom associate guides us out.
Oh, man, I made a serious mistake in my previous post here, indicating that 2 has two different “best doors” depending on whether one is headed in or out. It does not; 29 is always the best door. I was working off a list of best doors I made over ten years ago, and only recently discovered the error.
This greatly simplifies things.
Here’s an observation: each fresco features a central figure/figures, raising arms. Over 29 are three figures raising both arms. Over 22, a figure clearly raising just its left arm. Over 12, a figure that seems to be raising its left arm (hard to tell from the level of detail, but seems to be holding a shield in what would have to be its right arm).
Given all the discussion in the text of being on the right path, the doors marked with raised left arms would seem to point toward the third door, indicated differently. Well, they would probably do that even without the text.
NO, I was wrong in–dammit, just dammit dammit dammit.
2 does have two different best doors. Vewatkins of ten years ago wins again.
On the way out, 12 is best, on the way in, 29.
It has a ranking of doors I think. 29 is best. Forward is bad. I think there are clues that indicate choices B and C, but also more specific clues to 29.
I agree, it seems to indicate 29. This is odd, though, since 29 is not the best door on the way out.
Maybe that’s just the way of the world, though.
To clarify: The rooms on the True Path don’t seem to take into consideration which door is best on the way back, unless they’re part of the path back. Similarly, the rooms that are part of the path back to 1 don’t give clues to the best way to 45. (That is my belief, anyway, unless these rooms all contain double clued doors.)
But 2 isn’t part of the path in or out, and you’re just as likely to stumble on it either way, so I don’t know why it would contain a solution pointing toward the way in only.
If it’s true, it could be because the way in has more primacy in terms of the three official problems of the maze. Getting to the center is first. Further, someone on the way out is assumed to have more knowledge of the rooms and, thus, maybe doesn’t need so many clues to get out.
5 is similiar. There are indicators of the two best doors, that don’t get you lost, and then I think indicatrors for one of those two.
Both 5 and 2 sort of say, well yes the return path is an OK choice, but the point more toward the forward path to the center.
Also, the frescoes are all missing big chunks of plaster: the one above 29 has a missing chunk on the right; the one above 22 has a missing chunk on the right; the one above 12 has a missing chunk on the left.
The moons: 29′s fresco has a moon in the center, 22 has a moon picture hanging to its left, 12 has a moon shape on the banner propped up to its right.
Scenery behind 22 propped up by right triangles–warned against by all that right =/= correct business in the text?
Perhaps we’re meant to use both meanings of the word right- correct on the way in and relative direction on the way out.
Note the crescent staff is pointing to a horse REARING next to door 12. That the crescent echoes the other two moons might be notable.
It has been noted that the bear looks up at the moon much like the fresco above him.
The bear looks up at a moon and star representing “night” – “overbearing” “night”. Or in the frescos we have “overbearing knights”. We have “bright” in the text as a rhyme for “night” and “chair” and “disrepair” as rhymes for “overbear”.
On the ground we have a tipped over box of plaster. This is “gritty freedom”.
Other word values of interest might be “back ground”, “back bench”, a “ground level” broom, “frescos”, beginning the same word as the word “freedom”, “groaned” and “sound” supporting the word “ground” and “floorboards” supporting the concept of “ground”. Then above 29 there seems to be a celebration of freedom as some sort of fighters or warriors arrive.
So it seems we have “overbearing knights” vs. something like “gritty ground level fight back for freedom” . The ground level freedom fighters are indicated both by the broom pointing at 29 and the freedom celebration above it. The spears and banners point up at frescos of overbearing knights for the wrong choices, and an overbearing king for the worst choice.
I have no use for the word “creaked”, unless the fighters are freedom crusaders.
I was distracted with religious conflict and inter-room connection.
I quote The Guide, “They studied the old frescoes for clues but missed the obvious signs.”
The spear and the crescent staff both study (point towards) the Fresco. The more down-to-earth, day-to-day, humble broom is far more aware of the obvious. And so it is the obvious sign, pointing the way to go.
Hello Gregor,
Sorry about the problem with your post, I accidentally marked it as spam. I get about 20 spam messages a day and I just clicked the wrong box.
By pulling in the broom into your previous observation about the spears (below) and correctly picking up on one of the “obvious signs” you have bumped the solve meter up to 3. Congratulations!
White Raven
This is another room where all the objects begin with the same letter, in this case, B: bear, box, broom, bench, brick, battle, banner. Maybe more.
The quibble about “right” path vs. “correct” path vs. “most appropriate” path is an interesting one here, considering that this room has two-way links to two shortest-path rooms but one in each direction: you need #29 on the way in and #12 to exit. That means no matter which way you entered this room (not possible from #22), you have lately been on the “right” path, but you may have been walking it in the wrong direction.
My interpretation of the fresco is that the segments over doors #29 and #12 both contain marching soldiers, whereas all the figures in the segment over door #22 are static (except the angels, I suppose). Taken together with the closing line “Full of confidence now they marched out to…”, this could be an intentional hint that either #29 or #12 is preferred to #22 — which, after all, takes you straight into the trap sequence where you will eventually end up as motionless as the figures overhead.
As to which set of marching soldiers to follow, it depends on whether you’re on the way in or out. The soldiers above the door to 29, to our left, are marching away from us (into the Maze?); the soldiers above the door to room 12, on the right, are marching toward us (away from the Maze?). I may not be striking, on the right clues, but I think what we need to hit,on here is what tells us which marchers to follow on the way in and which to follow on the way out. (29 is correct on the way in, 12 is correct on the way out.)
This room isn’t part of the path, why is it categorized as part of the path?
Rooms 2, 5, 28 and 32, are not part of the 16 room path, they are side rooms off of the path. What this means is that these rooms are connected to the path. You can return to the path from these 4 rooms.
The frescos look Holy Roman Empire like. Perhaps the crusades? The banners look midieval. I’ll be the key to the puzzle is folding in the box and the bear.
Crusades would be interesting. That’s the star and crescent of Islam hanging above the bear there.
Interesting also are the three staves- each associated with a different door and a different life station.
Further notable in lieu of the comment above relating to marching soldiers is that the spear- weapon of choice of the Fresco’s soldiers- is associated with the wrong door.
Congratulations Hello Gregor!
I am moving the solve meter from zero to two, on account of your correct recognition of the spear-fresco-text connection. There are 3 more aspects to this riddle. You are correct that the star and crescent are involved but in a manner more specific than “Islam.”
White Raven
I was distracted with religious conflict and inter-room connection.
I quote The Guide, “They studied the old frescoes for clues but missed the obvious signs.”
The spear and the crescent staff both study (point towards) the Fresco. The more down-to-earth, day-to-day, humble broom is far more aware of the obvious. And so it is the obvious sign, pointing the way to go.
All I have are spitballs and observations.
The bear and the moon look like the three figures and the moon above door 29.
Room 12′s staff points to a horse rearing back. Room 22′s staff points to ruin. 29 points the way (as mentioned above).
You can see the theater backdropness of gaudy room 22 taken literally through the doorway.
There may be some significance to the way the staves are garbed. The broom is for work left to be done. The Crescent staff perhaps bears a victory banner? I’m unsure of the significance of the cloth draped upon the spear. Is it surrender? Is it soaked in blood?
Note that that’s a six-point star by the crescent moon, as opposed to the usual five. I can’t make anything of that at the moment, but I don’t think Manson does that stuff on accident.
More specific than Islam–Turkey? Help solidify the “crusade” interpretation?