Comments on: Room 29

By: Cheetah

Cheetah — Fri, 01 May 2026 22:12:33 +0000

Okay, so 1 and 1 so far. That’s a good sign that this puzzle isn’t unsolvable without cheating! Thanks for your replies, Vince and John! I still hope to hear more people’s experiences too.

By: John

John — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 21:41:15 +0000

I attest that I did. I went through a lot of the maze before coming back here, but saw the door on my second look at the page.

At first I was looking for a hint of what might be behind the curtain, then I noticed how janky the top of the candelabra looked. I’d noticed the “numberyness” of it the first time, and it suddenly seemed obvious once I looked closely. Then I saw the doorknob is actually the top of his staff. None of the other staffs have tops in this room, and neither does his.

I actually didn’t flip the book over until after I’d found it.

By: funyarinpa

funyarinpa — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 20:17:27 +0000

Forgive me if I missed it but I haven’t seen anyone mention the connection to the phrase “turn over a new leaf”, the other symbols above the doors are all more straightforwardly things you turn over to use, so it only makes sense that it’s using a similar connection for all of the symbols. That phrase is how the leaf connects to the clue telling you to turn over the book.

By: vewatkin

vewatkin — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 12:58:59 +0000

I did not find it cleanly. I had mapped out the book, and my mother gave me the hint that there was a secret door after I deduced there was no path to 45. (This was years before the internet was popularized )

By: Cheetah

Cheetah — Sun, 31 Aug 2025 19:11:20 +0000

Though I already kind of asked this on the “Welcome!” thread, I thought I’d directly ask again here. Can anyone attest to whether or not they were able to find the hidden door in this room, both without help from anyone who already knew about it (including the Internet), and without first looking through the book to find all the possible entrances to 45, thus being primed to look for a 17? I myself was not able to do this, but I’m assuming some people were. I’d love to hear more Mazers’ experiences with this devious puzzle!

By: P.Bird

P.Bird — Wed, 18 Jun 2025 13:51:26 +0000

This might be a stretch, but approaching the room from a tarot mindset you have three staves (or wands) without heads and one with. The 3 of Wands card implies preparation for exploration into the unknown, while the 4 of Wands implies harmony and balance, a sense of completion and correctness. Without the staff held by the blind man, staves only suggest that the guests have work to do here before they achieve their goal (the correct path). With his complete staff added – by no longer trusting common visual assumptions – they find the correct way forward.

By: Joe W

Joe W — Mon, 07 Apr 2025 20:24:55 +0000

I sometimes wonder if the rooms in MAZE contain a “meta theme”—something deeper than just the individual clues or imagery within each scene. Take Room 29, for example. While much of it has been well analyzed, I still suspect there’s a larger thematic layer that connects to the discovery of the hidden door to Room 17.

The chairs resemble old-fashioned tombstones or even 19th-century caskets with glass viewing panels. The table looks less like furniture and more like a sarcophagus. The candelabra, candles, hourglass sign, and draped cloth all evoke the setting of a funeral wake.

Room 17 itself feels like a crypt—sandy, filled with amphorae, and somewhat forgotten.

It’s almost as if Room 29 is a wake staged for the reader, with the “reveal” of Room 17 as a kind of dark joke or punchline. The theme of death and discovery might be more central than we’ve realized.

By: maxtes252

maxtes252 — Tue, 31 Mar 2020 23:03:43 +0000

Another clue to the correct door is in “The Riddle of the Maze” for Macintosh, where if you click on the blind man, he’ll say, “It’s better read from on your head.”

By: vewatkin

vewatkin — Mon, 30 Mar 2020 13:05:53 +0000

A review of antique pool cues has proved me unjustified in asserting offhandedly that the staves in this room are not pool cues. When I google “antique pool cues,” I see a number of sticks from the distant past that look more or less (some quite a bit more) like the sticks in here: just completely conical and unadorned.

By: ritz

ritz — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 17:40:18 +0000

You’re right that a lot of door number finds are confirmation bias