If we multiply, 9 x 6 = 54.

Now, the “Y” (“why”) is not shown, though Y = 12.

This part is a stretch, but since Y is not shown in letter format, we subtract it.

So 54 – 12 = 42.

Just how I figured it out, after the fact.

This motivates us to count up the number of times these letters appear.

Counting the text and the image of the room, the letter O appears 4 times: twice in the text and twice in the room. The letter U appears 2 times: once in the text and once in the room.

Since O appears to the left of U in the room, the clue is 42.

The tree has ten fruit on it, and the game master describes a contestant as “thoughtful” which is a word with ten letters. So you move the hand on the clock forward by ten ticks (moving clockwise) and it results in it pointing towards the correct door. Note it will point to the door better if you visualize the room from a top-down perspective.

thoughtful
Obviously

‘O’ and ‘U’
for us

confused
through

I noted a solution listed above, about counting F in the text and then multiplying by the etc etc, and even though that was motivated by specific symbols in the room, it was still nonsense that only worked out by coincidence.

(I only count 41 words in the quotes, incidentally, but I don’t think it matters very much which of us is correct in our counting.)

That’s fair enough too–the Eden theme and the discussion of door 34′s elegance speak to the idea of avoiding temptation. I think there’s a broader theme of “silence” in the book that suggests we don’t want to go the way that the clues point, but it’s not clear how far we can take that, or how many rooms are meant to suggest this to us.

(Room 1 makes the importance of silence explicit. Room 26 uses literal devils as clues. And perhaps this room highlights the danger of temptation. I’m not sure whether any other rooms along the path suggest this principle, and I’m not sure how many of them even follow it.)

That doesn’t mean that the associations you cite aren’t there, though. Certainly, the IF NO EVE anagram (ONE FIVE) will create associations with the tree here, and possibly with religious language in the next room, and the devil imagery in the previous room. It may be that one of the key ways that Manson distracts from the solution to a puzzle is by inserting elements into the room that associate with the puzzle along a different axis than the solution.

And the fruit of knowledge is fake so it offers false wisdom.

And the clock is broken making it not a reliable source of information.

Unsure if this all tracks.