Room 35

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…what appeared to be someone’s basement. One of them sank gratefully down on an old couch which prompty collapsed.

I tried to hide my smile.

“A totem, or tribal fetish,” said one, walking around the center of the room.

“It could be a work of art,” suggested another.

“Perhaps it’s a signal to us,” the thoughtful one said. “A warning or direction?”

“Not much help when there is only one way to go,” put in another.

“I still think it’s a signal.”

“Yes,” I said right away, “I’m sure you’re right.”

She was immediately suspicious. Still, with no real choice to make, we left the thing standing alone in light and silence, and went into…

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

 

Room Type:  LOOP    Doors:  25  29  33  41

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

● This room has only one exit. The puzzles in this room help with solutions in other rooms to help a person escape from The Loop. [Independent Credit: 515 | Vewatkin | White Raven] [This room relates to (at least) Room 33, 3, 18 & 13]

● Room 33: There are several unusual 3s in this room. The totem pointing at the exit stands on three legs. The couch has a broken leg, a point emphasized in the text, so like the totem now stands on three legs. The small table to the right is missing the back leg so also stands on three legs. All this is to cue us to choose door 3 in the next room, Room 33. [Independent Credit: 515 | White Raven] A couple other 3s perhaps meant to emphasize the point are: The 3 legged couch has 3 cushions, one of which lay in the exit doorway, and the suit has 3 buttons. Note: While there are plenty of 3s in this room they are all single, not is a set of two 3s (like if there were 6 buttons on the jacket in two rows). Thus 3, not 33 is indicated. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven]

● Room 3: The totem is a man made of sticks, a simple drawing of a person like the one on the wall in Room 3 is known as a “matchstick man.” The stick man in this room is pointing the way indicating that we follow the matchstick man in Room 3. [Independent Credit: Mazecast | White Raven] [The book of matches ("matchstick") and the suit ("man") reinforce this solution.]

● Room 18: The blank poster on the wall could relate to the unreadable, barely visible poster hanging inside the correct door in room 18. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven] The arms of the couch have a swirl reminiscent of a bass clef, this could be an indication we follow the bass clef meter door in Room 18. [Credit: Aria] The bench to the left has a piece of wood in front of it which makes an “F”. This could be a clue that we take the bass “F” clef in Room 18. [Independent Credit: Vewatkin | White Raven] The matches and flammable materials spread around the room may suggest fire and that we should take the door in Room 18 which is closest to the fire. [Credit: Mazecast]

● Room 13: The single lit bulb in this room reinforces the lit bulb solution in Room 13. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven]

● Room 25: The text for this room has the unusual phrase “light and silence” this may be a clue that we choose the well lit not screaming face in Room 25. [Credit: Mazecast]

35path

126 thoughts on “Room 35

  1. Further on this room helping you escape the Loop – could the guest’s uncertainty about the stickman in this room be a hint to take the “uncertain” or “maybe” door from 34 to 10? I dunno, that’s a bit of a stretch, lol.

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  2. “I tried to hide my smile.” – This wouldn’t be the rhetorical use of a “simile” or metaphor, would it?

    Is the couch pictured here (among other rooms in which furniture appears) have anything to do in regards to Sellisternium or Lectisternium?

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  3. If the remaining part of Room 3 requires you to flip and mirror-image the room, then it seems like the three hooks in this room might be hinting at that. You have two hooks that are mirror images of one another, and then one flipped upside-down (or right-side-up) — the coat-hook.

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    • Aria,

      This really works but I am not adding it to the summary until someone solves this riddle in Room 3.

      Good job!

      White Raven

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    • Ack! Someone solve that final Room 3 thing. It is driving me crazy. Perhaps that Humble Cleric fellow?

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  4. Aria wrote on Room 13: “This is hinted at in Room 35 with the turned-on lightbulb and the shadow of the Thing’s legs pointing to the right.”

    This room is now five out of five but take this with a grain of salt I’ll bet there is more here.

    Congratulations Aria!

    White Raven

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  5. We threw around a few ideas on the last Mazecast about ways in which 35 helps you get out of the loop. Here’s a summary, including a few gleaned from older comments and some new ones. I think there are a few good ones in here… for those, credit to Mazecast… for the crappy ones, blame me. :)

    In general, I think the pointing totem, plus the large stick leaning against the wall that looks like its missing arm, means: “go to 1” or “this way to 1.”

    Room 33
    In addition to all the three-y things here, there’s the stick hidden under the left hand side of the couch that looks a lot like a drumstick – the drumsticks in 33 point to door 3.

    Room 3
    I’m still pretty stuck on the idea that the pockets of the coat look like the 8 in 81/18 in 3. No other 8s look like that in the book. And the fact that there’s two of them like mirror images works for the door in 3, the mirror image room.

    There’s the obvious fact that the totem in 35 looks like a man made out of sticks, and he has a single bulb glowing behind him to his left. This matches the stick man and sun in 3 indicating door 81/18.

    Room 18
    In addition to the image of the bass clef in the couch arm, there’s also a very nice F in the near edge of the bench, defined by the leaning stick, and indicating the F (bass) clef, and also the Face and Fire. (This was pointed out by vewatkin way down in the comments. It’s worth noting that vewatkin also posited the idea that the purpose of 35 was to lead you out of the loop – and although he talked himself out of the idea, I think he still deserves some credit for it.)

    There are the matches and lots of flammable material in 35, which also makes you think of the fire, and 13 is the door closest to the fire.

    There are the two couch cushions remaining on the couch in 35, which are square like the shape of the chair seats here. The one on the left is closer to us than the one on the right, just like the chairs in 18.

    Something going on with the stick man in 35, who is hatless, the stick man in 3 who has a hat, and the ownerless hat here?

    Room 13
    Not much for this one. The lamp with lightbulb points the right way and matches the lightbulb in 35, maybe (also pointed out by vewatkin). Something with the sundial and the circle of light in 35? Don’t know.

    Room 25
    One idea is that “light and silence” in the text of 35, as well as the covered face of the totem and its position in a circle of light, could refer to room 25. The image of the face on the far left of this room has eyes closed and mouth closed – he is silent and blind – and is also well lit – while the face on the far right has eyes wide open, looks like he is screaming, and is very poorly lit. So take the door indicated by “light and silence.”

    Room 34
    Superimposed page idea already discussed below. Maybe the idea that you follow the man’s pointing hand rather than the direction he’s actually going in to match 35…

    Room 10
    Who knows. But another top hat guy with a stick is trustworthy here… his baton starts the trail of pointers to 41. Maybe that’s what the stick under the couch is?

    Room 41
    An actual totem beside door 1, with X marks the spot. Does that X match the X made by the two front legs of the room 35 totem?

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    • Aria and the Mazecast,

      Most productive Mazecast ever! Four potential solutions in one post!

      Also, I thought that this room probably only helped with the next three rooms but y’all’s idea about the bulb in Room 13 made me realize that this room is helps solve an as-of-yet-unsolved puzzle Room 13 as well.

      I am happy crediting “Mazecast,” let me know if you want personal credit instead.

      Nice sleuthing everyone! Great job!

      White Raven

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    • It’s just been pointed out to me that I mispronounced your name on the Mazecast again, 515! Sorry about that! (Five fifteen, five fifteen, five fifteen… OK got it.)

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    • If you all are knocking out rooms like that, you can pronounce it however the heck you’d like! :)

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  6. MAZECAST this Thursday evening to discuss Room 35 and various other things! We’d love to have you join us. 515? Kon-Tiki? MIT10? Shelley? Any of you Mazeheads out there. If you’re interested, contact us through the Mazecast site.

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  7. There was talk down below and in the Mazecast dealing with this room about what happens when you look at rooms 35 and 34 overlaid in front of a light source. (The reason to do this being sort of, somehow, kinda indicated by the hanging bulb. Also, maybe, the matchbook? MATCH pages of the BOOK?)

    This is a pretty weird thing to do because it breaks out of the conceit that Maze is a house, not a book. This isn’t something the visitors to the house could actually do. BUT we’ve been told by WR (somewhere) that 35 is a little different.

    Anyway, the original idea was that you would look through the white space in 35 to see what’s in 34. Put the two pages together and look at them with a bright light behind. (You have to actually look through the text from page 36 to do this if that makes sense. Or you can look from the 34 side and see what’s in the white page “frame”.) But that just gives you “YES.” Maybe a confirmation that you are doing the right thing?

    When you look at the two pages together like that, the idol is pointing directly at door 10 in 34, the correct door in that room.

    Interestingly, if you overlay 35 and 36 and look at them together in front of a light source, the idol is once again pointing at the correct door.

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    • Suit JACKET… crumpled up PAGES… a match BOOK… all things indicating we should be thinking about Maze as a book in this room?

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  8. Howdy all, did I miss anything? Haha, nice work on the guide path!

    This room still drives me nuts, but all this catching up reading about trefoils got me thinking. The totem has 3 legs (the 4th leg is against the wall). The couch seemingly has 3 legs now that it collapsed. And that side table, weirdly enough, seems to have only 3 legs – the back leg against the wall should be visible at this angle, but isn’t. There also appears to be something that looks exactly like the side table legs leaning in the doorway, just above the room number 35.

    So 3 objects with 3 legs. Which needlessly clues door 33. Except in Maze, even two 3-legged objects could clue 33. So maybe the extra one clues Door 3 in the next room.

    I also get a heavy hangman vibe in this room, following what Aria suggested. Some evidence (and maybe some crazy mixed in):
    - There’s a light hanging, and a suit hanging.
    - The totem resembles a gallows
    - There is a lot of what looks like crumpled up pieces of paper in the box in the corner… maybe that blank poster on the wall is one of those giant tear away paper sketch pads.
    - The ladder (weakly) suggests blank letter spaces you might find in hangman.
    - Random tennis wordplay. We have a point (the totem), a set (the suit) and a match (the, um, matches). All we’re missing is a game.

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    • Hi, 515!

      So many 3 things. Others have pointed this out too. Is it just unnecessary clueing of 33? Or is it meant to tell you to take door 3 in the next room? None of this has gotten a peep out of WR. Maybe it’s another hint to look for three-ish things to get to the Guide Path?

      In addition to the three-legged things you mentioned, there’s also the three-button jacket, the spring that looks like a three, the three hooks, and the three sofa cushions.

      Totally agree with you on the hangman vibe, just no idea what to do with it!

      I think that long post against the wall is probably the missing arm rather than a missing leg. It hadn’t occurred to me that the small post in the doorway is the missing leg of the bench but that works for sure.

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    • 515,

      Welcome back!

      You got it!

      The only other room like this, Room 6 has two purposes, the riddle of the guide and helping a visitor make the right choice… in the next room!

      This room is about the rooms coming up with riddles to help someone escape The Loop. These riddles offer subtle hints for (at least) rooms 33, 3 & 18.

      Nicely done 515! This room is out of the doghouse!

      White Raven

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    • Whoa, this is pretty cool! And some pretty big hints here from WR.

      For room 3, I can see two things that look like the 18/81 over the correct door:
      -the shape of the suit pocket, together perhaps with the line on the sleeve
      - the shape of the legs, crosspiece, and bench top on the near side of the bench, together with the missing leg leaning in the door

      For room 18, you have the bass clef shape in the couch arms and spring (found over the correct door in 18), combined with the blank poster, which you can juuuust see in the doorway to 13 in 18 (first pointed out by Dave G, I think).

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    • Also, regarding the suit and White Raven’s note about toggle buttons. I’m not sure I agree those are toggles — they just look like button holes to me, as if the suit is hanging unbuttoned. Regardless, it is the style of suit called a “three button suit” to distinguish it from a one, two, or four button suit.

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    • Aria,

      I looked REALLY closely at those toggles/button holes and you are right, it could be button holes. The toggles/holes are just a single line marquise-like shape in the drawing which is how you would draw either when you are not adding much detail, and so I removed “(it could be coincidence but the toggle buttons on the suit are typical of a mid 20th century “traveling suit”)” from the summary. Thanks for sharing your doubts!

      White Raven

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    • Aria,

      Yes! I used to think that the clues only helped with rooms 33 and 3 until recently when Dave pointed out the poster. Since then I have found stronger connection to room 18 but one I hadn’t noticed was the base-clef-like arms of the couch. Nice find!

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  9. Yeah, I should quit messing around and just think about this Guide puzzle…

    Anyway, I thought it was interesting enough to point out, though not apparently meaningful, that 35 and 6 are only functionally similar (in the sense of having only one exit) but have very similar surroundings. 6 exits to a room with three exits and an unmarked door; off of that room is a three-room closed loop. 35 exits to a room with three exits and an unmarked door; off of that room is a three-room closed loop. These are the only one-way rooms, and the only three-room closed loops, in the Maze. Well, the loops aren’t completely closed, you can head back to the room that leads to them. Maybe they’re better described as cul-de-sacs.

    The cul-de-sac of 38-22-43 is the furthest point from 24 in the Trap; the cul-de-sac of 7-16-36 is the furthest point from exits from the Loop. (That is, 1, 41, 14. There are also exits into the Trap in 19-21-31-44 section (we really need an agreed name for that place, by the way), and those are closer to the cul-de-sac, though they are inaccessible from the cul-de-sac without first returning to 1.)

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  10. Does anybody see any hidden, or not so apparent, objects in this room besides the Bass/F clef on the sofa? This room keeps blocking my trails.

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    • (“Go” is also in text: “… there is only one way to go,”…)

      Not that any of this does anything useful.

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  11. I thought I was onto something. Maybe it’s been mentioned…. We know that “felt” in the text signifies “left” as the correct door in all 3 instances it appears.

    Did we know that “left” in the text signifies “right” as the correct door 5 out of 6 instances? …the only outlier is this one, and technically, it IS the right-most door.

    The other rooms are 9, 16, 20, 32 and 44.

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    • People have talked about this for sure but I’m not sure where or what the conclusion was. This analysis is pretty good!

      Good point about the correct door in 35 being technically the “right” one since it’s the only one we can go through, even though there are other doors to its left. You could also think of all the couch stuff as cuing you to look at the room as if from that perspective. (This has been suggested once or twice as well, I think.)

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    • A cursory review suggests that where the word right appears, the correct door is on the left side of the room.

      (See 2, 4, 23, 36, 41.)

      The exceptions are the rooms in which both right and left are mentioned: 9, 35. And, actually, 35 isn’t an exception at all, I’m just putting it down here because it mentions both left and right.

      9′s an oddball, then, in this scheme, but that’s sort of a necessary consequence of using “right” and “left” in the text in a room with more than one door. But it at least seems a fair hypothesis that where the text simply contains a directional indicator of “right” or “left,” that indicator is meant to mislead us. I mean, we know it DOES mislead us, but with this many occurrences of the phenomenon, it seems fair to suggest it’s deliberate.

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  12. I am just noticing a bunch of stuff here, but I am not very perceptive as to hidden meanings so looking for help.
    1. Why is the suit new, clean and on hanger like it is brand new or recently cleaned when this room is so dilapidated and looks like no one has been in it for years? Also, no dust on anything, however dust would be hard for Manson to draw so that isn’t a huge deal.
    2. There is a sofa cushion in the 33 doorway.
    3. Why would anyone put a sofa in front of the entryway (assuming the visitors entered from the ladder)?
    4. There is a circle of light around the “thing”, and the Maze doctrine Light= ;) reinforces the idea that the “thing” is a clue, guide clue or room clue I don’t know.
    5. The most obvious: What in the name of sanity is the “thing”? (I understand it is up for interpretation, just rekindling that discussion)

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  13. Don’t know if this helps at all but…

    The couch (obviously) has been used many of times, since it collapses after a guest merely sits on it.

    The light bulb is right above (or fairly close, it’s hard to tell) the couch, so maybe it was worn down because someone was constantly standing on the couch to turn the light on and off. I think I might have an idea why.

    The box of papers have been crumpled and thrown in a heap, so the were “rejects” of something. When is two of the only times you hold paper up to light?

    A) When checking for forgery on a dollar bill. These papers are obviously not dollar bills, so we will ignore this fact, and

    B) When looking for secret messages. When you were a kid, you used lemon juice to write secret messages on paper to give to your sister or brother. And the light bulb kinda looks like a lemon…

    …or it just doesn’t mean anything and that’s just a light bulb. Did I just ramble?

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  14. The box of papers in the corner by the couch does look like a great kindling point-the matches could start the fire that would be an ARSON.

    As I have posted Cop-L-Hanger/Doppelganger/Doppler(sound).
    That would give us Arson that anagrams to Sonar(sound).

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  15. Vewatkin wrote (on a different page), “If 35 is only about the Guide, shouldn’t it get an automatic 5-star like Room 24 did?”

    Yes, the five star rating is for non-guide related solutions.

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    • So far we have only used two metrics, one for clues to the next room, the other clues to the Guide. I am forming this question to be answered yes or no so that WR doesn’t have to give anything up: since clues to 33 would be redundant, are the clues in this room pointing to a third metric (such as a clue meant to work for another room)?

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    • Hmm, maybe that doesn’t make sense. A clue meant to be used in a different room is still a room clue (first metric). I will assume it’s that.

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    • The way the question was phrased, it could just mean a room clue for down the road, general route guidance, “wrong way,” “start over,” etc.

      But 35′s a little different, hmm.

      Anyway, a good take away here is that the Guide Room (man, I love capitalizing phrases) at the end of the Guide Path will have some other kind of clue/s as well, unless it’s Room 24; though, since WR said “there is nothing really [in Room 24] to solve,” Room 24 doesn’t seem a likely candidate.

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  16. Perhaps the matches are meant to clue us into the fact that the top of the totem looks like a torch, and that the totem itself if a “torchbearer”, and that the torchbearer is leading the way by pointing to 33 (even though it’s obvious)

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  17. So the thing has a V. From the other side a lower case R. If we are bringing the wood over to make 3 legs as I think we are supposed to we could also use it to make an A or an N. 33 is backward E’s of course but there is also that ladder and in room 37 W R likes the idea that a ladder can be an E and maybe this is why.

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  18. I like the bass clef – dunno if it is a thing right now. I like the 3 stones – and think they are a thing. I have a pretty well developed theory of Maze time on my page – not years apart – but the rooms for which there is a specific time cover 1 24 hour day, and 3 cycles of the 8 letter maze clock in room 30. 33 is the earliest room , deep in the loop, then time moves forward one hour per room around the loop and then around the 16 step path. An exception is room 41 and 1 which they apparently move through quickly, and the text says so. Rooms 10 and 42 are 16 hours and 2 cycles apart – which seems to mean they take place at the same time in some sense.

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    • I’m thinking of missing body parts that you have to put together… the “trunk” in 10, extra legs on chairs and tables… you guys were talking about fingers earlier… feet… the stick man in 3 perhaps as a model… OK I need to think this through more.

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    • OK, no, it seems like a basement but isn’t actually a basement. But therefore the word in the text seems even more significant.

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    • The idol here, the big blank poster it overlaps, the ladder, the tilted stick — is there a way to see 6′s beam, warning notice, ladder, tilted stick, as a sort of reversed version of Room 35? It’s not a very precise matching between the rooms, but it strikes me that there are so many similarities, and the hanging paper in 35 and the hanging notice in 6 hadn’t been mentioned, to my recollection. The idol is a straight board with two offshooting boards, and the beam in 6 is similar to that, but upside-down.

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    • Hmmmm. That’s interesting… the three sofa cushions… the three stones on the floor that look just like the sofa cushions…

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    • The “40″ in 6 that looks like “4 of diamonds” — could that connect to “match suit?” (I am really hung up on the matches and the suit. So clearly a thing. But what????

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    • This leads me to another thought. Could there be some kind of serious time warping here? We already know time is funny in the House. The underground rooms are the same as above-ground rooms, but many many years later, after being buried like the buildings of ancient civilizations? This is probably pretty crazy but I’m going to take Maze to bed and think about it. :)

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    • Rope, strings, cords…not sure how you’d want to phrase it, but there is the power cord in 35, violin strings in 33, pull cord and power cord in 7, viol and guitar strings in 36…rope in 26…maybe something you could justify as a cord in 16…

      The eye sign in 6 is hung by strings as well…

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    • There are strings holding pictures in 41 and 10, a power cord and string in 14, ropes on the ship in 34, a power cord in 13…not seeing anything in 25…curtain is tied back in 18…nothing in 3. The holes in this pattern, and the fact that I have to conflate so many different kinds of things…nnnnnnn.

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    • Actually dreaming about Maze is one of the more productive ways to go about solving it sometimes – lol. I often find that if I am focused enough on it I wake up simply knowing something new about it.

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    • YES vewatkin, strings and cords — I am really with you on this one. I have been working on it too but have not come up with anything very illuminating. (This is partly why I was so excited about that thread that now appears to be a printing error according to WR’s investigations.) Note that the violin in 33 is missing a string.

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  19. Here is how the “claw”? Path looks like it could end. The three couch cushions and the leg on the thing get out together. The clue in 37 is relevant. Maybe matching terms is what we want. The couch cushions and the sign key three blanks. In the text we have blank blank blank right twice. The blanks over the doors also count three. Then we have the non matching threes. And maybe the cord. Eventually we make our way to 6 with that info and skip the first three words on the sign. The next words are “are visiting” and leaving of the g we have “it is I Raven”

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