Room 38

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…a narrow space where one wall boasted half-finished carvings and another some sort of carnival poster. There was a little confusion as we made our entrance but we soon sorted ourselves out.

It was impossible to climb up the slippery slide and another door wouldn’t open for us, so after emptying the pebbles from our shoes, we marched on to…

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

 

Room Type: TRAP   Doors:  22  26  40  41  43

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

● The carnival poster is a pictorial anagram for “no escape.” NOSE+APE+C (“See” = C) rearranged spells NO ESCAPE. [Independent Credit: David G | Beelzebibble | White Raven]

● The single boot is lost suggesting the group is lost as well. Its partner may be the boot from Room 42. [Credit: a collective assumption]

● The comment in the text, ““It was impossible to climb up the slippery slide and another door wouldn’t open for us…” is a subtle hint that this is a trap room. [Independent Credit: Hello Gregor | White Raven]

● The rooms of The Trap can be laid out like a two-prong key. The broken key is a map of The Trap. The break is telling us to stay on the handle side away from Room 24 (The Abyss). [Independent Credit: vewatkins | White Raven] The unfinished (broken looking) doorway leads to the bad prong end of the key. [Credit: vewatkins]

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78 thoughts on “Room 38

  1. “The rooms of The Trap can be laid out like a two prong key. The broken key is a map of The Trap. The break is telling us to stay on the handle side away from Room 24 (The Abyss). [Independent Credit: vewatkins | White Raven] The unfinished (broken looking) doorway leads to the bad prong end of the key. [Credit: vewatkins]”

    I’d like to argue that there is a bit more to this that further signals us to avoid Door 40 and go back to either 22 or 43 (either one being just as well). First, the key and the No Escape sign are both on the left side of the wall. As is the foreboding boot, on the floor. The carvings are less developed on the left side. As you go left, it seems to go sort-of-human to barely-human to ape. The text calls attention to basically everything on the left side of the room. I think all this stuff is saying “go thru the doors on the right.”

    Maybe this is just splitting hairs, or spelling out the obvious.

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  2. In two other trap rooms people noticed that the typeface is different, here the typeface is different for 43 and it looks like the other two.

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  3. In the broken key doorway is a silver slide like in room…uh…can’t remember…another trap room I think. Narrative said “it was impossible to climb up the slippery slide” (or something to that effect) and that looks to me like the other end of that slide. Doesn’t make sense that the thing would have slides coming off both ends, but, hey, this room also has a picture of an ape with an arrow pointing to its nose. Sometimes Maze doesn’t make sense.

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    • A.S.P. Welcome to our little group. The solution for this room explains the ape nose and arrow. I think you would be benefited by reading the solutions and the comments before posting. Nothing says you have to be well informed before posting but you may find it more rewarding to do so. Peace.

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    • It would be cool if we could figure out where that slide comes from, though.

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    • I actually did read the explanation for the ape before posting, I was just joking about how it looks a bit insane before you actually figure out the message it is saying. Just saying, I do make sure I am informed on solutions and stuff before posting, however I refuse to read 100 comments for each room so I read the more recent ones.

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    • Would the “Slippery Slide” that you’re referring to have some type of corresponding affiliation with the “Slippery Slope” fallacy?

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  4. The lost boot indicates that someone is walking around bootless, and “bootless” means “ineffectual” or “useless.” Another indication that we are now in a place of no escape.

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    • The boot always intrigued me. Was the boot thrown down the chute? While someone played the flute? Or is that moot?

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  5. OK so WR has no exit indicators for this room. My old one is the excess of double letters here points to 22. I actually did the calculations on that one and there are a significant number here. Here is a proposal for a 43 indicator that I’m not going to check (not that interested at this exact moment). 3 and 4 letter words. The pictured things all fit, I think. key, ape, see, (fare?), boot, shoe. (OK not slide) rock, door, face, nose. In the text there are a few times they happen together (but then I’d expect a few too). “one wall”, “made our”, “open for”. My intuitive feel is slightly more than average but not significantly more than average in the text. The picture – maybe a bit more significant. But if one were trying to put 3/4 combos in text I think one could probably do better than that.

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  6. The boot is not the partner of the one in room 42. The boot in room 42 has no tongue, while the one lying in the floor in room 38 has a tongue.

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  7. Does “SEE!” on the wall relate to the Medieval tradition of “seeing” = direct experience and “hearing” = faith. Perhaps. We can see this is an unpleasant place, and if we came from 41 then “seeing” was what we should have followed and gone to room 1. The sign does seem to say “See the nose in front of your face you dumb ape!” lol, among other things.

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  8. Oh, man, maybe this was obvious to everyone else but just left unspoken, but it just occurred to me–

    The break in the key IS this room. I suggested that before, based solely on its location in the trap, but then said that maybe this room is on the handle side of the key–but the break occurs IN this room. That’s why there’s the architectural change right at the door to 40, and all that rubble on the ground by it.

    I don’t know whether that’s really an admonition against crossing the break, but it’s a much clearer, physically realized manifestation of the break in the key than I had considered.

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  9. It thought that was exactly what would count as part 5 or the room points based on past comments and that room points have nothing to do with the guide. Additional note – the broken trap suggests escape is possible. At the first level of inspection it means trap. At a deeper level in signals escape. It 40 “trap” on the wall is easier than the arrow by 6. I was not even thinking arrow was real until for-tee appeared in room 11. The trap signals are very very subtle. And though not on Ravens list here the double letters provide the subtle nunge to 22. And 43 signals 22 as well. But 22 only has a dual directional indicator. So you should sit and rest in 22 until you figure a way out. And it does not involve king herod. :)

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  10. vewatkins,

    Regarding your comment,

    “Boy, that key mapping makes me want to find a shape for the loop, but once you start twisting that thing around, I don’t know, you could make a lot of stuff. It can be elegantly rendered (I drew it as three concentric circles and it worked surprisingly well), but it seems most immediately visually useful when it’s done a bit more ugly, as a circle with some inelegant branches.”

    After I found The Path figure 8/infinity symbol and then The Trap key I was determined to find a shape to The Loop. Maybe there is a shape but it can be rearranged so many different ways I wound up doing something similar to what is sounds you did, circles and branches. Mine looks a little like one of the aliens from Toy Story. If you ever find a symbolic shape I would love to see it, I spent hours rearranging that thing.

    White Raven

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    • I would draw the following as a circle. 33. 3. 9. 18. 13. 25. 35. Just like the musical notes A-G found in their time zones they circle around. 19 – 44 go next to the figure 8 “upstairs” the other loop connections just fit in as needed it seems, however.

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  11. Don’t want to steal thunder on that “Key” find, so I’ll keep thought to self there. But on my own line of thought. I prevously observed that the text contains an excess of double letter words. Two per sentence or clause roughly. 8 total which could be four signals to door 22. There is another set of repeated letters, however. BOOT and SEE. With the key explanition in place, the room seems used up indeed.

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    • David Gentile,

      Thank you for the suggestion – great idea!

      Thumbs up!

      White Raven

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  12. The broken key has been noted but not its (potentially obvious) significance. To me, it’s a sufficiently direct indication of inescapable entrapment, but your mileage may vary on that. We have a torn boot to account for as well, and some unfinished sculpting, but only one PUZZLE POINT here left to uncover; I’m not sure how many things are going to fit into this remaining riddle.

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    • Buttressing the broken key (kinda saying the same thing), the text says, “It was impossible to climb up the slippery slide and another door wouldn’t open for us…”

      Further evidence that you’re in the trap from the text is, “There was some confusion as we made our entrance…”
      This could refer to the slide, but it also could refer to the initial choice to go into this room in the first place. Being confused, we made the wrong choice in coming here. Subsequently, we “sorted ourselves out” by solving this room and realizing we had to start over.

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    • Yeah too me the key says “You can’t get back out up this slide”, and the boot says “lost soul”. I suspect there is more here. The key probably IS that, but not JUST that. Just a guess.

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    • vewatkin and Hello Gregor,

      You are correct about the hints in the text, and, even though it hasn’t been stated plainly, the damaged single (obviously lost) boot.

      The remaining point is for the key which is a puzzle in and of itself which is massively difficult. That is unless you decide to read my guide, at which point it becomes rather easy. In the guide I try to make things a bit easier but in this case there was no way around handing it over on a silver platter.

      White Raven

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    • Hmm, you know, the Trap itself could be rendered as a key, now that I think of it. Not that helps here…

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    • vewatkin,

      YES! That right there is the massively difficult part! The key is a map of The Trap. You can see how the guidebook gives this one away, see the attached image above.

      Now on to the easy part…

      White Raven

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    • Well, I don’t have my book offhand, so stand ready to correct me, Dave, but I believe the break in the key corresponds to Room 38′s position in the Trap.

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    • It could be an admonition not to cross that break, of course…like all warnings in the Trap, it’s ultimately useless, when there’s nowhere to go but down. But, like 22 says, you could spend quite some time there–better than eternity in 24, I guess.

      Boy, that key mapping makes me want to find a shape for the loop, but once you start twisting that thing around, I don’t know, you could make a lot of stuff. It can be elegantly rendered (I drew it as three concentric circles and it worked surprisingly well), but it seems most immediately visually useful when it’s done a bit more ugly, as a circle with some inelegant branches.

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    • vewatkin,

      You got it! Bumping it up to 5! The room we are in is on the handle side, we are being told not to cross to the prong side. This conclusion is reinforced by the directional clues in the rooms on the prong side which point us to the handle side away from Room 24.

      White Raven

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  13. There is a week door exit indicator too. It seems we DO have door indicators in the Trap. AWAY from 24. Here we have an excess of words with repeated letters in the text. Narrow. Wall. Little. Soon. Impossible. Slippery. Door. Pebbles. That could be a clue for 22 given 4 times. So 22 is where you are guided to.

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    • 2 “r”‘s + 2 “l”‘s = 22. Once would be an accident. But he gives it to us 4 times in short space. This accounts for nearly the whole text and a lot of the picture in the process. The carving th key and maybe the boot need better explanation than mine however.

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  14. Just to complete this corner of hte Maze: I’m happy with my 2012 analysis here:

    The sign on the wall has a “see” which we should read as “c” and a “nose” and an “ape”. These are an anagram for “no escape”. And this is indeed a trap room.
    We also have a broken key above one door. There are broken rocks in the picture and the pebbles in the text are also broken rocks. We also have shoes in the text and a broken shoe in the picture. Specifically we have a “broken sole/soul”. The room says in total – “No escape, broken soul”, and I think that gate, which moves us closer to room 24, even if it does not say it, bares the message, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here”.

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    • But the sole of the boot isn’t broken, it’s just peeled off a bit. If Manson meant “broken soul” the sole would be in two pieces or unnaturally shattered and there would be another reinforcing riddle to back up the phrase.

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    • Fair enough. But some other things are clearly broken. How about “lost soul” Or at least “nearly lost soul”, for whom there is no escape. But then there is probably something else here having to do with the broken key and so forth.

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    • Hi, um, doppelganger! I don’t really know what your message means.

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    • Curious…the “beelzebibble” two comments above is not the Beelzebibble (see comment directly above) that we know and love. The comment is not spam, the email looks human made, and there is no attached link. I considered deleting the comment but it is so…random, and we all love a mystery.

      None the less, if the real Beelzebibble says the word, it is gone.

      White Raven

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    • I get it! The doppelganger is referring to the poster…
      SEE = “she”
      nose = “knows”

      This is incorrect, the correct answer is the first comment below.

      Mr. Doppelganger, pick another name please, Beelzebibble is taken.

      White Raven

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    • I guess the person wrote “beelzebibble…” in the name field as the title of the comment. So they were directing it at me. Probably. OR they’re my evil but confused clone.

      I find this all really funny but if you consider it a useless diversion then no hard feelings if you want to delete this stuff.

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    • She knows! She KNOWS! Oh God, SHE KNOWS! Maybe, just maybe, I actually don’t…

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  15. Super obvious but it hasn’t been mentioned yet, so if any reader didn’t know this: the “sort of carnival poster” functions as a pictorial anagram. Take the NOSE of the APE, combine it with C (“SEE!”), unscramble, and you get NO ESCAPE.

    Considering which entry point is the most attractive-looking on the other side, I like to think that “There was a little confusion as we made our entrance but we soon sorted ourselves out” is a polite way of saying “all the visitors were dumped off the slide and landed on the floor in a tangle of elbows and knees, and I scolded them.”

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    • Beelzebibble,

      I bumped up the solve meter long ago but failed to acknowledge your correct solution. My apologies and congratulations!

      White Raven

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