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…a room with a special piece of furniture I thought might appeal to my guests.
“How can we trust that thing?” one remarked. “Who knows where it ends up…”
I knew, naturally, but that wasn’t the point. They were pretty sure of themselves, and went right on to…
- Images and text copyright 1985 by Christopher Manson
used with permission. [Purchase MAZE from Amazon]
Room Type: LOOP Doors: 1 10 35 38
Solution Summary: [COLLECTION CURATED BY WHITE Raven. SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTION PROPOSALS.]
● The picture of the frog and a fly is a sign that taking the slide is a trap, which it is. [Credit: R. Serena Wakefield]
● The checkered floor, ladders and the chute recalls the classic board game Chutes and Ladders. Winning Chutes and Ladders requires reaching the square marked 100. [Independent Credit: Kon-Tiki | White Raven] The doll in the picture on the wall is pointing to it’s wide open eyes which look like two zeros, combined with the “1″ of Door 1 this gives us 100 the winning space – indicating 1 as the correct door. [Credit: Kon-Tiki] The doll’s dress recalls the illustrations of girls in dresses in the version of the game in circulation in 1985. The bow on the doll’s head recalls the blue ribbon image on square 100. [Independent Credit: Marianne | White Raven]
The floor is a Masonic symbol of dualism. The black being death amoung other things. We have another death and rebirth symbol. The floor is also on a number of tarot card alchemical drawings. Kabbalah is mentioned in Google searches….etc
Some reiterations : idol looks like a one
It has ” one” eye and letter I looks like 1
VeWatkins says mushrooms points to toe number one (and there are 10 in box)
He also adds we do not know where ladder ends up or slide or ends of horns. so 1 is correct.
My odd thought: x o is for hugs and kisses since we are starting new trip.
Also squares on floor plus x plus o really does suggest tic tac toe. But…all I can figure is that it is a game so it can be “won”/”one”
There could be a very dark picture in door to 10
New round of 41 attempts. Ignoring slide/frog because we might have that covered.
The doll holds up 1 finger on each hand indicating door 1.
The “one” straight horn in near by and looks like a one.
Her sign hangs on “one” rack and the v might look like a door sign here.
The two nearest horns sort of point at 10 and make a backwards twisted 10. 0 1
The sarcophagus means “flesh eater” mushrooms and fungi also break down dead stuff and as a key point recycle it. The sarcophagus is associated with Egypt and cult of rebirth. Note that the sarcophagus has a navel. A symbol of birth. It is also across from death frog.
X and o for tic tac toe? Serious here. But how do we get 1?
Oh and in text. “One remarked” sort of like “1 rebooted”?
“Naturally.” Does not have to be in its sentence. Has a double “‘ll” we could take as one but impossible to know – so not intentional. But it could fit with recycling idea.
X marks the spot? On sarcophagus
Risers on slide could be ones. Ladder rungs if we are desperate too. one shroom by itself out of box says 1. One good horn out of many bent ones. Doll could be pointing to self. ie I = 1.
Fungus fungi sarcophagus sarcophagi = “us” and “I’ and maybe I is a one and “us” should go into 1.
She’s putting her fingers in her ears because those twisted horns would make a bad noise and that means we should not go that way.
Or up the ladder for that matter where the loop horn points.
Plus that long ladder with no support looks unsafe. I don’t think that way is a good idea.
“..but that wasn’t the point.”
Not that we needed the encouragement, but this seems to put additional focus on the pointing going on in the room.
Interesting, 35 is clearly marked by a pointing arrow; 10 is sort of badly indicated by a mess of warped horns; 38 is sort of indicated by the unnecessarily long upright poles on the slide. The idol by 1 seems to be doing its best not to point at anything, though the mushrooms below sort of point all over (except at 1). Well, unless the cap is the tip of the arrow…
Or is it just about the pointing doll?
Aw, nuts.
Anyway, those unreasonably long uprights on the slide definitely seem to be related to what’s also going on with those goofy horns, and that begs to bring the mushrooms into..is there a solid distinction here between what’s going on with 1 and what’s going on with the other rooms based on this pointing objects beneath them?
The “V” I picked up in the one sign has a point.
The doll points both to ears and to eyes and we are supposed to use both.
Goat horns have points.
That’s my take. But none up that is new.
Good pick-up though.
Now – the extra tall bits of the slide…hmmm
They almost look like feet themselves. Should we turn it upside down or something? Hmm.
Like the frog observation. Adding a note or two more on theory to my page relating to this room. Here is sample:
Conceptually combine goat and hear, and get heard. Goats travel in a heard, and heard is past tense of hear. Hear => heard => goat. Here again we could say “heard” is the intersection of two sets. “Words related to goats” and “tenses of “hear””. And again we choose these two sets from among other potential sets we could use, because of the narrowness to their intersection. In term of philosophy of science we note that narrower predictions = better theories. A poorer alternative would be to say goats and animals, and look at the result set of “animals with ears”, but that is a much wider result set than “heard”.
The fly is not part of the frog picture. Its wing extends beyond the frame border, indicating the fly is real. The eyes of the (somewhat sinister-looking) frog are not in fact directed at the fly that has landed on the picture, but at 38 above the door. This is a warning against taking the slide into [[Room 38]] as an act metaphorically akin to being swallowed (and trapped) by the frog.
I mentioned it elsewhere, but it belongs here:
David Gentile saw the pattern on the armchair in 20 as a suggestion of a checkered flag, as in the finish line of a race. I found that implausible as briefly discussed in the comments for Room 20.
However, Room 41 has an actual checkered floor, and is the other Room from which you could conceivably reach Room 1 on a return trip from 45. (You needn’t think of this as a checkered “flag,” per se; start/finish lines themselves are often checkered patterns drawn on the ground.)
Beyond the obvious applicability of this reading, there’s another nice tie in with The Tortoise and the Hare in terms of viewing the trip as a race. Moreover, as a specific reference to car racing, it’s interesting that 41 is your route back to 1 if you took the wrong/longer/slower route, further cementing that idea that it’s slow and steady that wins the race. (That is, the tortoise route wins, no the race car route.) (What, no good? What if I told you that everyone pictured in Room 7 is a famous race car driver? Don’t you see Dale Earnhardt in there? And Mario Andretti? And, well, that pretty much exhausts my knowledge of Nascar drivers. But I’m sure those two were big in the early 80s, right?)
(I ended up facetious there, but I’m serious about the checkered floor being a finishline. Credit to Gentile, whether he likes it in this room or not.)
ORRRRRRRRRR
Hey, maybe it’s just a reference, or also a reference, to a circular race track, which is sort of what the Loop is like, if you ignore all those offshoots of the main drag. (I.e. half the rooms.)
I think it is a Tile floor, emphasis on “I”. It could always be more than one thing, but not seeing it as that yet.
With no scorn intended, I hope you can appreciate how funny it is that you find the checkered finish line interpretation implausible for a checkered floor in the last room before the end of the trip; but what you do find plausible is that Manson used the checkered tiles in order to clue the sound “I.”
Meanwhile, an armchair with rectangles on it is a clue for a checkered flag.
Well, one problem in 41 is that it is not the end of the trip. It is the middle of the trip at best. If you got dumped back in room 33 or there about you’ve finally recovered from your mistake when you get here. You’ve moved from Time EA back to FA by here, one of 3 cycles of the Maze clock. You still need to get all the way to the center and back out.
On the other hand is 20 you ARE done, you’ve solved it (in theory). You have Omegas there, you have the Tortoise. You might have little “end of road” things inside the Omegas. The checkered flag puzzle there this is a cute reinforcement of the whole “end of race” thing.
And, although things can be more that one thing. In 41 it is “Tile” for the words with “I” sound theme.
Plus simple pictures rarely give any king of true meaning by themselves, you have to use them in a puzzle in some way to figure out what they mean for the most part. It goes with the whole Maze principle that easy clues are the red herrings.
Perhaps if I just omitted the word “check” to describe the chair an tower in would be clearer. Not everyone uses language in precisely the same way.
The chair and the tower together give us “pattern”. “Right angle pattern” more specifically. The rest of the room gives “cloth”. Together they are a “patterned cloth” then, or a “right angled patterned cloth”. A “patterned cloth” then is a general case, of which a “checkered flag” is a specific example. A specific example confirmed by appropriateness for the situation. Or think of it this way – the rest of the puzzles are giving us end of the road/race results. Now do a Venn diagram. What is the set of things that are both “patterned cloth” and represent “end of race”. The overlap of those two sets is the checkered flag.
Hmm, actually, I think you’re right about 41 not being the end of anything, because the instructions don’t say that your goal is to get to the center and then out–they say that your goal is to get to the center and out in 16 steps, which means that getting back to 1 through the Loop isn’t a sort of minor victory. It’s nothing.
The checkered floor could still be a STARTING line, which is the same line as the finish line, but that’s just sounding like a dumb thing to use to try and salvage my bad idea. It’s still plausible as the start/stop point in the Loop loop, but since it has no clue value, it’s not too important whether it’s that or not.
OH unless you want to use it as an indication that you’re just going in circles, but that seems lousy too, because the Loop isn’t JUST a big circle, and you can exit it to the Trap.
Back to the starting line, works much better, it is appropriate to the situation anyway (and fits with my flag in 20). And then it is part of a larger puzzle so that it only becomes clear in context.
Another thing that works about it being a starting line – The time here and in room 1 are both FA.
The doll can be indicating her ears as well as her eyes, but also her twisty braids. Then the twisted hall and the twisty horns match, as well as the doll’s twisty braids. You will get “twisted around” if you go forward, because you will be going backwards through the loop.
I kind of like that fungus/fungi and sarcophagus/sarcophagi indicate “1 of many” doors.
How about: the twisty horns match with the twisky passage. The one by the ladder to 45 is twisted in a loop so it indicated the start of the loop rooms. The one for 10 is just twisted, and with “hear” you get “twisted around here” – i.e. you will be going backwards through the loop.
I’d be hesitant to apply terminology like “loop” to solutions, because that was coined by White Raven. It’s readily described as a loop when you map it, of course, but so is the Path.
It is visible as a loop. Yes.
The poem follows the loop. (Yes, I know…)
The time moves forward around that loop.
The time goes from EA to EG. A through G is the musical scale and there are notes on one wall of the loop. I think it is reasonable to think he called it a loop or thought of it as a loop. Besides This is something WR and I agree on probably independetly. I have that as “loop” on my map since 2012.
Oh also the thoughtful one tells us we need to go around to prove something and in 9 we are clued to “going around in circles” as something we are supposed to do by the thoughtful one.
Random ideas. The fungi are one of many so we should choose 1! OF the many doors.
The doll with the hearing aid means “here” and hear so we should listen and stay here.
Raven,
Maybe I could get this bit of information. How many puzzles do you have in this room?
“Method” has come up a lot in recent discussions. Maze is somewhat unique in that you are not told what rules you can use. How then can we proceed? We have to INFER the rules. We then learn that all the puzzles involve various forms of association – that it – they involve inference too. These are not deductive problems, like arithmetic. We need to use induction. That will lead to error of course because any inductive rule is correct, at best, most of the time. Also because we don’t even know the rules, and need to infer them, we will have to engage in a somewhat circular process. Try a rule, then try some puzzles with it, then try a different rule and see what happens, etc… A good rule should be loose enough to allow us to find meanings for all the things the MAZE is stocked with, but tight enough that we are led to one meaning in the end. My “Christopher” phase was a period of too loose of rules clearly, but I believe others here are trying to abide by too tight a rule set.
In the absence of any rule book how might we sway each other about what rules are good? I can think of no other method than continually working through examples carefully until the examples have at least nudged us in the direction of consensus. I’d like to give a carfule walk through a try in room 41, explaining what rule I am using each time. I can’t, however offer proof that the rules are good, other than using them over many cases and showing good and unique results.
Level 0 – name the components – let’s assign everything names, with the foreknowledge of how we will use them. Before we know this we have to try many names of course. Also at each level other answers are possible, but we choose the ones that will carry us forward the best.
“Furniture” is a rather specific word – it should draw our notice – but all it does is generically identify both chute and ladder to hide the ladder in plain sight as a component. Our useful (at this point) inventory is:
Slide, Ladders, Fly, Frog picture, sarcophagus, bulls-eye, fungus, fungi, twisted horns, horn, ears. Also while we don’t know we need it yet there is a #1 sign will a v-shaped bottom.
Level 1
Combine ladder and twisted horns to get goat. We are finding a word that diminishes the conceptual distance, that relates closely to both terms. Goats have twisty horns. You climb a ladder and goats climb. Ladder => climb => goat => twisty horns is the conceptual chain.
Ear together with a horn that maybe a hearing aid gives us “hear” – they are both things we hear with. In reality we choose “hearing aid” to fit, so the conceptual chain is: horn => hearing aid => hear => ear
The slide and the frog can both be traps, I’m finding a common function here. The conceptual chain is slide => trap => frog (eyeing fly)
Add the fly and get “Fly trap” just by joining the words.
Combine the words sarcophagus and bull’s-eyes by using parts of both and get sarcophagi.
Final inventory going forward: goat, hear, fly trap, sarcophagus, sarcophagi, fungus, fungi, #1 sign.
Level 2
Conceptually combine goat and hear, and get heard. Goats travel in a heard, and heard is past tense of hear. Hear => heard => goat
Combine sarcophagus, sarcophagi, fungus, and fungi. Take the common parts. We get “us”, “us”, “I”, I”.
Sarcophagus => us => fungus, also sarcophagi => I => fungi. See that in all examples I’m taking a middle term between the things combined.
We now have “us”,”us”,”I”,”I”,”flytrap”,”heard”, #1 sign.
Leve1 3
Take that Vee from the #1 sign, and combine it with “us” and “flytrap” just by stringing them together. We get “Vee…us flytrap”. We are missing an “n”.
We still have “us”, “I”,”I”,”heard, #1.
Level 4
Use the “donut hole” rule from 45 and take just what is not there in “Vee…us flytrap” we get “n”
Level 5
Now we are ready to string together our pieces:
I + heard + us + I +n + #1 = “I heard us in #1”.
Is this a good result? Yes! It is a good result. In indicates the correct door and fits in exactly with what we previously knew about time in Maze. And in the process we used 100% of our inventory. (The horns leading forward we explain as a false lead).
On the “Maze clock” in room 30 the time here is “FA”, and it is also “FA” in the entrance room #1. Thus we have a situation like in rooms 37 and 10, where the guests can hear themselves. The text says that “they were pretty sure of themselves and went right on to…”, and this is a clue that the Maze clock does not click once between these two rooms.
A rule I neglected to mention is that in general on first pass, the objects you need to combine are visually grouped.
Ah “one” tiny step more. We grabbed the “V” from the 1 sign. We can grab the 1 right along with it. The final result then is “I heard us in 1″
So Raven, let me guess – we have differing answers for the math problem AGAIN!
There are lots of “I”s in this room. The doll is pointing at two of them. I-doll = idol? We have the frog which seems to have “spied” a “fly”. Then we have a “tile” floor, a “bull’s-eye”, a “slide”, and some “fungi”. They are fungi both because they are mushrooms, and because they are on toes, where one might find foot fungus. The text also gives us the word “I”, twice, and repeated words tend to be important..
Why all the “I”’s? Well, the correct exit here is to room number 1, and a 1 does look a lot like an “I”.
We have a small trio of false leads as well here I think. A slide, a ladder, and some interesting horns.
“Furniture” is an odd word choice. We of course think of the slide, but we should think, of the ladder. There are two in the room really, for reinforcement. Something you do with a ladder = climb. Next to the ladder we have twisted horn(s). “Twisted horns” plus “climb” = “goat” (or mountain goat, ram, etc.., but “goat” will do).
Next look at the doll, does she point at her eyes? Yes. But also looks like she has her fingers in her “ears”. That horn next to her could be a hearing aid. Together we have some form of ear/hear/hearing, etc.
Let’s go grab that goat (Baaahhh!). Goat + form of hear = “heard” as in a “heard of goats” and/or you heard something.
It has been noted that the fly sits on top of the picture of the frog. It is next to a slide to a Trap room and since you can’t get back up it is clearly a “trap“. Put them together and we have “Fly Trap”.
There is a “sarcophagus”. With a bull’s-eye it becomes “sarcophagi”. The mushrooms on the toes where they could be athlete’s foot are “fungi”. The lone one is a “fungus”. What do we have in common between these words? “I” and “us”. In fact there are 2 “I”s and 2 “us”s here.
That sign for exit 1? It is shaped even more like a “V” than the others. Let’s grab that, the fly trap, and an “us”. We have “Vee…us Fly- trap”. What is missing that fits like the hole in a donut? “N”. Grab one of those “I”s now and I+N = IN.
Put it all together now = “I hear us in…” and the completion to that sentence is of course room one.
On the “Maze clock” in room 30 the time here is “FA”, and it is also “FA” in the entrance room #1. Thus we have a situation like in rooms 37 and 10, where the guests can hear themselves. The text says that “they were pretty sure of themselves and went right on to…”, and this is a clue that the Maze clock does not click once between these two rooms.
Unlikely but possible stray things could include the bow on the doll and the extra 2 horns on the path to 10, maybe a weak connection between hearing themselves there and here.
Personal Room satisfaction rating = 99%,
Another gimme is 1 is the only door without leading stuff.
There is a fungus on the foot of the statue. That suggests Athlete’s Foot.
Welcome to The Abyss, Anchorperson Smith!
An interesting suggestion. It totally makes sense and yet means nothing. Exactly like most all the other good ideas on this site. You are clearly in the right place.
I don’t write much cuz I don’t know squat but its a hell of a lot of fun to read. As you will experience everyone in the group here is an slightly cracked mensa candidate. Sounds like you’ll fit right in with the rest of us trapped here in the dark.
They are fungi plural. :)
There is only one fungus literally on the toe, though.
Ok. That may be meaningful. At this point all I have is that it is one of many “I” words in the room.
idol / “I, doll” – not sure what the significance is but might reference room 1.
I long ago took this to mean “idle”, in reference to room 41 in general. (The BEST you can do from 41 is go back to 1. It’s the gateway to much idle exploration.)
But I would lay a lot of money that’s wrong. For one thing, it’s not positioned in a way to make you think it applies to the whole room. For two–wait, why am I describing a bad solution?
LOL!
An awful lot of words there have the “I” sound. An I and a 1 look the same. I’m sure there is more. But that’s a simple one.
On the right of this room is a picture of a frog and a fly. This is a sign that taking the slide is a trap, which it is.
Notice that the fly isn’t actually part of the picture. It’s a real fly, as shown by its wing being over the frame.
Janice collected this correct solution from the now defunct John Bailey site (solution posted by R. Serena Wakefield).