This has all been said before, but IMO forthright means take the doors on the right, and the center tree divides Room 5 into left and right doors. The guide is being flippant saying, “the trees are as real as anything else…”, diverting attention away from the significance of the center tree. Saying, “I encouraged them to take their time” could the devious guide be suggesting they go to Room 30 and take one of the doors indicated by the clock hands, either the door to Room 34 or the door to Room 15, both wrong?

IMO, forthward clueing fourth word, and logically that fourth would be forth”coming” or forth”going”, is most significant. If you’re “coming” into (toward) the center (Room 45) then take the door to Room 30; if you’re “going” outward from the center (toward Room 1) then take the door to Room 20. Is it serendipitous that in this room Manson uses the word forth four times, and it’s a path room that has 2 path doors? Could it be a clue that Room 4 also has 2 doors, coming and going?

- forthwith = immediately
- forthright = direct, honest, outspoken
- forthward = an archaic mode to write “forward”
- forth_ = this adverb alone means “forward”

Without the “forth”, the words we have are: “with right ward”, meaning the right part of the room.

So, immediately and honest/direct, we can move forth with the right part of the picture (Right obviously means correct too).

The tree in the foreground separates the room in two “wards”, left and right, so we can assume the right one is correct.

Two doors are correct, as the Guide told us; we can enter in this room only from room 20 or 30, so we always know what’s inside one of these doors, based from where we came from, so the other one is still correct. We are encouraged to choose a different door from the text saying there are two chances, and from the fact the word “forth”, and not “back”, just in case someone thinks to come back from where they come thinking all the other three are all traps.

A lot of steganography references and null ciphers in MAZE

White rose has strong symbolic link with House of York and the War of the Roses.
Shakespeare popularised the “War of the Roses” in Henry VI part 1 – which is play 20 in First Folio. The war lasted ~30 years. The doors left and right of the rose are 30 and 20.

The War resulted in creation of the House of Tudor and the “Tudor Rose” (pronounced “Two Door Rose”… Our rose is between 2 doors).

In the famous Act 2 scene 4 of this play we see Plantagenet say “From off this brier pluck a white rose with me”. (you can get “brier rose” this way for the sleeping beauty answer).
The scene continues with Vernon saying “The fewest roses are cropp’d from the tree,
Shall yield the other in the right opinion.”.
The scene then has people pick between either white rose or red rose.
4 pick white rose and 3 pick red rose.
Therefore the side with the white rose is the right opinion.
This MAZE room is full of cropped trees.
The room is split in half, symbolising the white/red split.
The correct doors are both on the right side of the room and cropped tree; the side with the white rose.

(Trivia: in Blue Prince there’s endgame puzzles around “rosewary”, which may partially mean rose-war-y)

The 4 words after “forth” make: “with rightward ink”. The sign for “20″ is about 10% more italic than the other number signs. Compare the 0s especially. “With rightward ink” may mean pick the sign with italic ink, which again is door 20.

The easel has three dots on each leg. Like ellipsis. So in the text (you need to use scan of real MAZE book) see there are 5 sets of “…” and two are directly on top of each other. Take the 2 words above and 2 words below these “…”. 2 of the 4 words are “for” and “think” (the other two words are “make” “doors”). The text says “two in four perhaps, if I was generous about it”.

The following holds only for the two right side doors of this room. The door number appears to indicate the distance of the room from the start. Room 30 is three steps from the gate (3 from 0). Room 20 is two steps from the gate (2 from 0). The door count starting at the left with 1, seams to indicate the room count starting from room 4. Door 30 is the 3rd door from the left and room 4=1st, 42=2nd, 30=3rd. Door 2 is the 4th door from the left and room 4=1st, 15=2nd, 37=3rd, 20=4th. Using room 4 as a reference point and looking at the door count appears to be signaled by the sign pointing at the 1st door and by having 4 lines of “forth…” Room 4 = forth. The 3rd line “forthward” gives us a direction for the 3rd door: room 30 to room 4. The 4th line would then be “forthcoming” to give us the correct direction for the 4th door: from room 4 to room 20. Reading the sign from top to bottom without the “forth” gives “with right ward” which can be read to mean “with correct direction”. Putting it all together we get the full circle from the gate to room 30 to room 4 to room 20 and back to the gate for a total of 7 rooms plus room 1.

Looking closely at that flower I think I see 7 leaves for the seven rooms, a stem for the starting point at the gate and room 1, and maybe room 5 is the center like White Raven has it mapped out. So the flower is the right way to think about the room connectivity in this part of the maze. This circular counting is also like the clock in room 30 and it’s 8 hours. Thinking of the graph-like structure of the maze, the number of branching possibilities as we get deeper into the maze isn’t as intimidating as these trees make it seem — there is more structure to exploit. The guide wants us to feel overwhelmed and to resort to random guessing since that will ultimately land us in the trap. But someone has been helpfully pruning branches so this room isn’t a complete tangle, and perhaps they’ve left a little flower as a hint.

As for the left side of the room, Room 43 (the 1st door) is 1 step from room 4. Room 22 (the 2nd door) is 2 steps from room 4. Heading toward these rooms is more like following an arrow, which is appropriate given the arrow-like indicators spread throughout the maze that do not lead us along the path. This room seams designed to teach us that lesson early on in our explorations.