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…an entirely different kind of place.
The group complained of feeling “all turned around,” as well they might.
Because no one wanted to stay here very long they missed the real sign while looking through the obvious. People in their situation, confronted with a challenge, tend to accept the terms of the challenge as a given, without examining it from all sides. How many sides does that problem have? They don’t know.
We passed down a long flight of stairs, through some sort of pantry, and on into…
- Images and text copyright 1985 by Christopher Manson
used with permission. [Purchase MAZE from Amazon]
Room Type: LOOP Doors: 9 15 18 33
Solution Summary: [COLLECTION CURATED BY WHITE Raven. SEE COMMENTS FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTION PROPOSALS.]
● The “obvious sign” in the text refers to the “THIS WAY” sign which points to door 18 no matter how you invert the image. [Independent Credit: Hello Gregor | White Raven]
● Two question and answer pairs indicate the correct door. The riddle of the sphinx emphasized by a question mark (next to the wrong door) points to the answer “man” next to door 18. [Independent Credit: Hello Gregor | vewatkin | White Raven]["Man" is understood in the context of the Riddle of the Sphinx as not to be "male" but "humankind."] The question, “What is your sign?” points to the answer “man” next to door 18. [Independent Credit: David G | White Raven] [This is emphasized by both the question mark in the sphinx picture and the "What is your sign?" banner having the same orientation.]
● The well known modern version of the riddle of sphinx is, “What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs during the day, and four legs in the evening?” In this version a day is equated to a life and thus the night which follows evening is death. The sun and moon symbol then symbolize life and death, reinforcing 18 as the correct choice. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven][There are several versions of the riddle in antiquity all which emphasize the sequence four, two, three and make no mention of morning, day and evening. Though the version by Athenaeus includes a second riddle, "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first." The answer is day and night. It is possible that these two riddles were combined to create the modern version.]
● The STOP/POTS sign pairs with the pots indicating that they are incorrect. The tepid water in the pots points to the warm water in the radiator. “Warm” as an idiom in English denotes more correct. The sun and radiator on/next to door 18 are both warm. [Independent Credit: Hello Gregor | White Raven] Room 18 is described as a “much warmer room” this reinforces the warmer/cooler riddle. [Credit: Hello Gregor] The moon denotes darkness, the sun denotes light. Darkness/bad versus light/good is a running theme in MAZE. [Independent Credit: David Gentile | White Raven] [Warm and cold dovetail with life and death in the sphinx riddle so that "warmer," life, light, and "man" all point to door 18.]
● The typeface of the banner “WHAT IS YOUR SIGN” is written so that letters could be numbers. The word “IS” appears to be either a 15, 51, 12, or 21 depending upon how the room is flipped or reversed. If 21 and 12 are added the result is 33, if these numbers are subtracted the result is 9. 33 and 9 are the numbers of the incorrect doors. [Independent Credit: 515 | White Raven] [This solution is incomplete.] 51 – 12 & 21 = 18 the number of the correct door. [Independent Credit: Aria | White Raven] [This solution is incomplete.]
may be easy enough to find as to have been mentioned before, and may be silly enough to be not worth mentioning, but STOP can be trimmed to TOP and WHAT to HAT. may be strengthened a teeny bit by the order being correct when flipped, and nothing in between being the same orientation
I don”t recall hearing that before, certainly worth mentioning.
Perhaps the hidden sign behind the stop sign is a U(You)-Turn sign as a reply to the question “what is your sign?” and reinforced by their feeling “all turned around”. That could also make sense as an instruction to flip the book over backward to see the “this way” sign read correctly pointing toward door 18, which reads in this orientation as door 81 = 51 + 15 + 15 using the numbers in the sign texts. Also from that orientation the stick man looks like a falling Icarus too close to the sun. Icarus was instructed by his father Daedalus also to not fly too close to water as shown in the 2 pots and the pan. Perhaps we should try the pan’s handle and Icarus as he falls to his demise in Room 18 down that “long flight of stairs, through some sort of pantry…”
Note that the book reads 81 when right-side-up and 18 when upside down. Also, why would we want to follow Icarus anywhere?
29 already instructs the reader to flip the book over, and that message gets across much clearer than this.
A U-Turn sign for “what is your sign” isn’t a bad idea… but I’ve only ever seen one sign specifically indicating a U-Turn. Mostly I’ve seen No U-Turn signs. I’d like to come up with a way this applies, but all the doors from 3 are two-way.
Thanks Kiki for the post. Hopefully this post helps clarify my thoughts. Following what others have posted before, to read the “This Way” sign correctly you can (1) turn the book upside down and then (2) turn the page over to look at the room through the next page (it helps to hold it up to a light) or (2) look at it in a mirror. The first step turns the 81 into an 18 and either second step turns the 18 back into an 81. In that final orientation the numbers in the signs add up correctly: 15 + 15 + 51 = 81. But two steps aren’t necessary to get there. The same thing can be accomplished in just one flip of the book about the top or bottom edge of the page. So maybe that one flip could be suggested by a u-turn sign. If it is a u-turn sign, I’m not sure it has to also work for the immediate door choice too (although I see how that could be confusing a bit like how that stop sign is confusing), but it could work as a hint to make your way back to Room 1. Also, we don’t really need to flip and turn anything to see that the “This Way” sign always points to Room 18. But if we do, we get to see that stick figure top hat man turn momentarily into Icarus, which might come in handy :) elsewhere. This post is getting long, so I’m going to try and post about Icarus later, perhaps in the interconnectivity section of this site since that top hat fellow shows up in a lot of places. His story I’m still working on so I’ll go and read the posts there and see what I can come up with…
There’s just no way or reason to interpret the unseen sign as saying “U Turn.” You could just imagine that it does, but you might as well skip some steps and just imagine it says “18″ on it. That sounds like a joke, but it’s truly no less arbitrary.
Moreover, we don’t need this imagined instruction to be motivated to think about mirror-imaging or rotation. Those concepts are inherent to the flipped and rotated elements in the room.
The stick figure does not resemble Icarus from any orientation. It’s also wearing a conspicuous top hat, a fashion choice incompatible with ancient Greece/Crete.
I agree vewatkins that for these speculations to be worth considering we require more evidence – so here goes. First I’d like to say that I think using the riddle of the sphinx to identify stick man as a sign for mankind is the best identity found so far for the top hat character, and that it is better that it be a more recent more powerful stage of mankind than the Ancient Greeks, hence the top hat and no Greek attire. Not necessarily all of mankind, but a type or role mankind takes on. As you’ve pointed out in the interconnectivity page posts, he can be helpful in this loop area to find our way out: Rooms 7 and 16 and this room. But then the trail kind of goes dry until Room 10 where he appears as a dancer next to door 14, a position similar to our stick figure in Room 3 next to door 18. In Room 18 we get the text “Shadows danced across the floor to the fire’s music. Someone’s lost his hat.” These lines connect light and shadow to dancing and the top hat figure. Just as in the myth of Icarus we don’t want bright light and we don’t want total darkness, we want a balance or a middle path. That doesn’t mean that top hat man is Icarus, just that the guidance for how to make choices that the myth provides (moderation and not extremes) is generally actionable as wisdom for mankind that top hat man didn’t follow – but perhaps we could for the rest of our way out provided we see the lesson. There is a kind of shadow path from door 3 to door 13 in Room 18 for example, and music to dance to. The other rooms I’ll leave for later because I want to get to the stop sign and what it’s hiding. For the stop sign, I think there’s likely a connection to Room 22 where there is a hidden stop sign under the ottoman in the room’s center. Room 22 has lots of astrological signs and Room 3 includes the question “what is your sign?” The sphinx has the lion’s body being Leo and the woman’s front being Virgo — two adjacent astrological signs. Finally, that sphinx tail sure looks like that tail in Room 22! Through a sort of symmetry argument, maybe the sign that the stop sign is hiding could have some relevance here and/or elsewhere. It is at least inviting me to speculate and infer what I could make it say if there’s enough evidence that’s discoverable – a good enough story around it. Then maybe we can really make it “our sign”. Tie the u-turn sign and the revealed Icarus moderation advice to the dancing top hat man and you get the following directions for Room 10 on the way out. In Room 10, door 34 is the darkest and door 14 is the brightest, the best door is the in-between door 41. Furthermore, Room 14 is very dangerous and the only safe move is a u-turn! All that is a lot of pieces to put together for an extra layer of solutions that aren’t strictly necessary, but it seams to fit well and kind of satisfying how it weaves in some details, or maybe ties various simpler solutions into a more cohesive tale. I see potential for more to Top Hat’s story that I think I’ll flesh out further in a post in the interconnectivity page. Hope that isn’t too tall of a tale for you vewatkins! If it is – I get it. I appreciate you warning us from straying too far afield which is all too easy to do. Especially at this point with all of the amazing solutions already posted.
Going back through the old posts here, I see an incredible amount of effort poured into mathematically computing the correct path forward, as well as measurements and angles of celestial objects and the justifications for flipping them, and a significant stretch of non sequitur *somethings*… but no one mentioned the sign behind the STOP sign at any point. There’s a rectangular sign right behind it, which would be visible if you flipped the pair around. As best I can tell, the most likely identity for it would be a Speed Limit sign – go forward, but with a certain amount of caution. This sign is initially parked next to Door 9, but once flipped out to make the rear sign visible, would be positioned directly next to Door 18.
Most things suggested on this website are completely bonkers–including things I’ve suggested, and things listed as accepted solutions above. Don’t be fooled by the standard of lunacy embraced here! That’s not really what this book is about, that’s just what we end up wallowing in because we can’t figure things out for real.
It’s an excuse to English major BS my heart out without (much) judgment. I’m just sad I didn’t rediscover the book until Blue Prince went and made it all hip and cool again…
Well, don’t let me ruin your fun. I try to provide some feedback here so that people aren’t misled as to the authenticity of these solutions. (I was, for quite a while, which is why my own lunacy is in evidence everywhere.)
I did notice you’ve been stalking the halls of the Labyrinth for a decade now. It’d be weird if you didn’t experience a lunatic phase in all that time :P
this sounds simplistic out loud, but
the text asking how many sides = reading the stop sign as an octagon more supported, defining it by how many sides it has