Tarot in the Maze

If you enjoy MAZE, there’s a good chance you are also interested in the Tarot – both are an irresistible stew of images, symbols, text, and numbers, spiced with myth, mystery, magic, and menace while offering rich possibilities for interpretation. I caught the Tarot bug early and bought my first deck at the age of 10 from a New-Agey store, dutifully storing it in black silk to protect it from “harmful vibrations” when I wasn’t torturing friends and family with inept readings.

Over the years, I came to lose my childhood belief in any real predictive magic the Tarot might have, but I never quite lost interest in the cards, picking up a new deck or Tarot book here and there, and occasionally attempting readings. Magic or not, the Tarot does have value in decision making: as a ritualized way of approaching a problem or a question, the cards can be helpful in focussing your thinking. Doing a reading for yourself or someone else can force you to think carefully and deeply about a situation and to consider it from different perspectives, working through the consequences of possible solutions and obstacles suggested by the cards.

And even if you don’t use them for readings, Tarot cards are fascinating just for the artwork. People become obsessed with collecting Tarot decks-I have four or five myself and that’s nothing compared to some people. There are a lot of ugly or silly or lazy decks out there, but there are also many that are gorgeous and innovative. (Dali did a wonderful deck, for example, casting himself as The Magician, of course.)It’s exciting to see how different artists have interpreted the familiar scenes and meanings of the cards, a thrill similar to what you feel when you listen to a cover of a beloved song that makes it beautiful in a new way.

I could ramble on for quite some time about Tarot, but we’re here to talk about MAZE. In the chat and on the episodes people have spent a fair bit of time discussing the significance and validity of various Tarot references throughout the Maze. (Some of us even chose cards to go with our bios – can you figure out the reasons behind the choices?) There’s no question – Tarot is part of the Maze. But, as with most things around here, how much is real and what it all means is up for debate...

Room 20: The Tower

The distinctive image of a lightning-struck tower in Room 20 is the most obvious and indisputable reference to a Tarot card in the Maze. Interpretations of The Tower and its 3D twin reclining in the tartan-covered chair are many; some are better than others. The most compelling observation is that The Tower is the sixteenth card of the major arcana, and that tells you that if you get to Room 20 you are at the end of the sixteen-step path. To me, this is the most important message for Room 20 to convey. Some may quibble and say that Room 20 actually represents the fifteenth step, but I say in the Maze, 16 = end of Path, and the 16th card in a room sends a pretty clear message. It’s beside the door to Room 1, so if you want, it can be telling you that taking door 1 from here represents your sixteenth step if you’ve been going the right way. If not-try again.

Several interpretations involve the closed and open doors of the two towers. The tower reclining in the comfy chair has a closed door, while the door on The Tower is open. Meaning-wise, The Tower is one of the worst cards in the Tarot, representing calamitous change. Connecting this meaning to the open door, and the idea of safety to the closed door on the other tower a possible reading is, “open doors are dangerous, closed doors are safe.” I like this interpretation because to me, the only correct choice in here is to go back to 1, regardless of where you are in your journey, and door 1 is the closed door. If you go to 27 you get stuck in the Loop, and if you go to 5 you have a 50% chance of ending up in the Trap and will miss the crucial ATLAS part of the riddle, even if you manage to pick door 30.

There is another interpretation of the open and closed doors on the Abyss, which you can read here.

Room 27: The Hermit

Or should I say the anti-Hermit? This Tarot reference has been discussed more than any of the others. The solution on the Abyss, which I like, depends on the statue with the lantern on door 9 clearly referencing The Hermit. I think he does because a) we are in a room that references cards, making you think of Tarot by association; b) the Hermit is the ninth card of the Major Arcana, matching the door number; and c) the Hermit is commonly depicted as carrying a lantern.

The obvious problem is that the statue itself doesn’t look anything like The Hermit. There are several key differences: the statue is young not old, blind not sighted; he isn’t carrying his lantern (and could not see by its light anyway); he’s wearing the garb of an ancient Greek, not Gandalf-robes; and he seems to be sinking into the ground instead of standing on a mountaintop. Given that one of the meanings of the card is wisdom, the point of Manson making us think of the card while also evoking its opposite is to signal that to take this door would be foolish. Of all the figures in the Tarot, this statue probably resembles The Fool most, strengthening this interpretation. The lantern, though, seems to be The Hermit’s true lantern, and lights the way for us to door 13.

As I said, I like this, but there are many who don’t, surprise surprise. Beelz posited this explanation in the Room 27 episode, and everyone seemed pretty keen on it then, but a year later most were not so thrilled with the idea when it came out of one of White Raven’s hints. Take a look at the initial and subsequent discussions on The Abyss and decide for yourself!

An interesting observation is that you can get to Room 27 from Room 20, so perhaps Manson also saw these references as a red herring trail for people trying to find interroom connections.

Other Tarot Possibilities

At one point Vincent went through and made a list of a bunch of symbols and objects that appeared both in the Maze and in Tarot. I can’t seem to find that list now but there are quite a few: staves, angels, sun, moon, stars, clarions, devils, banners, chariots… that’s just a few off the top of my head. These are mostly common symbols and objects, so it’s hard to know if there was an intended Tarot connection or not.

Two references that do seem to have some legs are found in Rooms 19 and 38. Room 19, the outdoor room in which we meet Manson and the Sun-Man, and in which the brightness of the sunlight is emphasized, might refer to The Sun, which is the 19th trump of the Tarot. I pointed out a bunch of other similarities and connections in that room, mostly silly, which you can read here. It doesn’t seem to really help with a solution. In Room 38, the face above the door and the two unfinished figures on the side seem to evoke the composition of trump 15, The Devil. Again, doesn’t seem to help much. Could perhaps just be another trap/Minotaur reference, since the two human figures in the Rider-Waite deck (the most commonly known one and the one shown here), are chained to the pedestal on which the horned part-human part-beast devil is squatting.

*UPDATE (10/31/2016): How could I have forgotten Room 13 and its possible references to the 13th trump, the Death card? I don’t know, but I did. This possible reference is especially interesting considering it continues the Room 20 – Room 27 Tarot trail. Never fear, you can read all about that connection and more in this, the longest-ever Abyss post, written (of course) by Vincent.

A Reading

Well! All this thinking about the Tarot put me in the mood to do a reading for an absent friend. I decided to try out a new method for laying out the cards, but I’m having some trouble interpreting them. Here they are-can you help?

While you’re puzzling it out, have a listen. This doesn’t have anything to do with the reading, but it’s on theme. 🙂

Best of Mazecast: Room 39

Getting antsy waiting for the next MazeCast episode? My recommendation is to go back and watch early episodes again. I like to do this when working on mechanical tasks and when I do I always find I learn something I missed the first time or am reminded of an idea I loved.

Take, for example, the Room 39 episode, “The Thousand Injuries of Fortunato.” I revisited this episode recently while doing a bunch of formatting and it is a good one, featuring Vincent, Greg, and Beelz. Room 39 is of course the Cask of Amontillado/Poe room, so there’s a lot of talk about that, but you also learn about the ELVIS WAY observation and the Young Guns 2 connection. In case that’s not enough to make you want to revisit Room 39, here’s a snippet of conversation that occurred after Beelz presented Dave Gentile’s idea about how we know which door Montresor took. Apparently, he was just popping over to Room 4 to gather materials to make the torch which he planned to shove into Fortunato’s cell before sealing it up for good.

VINCENT: You wouldn’t really use a log to make a torch, would you? I mean, that’s not the way you make torches…

GREG: Chop it up!

BEELZ: Chop some of it off!

VINCENT: You, you’d have to… You wouldn’t... you couldn’t do it with just an axe because they’re – I mean you could I guess if you were really an expert wor – but that’s not what they do ’cause they make like, thin – more like a pole than a-

GREG: Well, what Middle Ages tool would you use to make a torch?

VINCENT: (exasperated) I don’t know what they used in the Middle AGES…

GREG: Well, that’s when you used torches! You don’t use torches – like, these days, the British, they call torches flashlights, and you don’t use wood for that at all. But that’s not what they used in the Cask of Amontillago! They used, like, a torch with a stick.

VINCENT: Yeah a STICK, not a LOG!

BEELZ: He just pushes the candle in there! It’s METAPHORICALLY a torch.

Yes, a fine example of the kind of eloquence and in-depth analysis you have come to expect from MazeCast.

But what happens next? Before you get all shook up, skip to 56:40-ish to listen the exchange and find out. Or, don’t be cruel to yourself, just rewatch the whole episode! And remember, if MAZE is always on your mind, we want to hear from you. Comment or get in touch via the public MAZE chat room, accessible from the link on the home page banner.

Another Maze diorama!

Another Canadian Thanksgiving, another MAZE diorama. Inspired by finding a toy alligator that my mom had saved from our trip to Busch Gardens 30-odd years ago, I decided to tackle Room 44. I had a fair bit of time one evening to draw the back wall and really enjoyed doing it-it's quite relaxing and meditative to redraw rooms, as Barry already knows of course. Unfortunately I was a little pressed for time during setup and photography, so the results are not exactly as I had envisioned:



Better in sepia perhaps?



Anyway, I wish I'd had time to make the reptile a proper spiky collar or even to have centred "Athena" on her Lego pedestal, and the effect certainly would have been improved by a different angle or a fake blue-sky background, but I think it was a worthwhile exercise nevertheless. I did not bother to hide my project from the family this time. They've witnessed enough MAZE-mania over the past year to be in no doubt as to my mental state, so I've decided I'm going to be crazy out in the open, and that's one thing to feel thankful for. (Although it's possible the intervention is just around the corner...)

This Thanksgiving weekend I also felt thankful for Christopher Manson and MAZE, White Raven and Into the Abyss, and all the friends I've met through MazeCast. Special thanks to the creators of Terror Island for inspiring the use of chess pieces as statues.

Songs to Maze by: GAME OVER (Room 24)

This is the end, beautiful friends.* The final puzzle point has been awarded; no further Cluemasters will be crowned. In light of White Raven's recent announcement that the gamification of MAZE on Into the Abyss is now at an end, it seemed fitting to do a playlist for MAZE's Game Over room-the Abyss itself, Room 24.



"One of Us" by Technical Itch
Alex posted this one in the public chat the other day and said it was perfect for Room 24-and it is! It won't take you long to figure out why...



"The Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel
"Hello darkness my old friend..."



"These Eyes" by The Guess Who
Here's your government-mandated CanCon.



"The End" by The Doors
The Doors - Get it? Get it!? (Yes, it is nearly 12 minutes long, but you're stuck in the Abyss forever so QUIT COMPLAINING!!!)



"The End of the World as We Know It" by REM

As a generally cheerful person, I find I cannot end even the Room 24 playlist on a depressing note. So here for you is the most cheerful** of apocalypse songs. For me this song has particular meaning and since we're stuck here together in the dark, I'll tell you why. At university I belonged to a group that did sketch comedy interspersed with songs. We had a live band and performed in one of the campus pubs. I'm old, so this was near the dawn of the Internet, and the miracle of being able to find lyrics to any song at the click of a mouse had not yet occurred. Therefore, if the lyrics weren't on the liner notes, somebody had to listen to and write out the words to any song we wanted to do-or just make up new words, which is what often happened. But not in the case of this song, which was to be the big finale, since nobody wanted the job of writing new words for all those lyrics. So it transpired that five of us, including the musical director, were crammed in somebody's car on the way back to school from Toronto, listening to this song over and over and desperately trying to figure out what the fuck they were saying. Much of what we wrote down was total gibberish, but everyone dutifully learned and sang it. (Fortunately the audience-along with the performers-were usually pretty drunk by the end of the show, so nobody cared that it made no sense.) These days, of course, you are spared this kind of trouble thanks to the aforementioned miracle, although the published lyrics don't make much sense either. Some sample comparisons:

Internet: "Don't misserve your own needs" vs. What we thought: "Dummy, serve your own needs"
Internet: "Feed it up a knock, feed, grunt, no strength" vs. What we thought: "Speed it up a notch, Pete: front row seat"
Internet: "You vitriolic patriotic slam fight bright light" vs. What we thought: "You vitriolic patriotic slam butt fight, like"

To this day I can sing that whole song with the lyrics we wrote down, even a few beers into the evening.

Anyway, thanks for listening-so nice to have a captive audience. And now, "It's time I had some time alone..." BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAA



*Some would have you believe that it's not really the end but only the beginning of a BRAVE NEW ERA OF MAZE. Hope springs eternal! **For an even more cheerful (and even faster!) rendition, check out this CanCon cover by Great Big Sea.

Songs to Maze by: Room 23

How about this heat, eh? Baseball, sunshine, thunderstorms-if there's a summer room in MAZE, then Room 23 is it. Here's your playlist!



"I'll Follow the Sun" by the Beatles
Let's start with the blindingly obvious. The correct door to take in here is the Room 8 door, which is bathed in sunlight and has a picture of the glowing sun over the door. If you're on the Path, you've just come from 45, and day follows night, so on you go, and who better to accompany you than these fellows.



"Follow the Sun" by Xavier Rudd
As an alternative, here's a rather lovely little sun-following song I found when looking for the Beatles tune. To be honest, it's a bit earnest-Australian-surfer-dude for me, but the lyrics have birds, so it's Mazey enough to warrant inclusion.



"Look Over Your Shoulder" by Kwabs
The second half of the 16-step path spells out "shoulders." (Not without controversy!) Room 23 has the "O" from the scroll but also has the word in the text: the Guide says, "... looking over my shoulder, which is not easy to do." Meaning the Guide is tall, I guess? I have an overly complicated theory about the Pleiades being on the shoulder of the constellation Taurus, but never mind that. The point is, we need a shoulder song. The first one that sprang to mind was Canadian Paul Anka's "Put Your Head on My Shoulder," and there is something appealing and kind of creepy about imagining that scratchy record being played on repeat in here, but in the end I went with this tune. I love this guy's voice and the ominous feel that comes from that buzzing bass line. "Better stay out of the shadows when you wander far from home" is a pretty good line for Room 23, dontcha think? And this line is highly appropriate for MAZE in general: "It will creep into your head and it will never let you go." (You can also listen to an alternative, stripped-down version here.)



"Centerfield" by John Fogerty
Although Room 45 is identified as the centre of the Maze, Room 23 marks the midpoint of your journey on the 16-step path, making Fogerty's baseball classic doubly suitable for Room 23.



"Moses Supposes (his Toeses are Roses)" with Gene Kelly and Donald O'Connor
To finish this room off, let's check off the stone tablets and that random foot picture with this jaunty number from Singin' in the Rain. Be sure to watch for the doors at 1:50. And try to imagine that instead of that final long "A" sound the boys are helpfully singing "EEEEEEIIIIIIGHHHHHHTT!"



Bonus CanCon Track: "Hard Sun" by Indio
This is actually the song that got me thinking about sun songs. I was in the car with a friend of mine who knows a lot about music, and the Eddie Vedder cover of "Hard Sun" came on the radio. I had never heard that version and was surprised when my friend said he didn't realize that the song was not Vedder's own. The original is by Indio, the stage name of a Canadian called Gordon Peterson, who recorded it as part of his one and only album, Big Harvest, in 1989, which was critically acclaimed but didn't do much commercially. Peterson disappeared from the scene shortly after releasing the album. Twenty years later, Vedder did his cover for the film Into the Wild, reviving the song and introducing it to new audiences, which led to the reissue of Big Harvest. Unfortunately, the cover also got Vedder in hot water with Gordon Peterson - although the label gave permission for Vedder to cover the song they never talked to Peterson about it. Peterson was upset about this and about some lyric changes, so he sued Vedder. (He lost.) It's all kind of depressing but the song itself remains a glorious thing.



"Walking on Broken Glass" by Annie Lennox
Update 2016-11-16: I heard this song on the radio yesterday and could not believe I had omitted it from this playlist. It's perfect for obvious reasons and the video is an over-the-top treat complete with pre-House Hugh Laurie and John Malkovich hamming it up Dangerous Liaisons–style.

The sun's still shining in the big blue sky
But it don't mean nothing to me
Oh let the rain come down
Let the wind blow through me
I'm living in an empty room
With all the windows smashed
And I've got so little left to lose
That it feels just like I'm walking on broken glass

Mazes and obsession go together like pots and hats

If you are at all interested in Kubrick’s "The Shining", hedge mazes, and mania in general, check out this video, in which that guy from MythBusters gets annoyed about an inaccurate recreation of the hedge maze model from the movie and decides to make his own.

< missing video >

The Riddle of the Guide: Donald Trump's Solution

PART I

The Guide, this guy-have you seen this guy?The “Guide,” they call him, well, maybe that’s what he calls himself.I don’t know, I don’t see much guiding out of this guy.This guy-you want to talk about somebody with problems, the Guide-can we just call him the Minotaur, folks?Can we do that?I mean, who are we kidding folks, who are we kidding.We have people going into the Maze, going in there every day, sometimes several times a day-some people have been going in for years, if you can believe that.And they just call him the Guide.The Guide, the Guide, the Guide.Folks, you can’t solve a problem if you won’t say what the problem is.Okay?You can’t solve it like that.Folks, this is a minotaur we’re dealing with, the original Minotaur, really.So I’m just gonna call him-because who are we kidding, right folks?I’m just going to call him the Minotaur.So this guy-what a piece of work he is, what a-you know where this guy comes from?You know the story on this guy?Look, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know, I don’t even think I ought to discuss it, I shouldn’t even say where this, this monster-it’s what he really is, he’s a monster, I mean, you ask me what a monster is, I’m going to describe something scary, misshaped, ugly, deadly-and don’t kid yourselves, folks, don’t kid yourselves, this guy is deadly.And that’s a monster, that’s what we call a monster.And you know where he came from right?Should I talk about it, do I need to talk about it?Because they’re going to give me such a hard time-tomorrow, it’s going to be, “Trump uses disgusting language, Trump says bad words,” all over the news, everywhere, CNN, FOX News, everywhere, that’s all you’ll hear.So I don’t know, I don’t know that I can even talk about this stuff anymore, but if you-well, listen, listen folks, what can I do, you’re all screaming to hear it, maybe this is a bad move, maybe it will get me in trouble, but who cares...

PART II

So people are still, still they’re asking me, “Mr. Trump, why do you keep talking about this wall?You know you can’t build that wall, there’s no way, it can’t be done.”Folks, let me tell you, I am going to build a wall, and it’s going to be the best-look, we have lots of walls right?Circling, dividing, just walls all over, more walls than we know what to do with, so many walls, maybe some of you are sick of walls.But you-you know what the Guide says?The Guide, they call him the Guide, I call him the Minotaur, if you want to know the truth, that’s what he is, the Minotaur, but you know what he says, he says he can’t even tell which side is the Maze anymore.Bright guy, right?And this is the guy you want running your Maze, right?This guy, this clown who doesn’t know which-and he’s the architect, he says.I mean, I don’t know what that means, can this guy even hold a pencil in those hooves of his?What’s he doing, holding a pencil in his mouth?[mimes drawing a blueprint with a pencil in his mouth] It’s ridiculous, folks, what a disaster this guy is. But he says he can’t tell which side is the Maze.And I say, what is this guy, kidding?Is he really that stupid, could our guide be that stupid?This guy’s guiding you around the Maze, and all of a sudden he’s not even sure whether you’re in the Maze.And they call him “Guide,” “Guide” they call him, well, I don’t know about that, I don’t know.I don’t know how you can build a place-and folks, I’m a builder, ok? I’m a builder, it’s-you see my name, all over the world, buildings, the best buildings, the tallest towers, Trump, Trump, Trump.And I’ll tell you, when I walk inside one of my buildings, when I walk inside Trump Tower, I don’t start asking people, “Am I inside or outside? Is this Trump Tower or Brooklyn?” It’s a disaster, this guy, he’s a disaster.

- by vewatkin

See Ape Nose

This is an 1896 engraving of an ape. (I could not find out the name of the artist.) Does it look familiar to you? What do you think-could this image have been Manson's reference for the ape in Room 38?

I mean, an ape profile is an ape profile is an ape profile, but it seems like a decent bet. That oddly 2-shaped nose on the SEE! poster is even more 2-shaped in the original engraving. (This is actually the reason I started looking at ape profiles-I wanted to know if that 2 could possibly mean something or if apes in profile just had 2-shaped noses.) To me, the pattern of light and shadow on the faces look similar, as do the proportions of the features. In addition, it seems to be a relatively well-known image, as far as engravings of ape profiles go.

If the 19th-century engraving was Manson's reference, then that is kind of wonderful, because it shows just how much thought might have gone into this little poster. One of the tricky bits about the "see ape nose" riddle (as discussed in the Room 38 Mazecast) is getting that the picture shows an ape and not, say, a chimp or a gorilla. After having done a little research on the engraving, we discovered that it depicts a Koolakamba-a species of ape reported in the 19th century which was thought by some to have been a hybrid between a chimp and a gorilla. There doesn't seem to be a lot of evidence that these apes were anything other than unusual chimps or perhaps bonobos, but still-as Vincent pointed out-if Manson was aware of this little cryptozoological tale, could he have picked a better way to depict a generic ape?

(You can read more about the Koolakamba on Wikipedia, on this Cryptozoology wiki, and on this nutty-but-entertaining cryptozoology website.)

Songs to Maze by: Room 21

We just finished solving a White Raven hint for Room 21 and the answer was "turn around." I'm still not sure what I think about the solution, but the room playlist now practically writes itself! Here are my picks to accompany your musings on Room 21, in no particular order:



"Turn the Beak Beat Around", Gloria Estefan cover Sorry, sorry, sorry. It was impossible for me to resist. I chose the Gloria Estefan cover, mostly for the awesome skyscraper-top jazz flute action, not to mention the appearance of SLY, but the original, performed by Vicky Sue Robinson, is here for the purists.



"Anywhere Is" by Enya
I'm just going to say it: I like Enya. Okay? Happy? I do. I listened to my Watermark CD on infinite repeat in university during all-nighters and it kept me alert yet calm without distracting me from what I was doing. Usually I can't work to music that has words but the great thing about Enya is that most of the time you cannot tell what the fuck she is saying. Her voice is like some new-agey woodwind that makes lovely sounds that occasionally resemble words. It's so soothing. You can pick out the odd word, however, and as I was getting through some work recently with "Anywhere Is" on in the background the word "turn" popped out at me a few times. I checked out the lyrics, and wouldn't you know it, they are very Mazey! Just take the first few lines: "I walk the maze of moments/ But everywhere I turn to/ Begins a new beginning/ But never finds a finish..." Take a look at the final verse-it fits Room 21 like it was written for it.

It's worth mentioning that Enya lives in a castle named Manderley, heavily fortified to protect her from crazy stalkers such as the superfan who stabbed himself outside a pub owned by her parents while wearing a picture of her around his neck. Her castle is possibly very Mazey inside but we will never know. She is obsessive about her privacy and prefers to let her work speak (sing, I guess) for itself - sound familiar?



"Over Under Sideways Down" by the Yardbirds
It's a YARD, see, and there's this BIRD...
Yes, there's more to my recommendation than that-I do also feel that the title and chorus are appropriate for a visitor stuck in the Loop: "Over under sideways down,/ Backwards forwards square and round./ When will it end, when will it end./ When will it end, when will it end." This thing is weird, groovy, psychedelic-enjoy!



"Turn! Turn! Turn!" by the Byrds (written by Pete Seeger and King Solomon) Again, my apologies for my inability to resist these bad jokes. Great song, though.



"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler

TURN AROUND, BRIIIIIIIIGHT EYES! Any time I hear the phrase "turn around" this song belts its way into my head and stays there for days, but I don't mind-it brings back very fond memories. If you haven't howled this classic into a karaoke mic at 2 am then you haven't lived, in my opinion. Although I am intimately familiar with the song, I had never seen the video before watching it for this post, and by Manson if it isn't Mazey in the extreme. A big house with mysterious doors! White birds! Shirtless men with swim goggles! Possessed choirboys with glowing eyes...?Dancing ninjas?!? Okay, it's basically a surreal mess, but it's a fun ride.

Poisson (rouge) d’avril

Dear Christopher Manson:

If you are reading this then you have seen my blog and you know that I’m a huge fan, so let’s take the gushing and fawning as read, shall we?

Mr Manson, it has now been one year and one day since my (terrible) first post on the Abyss.

During that time I have had a lot of fun on that site and here on MazeCast. I’ve learned a great deal about your book but also about Greek myths and Roman numerals and the short stories of Borges. In addition, I have met many interesting and intelligent people, some of whom I now consider actual friends despite never having met them in person-a first for me-so thank you very, very much for that.

But Chris-may I call you Chris? No? Very well. Mr Manson, the other day my husband glanced at MAZE as it lay on a side table in the living room. It was not the first time he had seen the book, of course, far from it, but this time something prompted him to remark, “Why are you all spending so much time on this thing? There’s a giant red herring right there on the cover. What does that tell you?”

Perhaps he was trying to pry me away from this (let’s face it) extremely nerdy hobby but his comment gave me pause.

Has it all been a prolonged, elaborate April Fool’s Day prank, Mr Manson? Are we all just chasing rainbow trout here? Please send us a sign. A rain of fish, an umbrella, anything.

Very faithfully yours,

Sara

Happy Prologue Day

Happy Prologue Day to all Mazers! Perhaps better known as Pi Day, March 14 (of course) is the day on which to celebrate all things mathematical, and especially pi in all its irrational glory.

Should your notion of celebration include imbibing cocktails as you recite your times tables, solve differential equations, or memorize pi to 100,000 digits, may I recommend a piña colada piled high with pineapple pieces. For more refined tastes, a spirited pinot grigio should do the trick. Beer drinkers can enjoy a pint of piquant pilsner. Kanpai!

Back to the Prologue. The entrance gate is unusual in that you can go through it even though it does not have a number above the door. Instead it has "THE NEXT PAGE", which is preeeeeetty unambiguous. Nevertheless, like the rooms inside the House, the entrance seems to have a puzzle or three to solve to confirm you've got the right door, even though it isn't necessary here. That's how I interpret the pi symbol–shaped gate on the prologue page: it is a door indicator puzzle when combined with the umbrella.

This is the idea (see also the Abyss): the way the umbrella with its r-shaped handle is propped against the pi-shaped gate gives you πr. What does πr signify? The equation for the circumference of a circle is C = 2πr, where r is the radius of the circle. Divide both sides of the equation by two, and you get ½C = πr - pi times the radius of a circle is equal to half the circumference of that circle. And there's that half circle right over the door, a visual representation of the solution to the puzzle.

White Raven's theory about red herrings is that things that seem to connect one room to another, things that you have to peek into the next room to see, are usually red herrings (e.g., BALLerina in Room 10 and the BALL in room 14). If that's true, then the Prologue page can be seen as a kind of teaching page: the clues indicating the door to 41 (the fact that it's the only door you can see, the path of light, the highlighted handle) are misleading. The reliable clue comes from objects within the "room" - in this case, outside the gate.

An additional Prologue clue for door 1 comes from an observation vewatkin made in the chat a while ago: the two round stones by the umbrella could be intended as Morse code for I. If this is intentional, I could be meant as a reference to Roman numeral I, indicating Room 1. (In fact, the door itself could be an "i"- again, the Roman numeral 1, lowercase this time.) These ideas appeal to me because they add to the "teaching page" notion: the point illustrated here would be that each room contains multiple different puzzles pointing you to the correct door.

In general, there doesn't seem to be all that much in the way of mathematical clues in MAZE; at least, there are few if any of any complexity. Sometimes you have to do some simple addition, and there seems to be a multiplication thing going on in Room 30, and there's still the geometric transformation shenanigans in Room 3 to work out (or not), but that's about it. I keep hoping to find something related to the golden ratio, which seems like it would fit thematically, be relatively easy to incorporate into visual clues, and be up Manson's alley, but so far no dice.

LATE-BREAKING NEWS: a math-related solution has just been revealed by White Raven. You can find the solution here, the hint thread here

Finally, I will leave you with this fun fact about pi that I feel Manson himself might enjoy: when you hold "3.14" up to the mirror you get...

Songs to Maze By: The Guide

In a departure from my usual practice of providing you with a soundtrack for a room or area in the Maze, this month's playlist is dedicated to the Guide.



"Sympathy for the Devil" by the Rolling Stones

"Pleased to meet you/ Hope you guess my name/ But what's puzzling you/ Is the nature of my game." I could pretty much stop here, right? Trying to work out the identity of the Guide is one of the more absorbing puzzles that MAZE has to offer. Right from the get-go the Guide himself sets up the mystery: "Preoccupied with their own thoughts, impatient, like so many children, they didn't see who I really was." From there the question is implied again and again throughout the book as the Guide drops hints about his past and makes oblique comments about his own appearance, and a torn sign in the Trap has a hole where his name should be: who is the Guide?



"Who Are You?" by The Who

If only we had a microscopic hair sample, or a smear of spittle, or a blurry still from a security video that we could blow up with impossibly good resolution...!



"Strange Animal," by Gowan

Well, we now know for certain, of course, that the Guide is the Minotaur, as most MAZE fanatics have long suspected. It was fun to toss around other candidates like Minos or Theseus or the Devil, but nobody else fit all the clues so well. (More on that in future posts.) The Guide is winking very broadly when he says, "... in a very real way we are all of us animals, at least in part." I mean, who else is this clue going to be referencing? Mr Tumnus?



"Liar, Liar," by the Castaways

One of the more interesting bits of information that we got from an Ask Manson was that the Guide's statements are never completely truthful. It was difficult to pick a song about lies because there are so many good ones out there - Fleetwood Mac's "Little Lies," or the Knickerbockers' "Lies," for example - but in the end, I had to go with this one. The schoolyard chant of "liar, liar, pants on fire" seems a suitable response to the Guide's condescending attitude towards his visitors, whom he often refers to as children although they seem not to be - and even though he more often seems like the childish one, with his little tantrums and snits.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Gjx-ZQuQ_Y

"Follow Me," by Uncle Kracker

Sometimes in making these playlists I learn something new about a familiar song. For example, I had no idea that this song, which seems to be a sweet and simple love song if you're not paying attention, is actually about an arrogant jerk who likes to sleep with married women. Huh. Also, "Uncle Kracker"?! On the subject of sex, that's something that is largely absent from MAZE. The Minotaur has been used as a metaphor for animalistic or violent male lust (see, e.g., Picasso's Minotaur prints), but aside from a bit of mild flirtation with the Thoughtful One in Room 19, this Minotaur is really more interested in insulting and confusing his guests, with the goal of trapping them forever in Room 24, than in having sex with them. Or in eating them, for that matter! Which has always bothered me a little. Eternal entrapment seems a strangely bloodless end for a famously voracious monster to arrange for his victims...



"Lead Me On" by Teena Marie

Gotta be honest, including this track is pure self-indulgence. Ah, those pre-teen memories of listening to the Top Gun soundtrack over and over while fantasizing about Iceman. (Yes, pillow-kissing may have been involved.) On a related tangent: didja ever hear about that time when someone was plastering Val Kilmer's face and name all over Toronto?



"Your Daddy Don't Know" by Toronto
"... What your mama's gonna do tonight!" Speaking of Toronto, here's some CanCon and a shout-out to the Guide's family. Neither of the Minotaur's two daddies, Minos and the white bull, knew what his mama, Queen Pasiphaë, was going to do that night when she got up to her ill-fated shenanigans. I blame you, Daedalus! When a cursed woman asks you to build her a cow costume so she can fuck a bull, YOU SAY NO.



"Centuries" Fall Out Boy
In Room 16, an ancient-looking stone chamber, the Guide muses that he is reminded of his old neighbours, whose descendants "are still telling stories about me and my family to their children," a notoriety that he calls "immortality of a sort." In a similar spirit, this anthem blusters, "Some legends are told/ Some turn to dust or to gold/ But you will remember me / Remember me for centuries." It is a very silly song with a very silly video but I enjoy them both quite a lot.



"Minotaur's Song" Incredible String Band

The Incredible String Band is a Scottish psychedelic folk group, and this is their Minotaur song, which includes such magnificent lines as: "I can't dream well because of my horns" and "His habits are predicta-bull / Aggressively relia-bull bull bull..."



"Mini Mini Taur Taur" Tobuscus

If you listen to this, it will become an earworm that will torment you for the rest of your life, especially when you are trying to work or sleep. Don't say I didn't warn you.

http://soundcloud.com/chillygonzales/myth-me

"Myth Me" Chilly Gonzales

"Are you still with me? / You're gonna myth me..." We close on a wistful note with a lisping pun. The Guide puts up a good front, but perhaps all that sneering pride is just to hide the terrible loneliness of an eternity in the Maze with only occasional doomed visitors, an elusive man in formalwear, and a bunch of birds for company.

More Musical Maziness from Hello Gregor

I came up with some MAZE-y song titles and Greg made the songs to go with them. ("Horns and Strings" is actually doing double duty as an anti-mathematics song, requested by another one of Greg's Patrons.) As usual, his wonderful lyrics are surreal but also full of concrete details, creating a response that shifts between recognition and bewilderment and evoking emotions you can't quite place. It's hard to pick a favourite song among these. Do you connect most with the frenetic strangeness of "That's the Trick" or the wistful nostalgia of "Sinking Gratefully Down"? The alterna-folk call-and-response of "Horns and Strings" or the driving fierceness of "Too Many Animals"? Hope you enjoy these as much as I do.



In the end when the doves are done flying and the stream of dinners and dying are done and we're lying here. Will there be time to make a phone call? After the war is done again?

What can we give each other but a break from all this running around?

Or will there still be too many animals for the crowd?

Recall when we heard the jailed men whisper. So we filled our houses with smoke and pulled their teeth out one by one with a shepherd's cane.

Their sour gums suckled still-smacking sounds we hoped would perish. So we forced a thumb straight down the throat and tickled a ride to the closest exit; encouraged them onward through the mook. Then, stood back shaking our heads at the sorry state they're in.

Those wolves, they make great customers; so long as they're occasionally reaching.
A paw for a quarter. A claw for a dollar at some unnecessary door.
A chair to sit in and some kind of answer before the ceiling runs afoul.

Will there still be too many crickets to let this house stay silent?
Will there still be too many animals to end the war?
Will there still be too many animals after the war?



Between human and mouse, whose nose serves them better? Whose ears hear the thunder? Whose tongue savors butter?

Whose eyes rest on that golden pillow melting softly as the sun opens its eye.

The package says it's salted. Surprise! It was rancid the whole time.
Mind your manners. Practice what you preach. Behold! A kid!
They say a goat can chew a tin can cuz it pretends it's iceberg lettuce served as a free side for lunch.
"It is salad," says the menu...
... and there's a sandwich coming. On a bun. In a carriage, maybe. With all the trappings.

While waiting, why not indulge? Look up-see that star? It's a breeze. It doesn't whisper. That shine is speaking soundly. It's probably made of gold. Put it down or risk a sliver.

Now you're married.
Now it was chocolate the whole time.
See that foil fleck off?

Imagine a miniature wonderland of those bugs gazing in wonder at a world of pink glittering snow. We could put them in a globe with all that rust to preserve this moment forever. Just a shake. Just a flick of the wrist.



A horn is a blow-hole, a path tapered and maybe twisting into a start of a kiss, a thought expressed and an end; a sound to get there A singular sound, sonorous or bleating, begging attention to be paid to itself and, in the end, the listener knows what that means.

Around that sound some songs sing to each other, creeping in and out of doors in conversation with textures of trees and furs and silt
Around that sound like mud or swelling air a battle of colors ease together into a corpulent dawn or sunset

The trumpet brings freedom from swampy shackles uncertain-its call is the brightest star to summon home from far away
The tuba holds us up to keep walking toward an illuminated goal
And when we arrive we are known by the cornet's drone

Around that sound these words are a burden no donkey can carry unless it's dead because that would certainly be true unless it's a corpse baking on a rock, an altar to maggots that will certainly live on.
Is this then the house where all within it are living despite these dust-touched unblinking eyes?
Does the journey end when the hooves stop moving or is that corpse one more curtain for the next surprise?

The horn says you have nothing to say unless you're saying something
For the world that's not words, what can you say about that?

Team spirit? No. Multiplication? No. A gentle fog in a German submarine? If you want.



There are flowers in these trees and the birds are singing tweet-tweet and it's raining sometimes to bring out the green. It's here we start our journey dressed for the cold that's coming.

Here's your hat, then. Here's your napkin. There's sure to be meals where we're going. Here's your basket, an empty flask, and a pound of unmelted butter-in case we run into some bread.

The sun is majestic and we're taking on sweat. Bead by bead, step by step. None of us cares because the day is enormous enough for the laughter to fill in. Enough for this pasture we're in. Enough for a lifetime. Enough for these leaves that keep clogging our socks to speechify crunching as we're trying to talk. Children keep interrupting. I hope you heard what I said.

This coat is too heavy, but I'm sick of the cold. This place once had a river behind where they put the mall. Do we remember the past?

We got where we're going or at least we are where we are; staggering bags of extinguished fire. Some smoke escapes our lips that hang limp and you're trying to smile for all of that. Do we remember the past? And though we both know it'll all fall to pieces, we still sink gratefully down.

The Sleeping Beauty Solution

In delay there lies no plenty;
Then come and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty,
Youth's a stuff will not endure.

One of the things that keeps me interested in MAZE is the way it acts as a departure point for enjoyable free association. This can be a worthwhile result in itself, but Room 5 is an example of how this kind of thinking led me to what I think is a pretty satisfying solution via a convoluted path of mental connections.



I was looking at Room 5 (rendered here in this lovely digitally-coloured chalk drawing by Crouchman) and thinking about the two best doors to take in that room, which are Room 20 and Room 30. Here is a recreation of what happened:

Twenty, thirty, twenty, thirty.
Twenty... twenty....
"Come and kiss me, sweet-and-twenty...."

Where did that thought come from? It's a Shakespeare quote, isn't it?
Google Google Google, oh right, Twelfth Night. Hmmmmmm...

(We now pause for many minutes of fruitless but fun analysis of plot and text of Twelfth Night, despite the only apparent connection between Room 5 and Twelfth Night being the mention/presence of the number twenty.)

OK, so it's a song from a Shakespeare play.

But then why do I associate a pen-and-ink illustration of a young woman with that quote?

Wait, didn't I once own a picture book that had the lyrics of the song as a theme throughout? I remember a man-a forest-a sleeping girl-oh right! It was a retelling of Sleeping Beauty.

Sleeping Beauty.

SLEEPING BEAUTY!

You can check out how the rest of it went on the Abyss. Quite a bit more Googling and checking of books and posting ensued. The short version is, the Grimm fairy tale we now know as Sleeping Beauty was called "Little Brier-Rose," and a briar rose looks just like the one in Room 5, indicating the two safe doors. The solution doesn't have anything to do with the number twenty or the "Come and kiss me..." song, but it was those linked thoughts that led me to the idea.

My fellow MazeCasters roll their eyes at the Sleeping Beauty solution, for the usual reasons ("Those aren't brambles!" -vewatkin), but I think it's solid, and it was one WR hadn't thought of, making it extra-satisfying. (Although he did find the image of the briar rose once the idea was raised.) More importantly, I had a good time getting there, and I learned a lot about the Sleeping Beauty story that I didn't know before. For example, it seems obvious now, but I hadn't thought to read the pricked finger as the onset of puberty, or the hundred years and thicket as a metaphor for a way to allow the fifteen-year-old girl to grow up a little more before she starts entertaining errant princes. (Phillip Pullman describes this reading, Bruno Bettelheim's, in an afterword to "Briar Rose" in his excellent collection of retellings, Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm.)

As an added bonus, I got to relive my childhood terror of Maleficent in dragon form. Brrrrrr!



After all this went down it was driving me crazy that I couldn't remember the title, author, illustrator, or anything much else specific about that children's book, other than that it quoted the Shakespeare song and was about Sleeping Beauty. My mom, ever the librarian even in retirement, found it among the many children's books of ours that she had saved, going only by my vague description of the cover.

The book is The Wedding Ghost, written by Leon Garfield and illustrated by Charles Keeping. In an ASTONISHING COINCIDENCE, it was published in 1985, the same year as MAZE. It's a strange work-a picture book that is not really a children's book-sound familiar? It tells the story of a man, Jack, about to get married to Jill, his plain and solid sweetheart. He receives a mysterious map as a shower gift and ends up finding his way through a dense forest full of bones to the castle of a sleeping princess, a magnificent beauty who, once woken by Jack's kiss, says nothing but "Oh!" Further odd events follow, and Jack somehow ends up married to both Jill and the Beauty.



As a ten- or eleven-year-old I loved the creepy and slightly racy pictures, and these are as fantastic as I remember them. But what was really rewarding about reading the story again as a middle-aged person (how has THAT happened so suddenly?) was being able to appreciate and ponder some of the things it was saying about marriage and love and desire. I am grateful that MAZE and Room 5 helped me find it again.

SiGNing off

This post is going to discuss a solution proposed by White Raven for Room 8. You can find his description of it here.

I would like to say first that although I don't consider this solution to be correct, I approve of it being proposed and posted. I think that solving MAZE is going to rely on people sharing lots of possible solutions with the community, an activity which will, for the most part, involve ideas that don't end up working out. This doesn't mean the people coming up with them are bad solvers; it means they're trying to solve something difficult. White Raven's willingness to suggest theories, even ones I often disagree with, is a genuine boon to the MAZE community. I say all this because I'm about to criticize this theory, and don't want this to be mistaken for criticizing the theorizer.

The idea here is to find an encoding of "xii," in a room where the correct door to take is 12. The way he suggests it's encoded, letter by letter, is as follows:

x: "SGN" from the SiGN sign
i: "i" from the SiGN sign
i: The bowling pin

The i on the sign does obviously match a Roman numeral i. The bowling pin kind of looks like an i, I guess. But why does "SGN" produce x? The explanation given is that sgn is the sign function, often written sgn(x). White Raven says he doesn't know much about the math involved here himself, but ran this by a mathematician friend. I think that he may have misunderstood what that friend told him, or perhaps conveyed the puzzle idea to him poorly. This solution looks like it involved a breakdown of communication somewhere, anyway.

First of all, the idea of writing "(x)" after a function isn't as significant as it's being made out to be. It's true that if you want to talk about the sign of x, you write "sgn(x)." Smilarly, the logarithm of x is log(x), the cosine of x is cos(x), and so on. This is a feature of notation for functions in general, not the sign function in particular. There's no reason to think that, in looking for a way to hide the letter x, Manson would decide on "SGN" as being related.

One of the more confusing passages of the post: "The sgn function in simple form is written as ‘sgn(x)' in a function, and the architypical representation of the function is x=sgn(x).|x| As the math prof put it, ‘sgn is a mathematical representation of absolute value "x".'" I'm not sure what White Raven is trying to establish here. It may be an attempt to relate the sign function to having some kind of relevance to x itself, but if so, it's misguided.

I'm going to take a moment to explain the functions discussed here, for those who aren't familiar.

Diane's Math Corner

The sign function, sgn, is about whether something is positive or negative. You put a number in, and the function gives you a new number telling you something about the sign of that number. If your number is positive, it gives you 1. If your number is negative, you get -1. If it's 0, 0. So, for example, sgn(8)=1, sgn(-17)=-1, sgn(45)=1, sgn(0)=0. You get the idea.

The absolute value of a number is basically what the number would be if it were positive. We write |x| for the absolute value of x. For a positive number, taking the absolute value doesn't change it. |5|=5. Negative numbers are switched to positive: |-5|=5. Zero is again just zero. |0|=0.

You'll notice that these are two different functions, giving (usually) different results. sgn(12)=1, but |12|=12. The sign function is not a representation of the absolute value of a number. They are, however, related.

One way to think about numbers is as points on a line. Everything off to the left of 0 is negative, everything off to the right is positive. The sign of a number tells you which direction from 0 it is. The absolute value tells you how far from 0 it is. If you know both those things, then you can work out exactly what the number is. I'm thinking of a number, which I'll call n. sgn(n)=-1, and |n|=13. That's enough information for you to determine what number I'm thinking of. Neither of those pieces of information alone would do it. All right, now that we've had a fun math digression, let's reiterate that this isn't a way to clue "x." Maybe the notation for absolute value led to confusion at some point, with |x| looking like a way of writing x with some emphasis? Is it possible that Manson also didn't understand the math involved, and also mistakenly thought that "SGN" would work as a clue for x? This seems very unlikely to me, because it would require an incredibly specific mistake. He would have to not only think, like White Raven, that using the name of a function would mean x, but would also have to think that this mildly obscure function was the one to use for that. It's a solution idea that would only occur to someone working from the solver's end, not one that the puzzle constructor would come up with working forwards. Topic for a later post: Communication misunderstandings and Mansonian verification.

Crouchman's Charcoals

The mysterious Crouchman has sent Mazecast his charcoals of the Maze.