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After watching the video I can't help but feel that 'choosing' between the two pictures seems too easy. Maybe we should choose 'between' the two pictures instead. Instead of all or none, what about some? I guess that is kind of moot though since the publishing company was looking for the 'world' answer so nevermind!
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Dec 3, 2014 09:23
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I think another reason we skipped past "World" is that Atlas didn't carry the world on his back, dang it. To be honest, I think we figured it out almost entirely from the Path riddle rather than the Room riddle.
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Dec 3, 2014 12:06
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:I think another reason we skipped past "World" is that Atlas didn't carry the world on his back, dang it. To be honest, I think we figured it out almost entirely from the Path riddle rather than the Room riddle. It's such a common misconception though that you[*] should still have considered it... Although maybe it's not such a common misconception anymore? Are people so far removed from knowledge of the classics that they don't know of Atlas as anything other than a book of maps. Or maybe it's another level of the riddle? That's the trouble with riddles like this - you never know when to *stop* digging deeper! [* I say 'you' as by this point I'd cheated and searched Google the solution!] NeoAnjou fucked around with this message at 13:13 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 12:50
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I think it would be fine if there were more clues that could help you confirm your hypothetical answer. But Maze, as established, has a lot of hints that only make sense after the correct answer has already been confirmed. Given just the hints "What house will all/none live in?" and "Like Atlas, you bear it on your shoulders"... I think both "heaven" (everyone in heaven is dead - although it's conflating the Abrahamic afterlife with the Greek one, whatever) and "earth" are reasonable answers to arrive at.
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Dec 3, 2014 13:08
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It's earth. Either everyone will live on this planet or we will gently caress things up and no one will live here. If you go by the religious answear "heaven" then the riddle doesn't make sense because it's not true that everyone will live on heaven in any situation. Because some people just won't go to heaven, some will go to hell, remember? So between the answears Earth and Heaven it's obvious the correct choice is Earth. Big Edit: it's true that the original Atlas held the Heavens on top of his shoulders, and not he world. But it's a very common misconception that he did hold Earth itself and not just the heavens:  You have to remember this book predates the internet. Nowadays it's very easy to find information about myths and ancient symbolism but when it was written it was a huge task and took a lot of research to get all those mythological references right. It's not surprising that the author made at least one small mistake and I think it doesn't diminish the book at all. The bottom line is: Traditionally labyrinths and mazes are about self discovery. Like, walking through a maze you get yourself involved in deep thoughts trying to solve it but what you get when you solve it isn't a matherial prize you get for winning. What you get is all that time that you spent alone with your thoughts, it's a very introspective experience. That's why I like the book Maze, it does a great job in representing this introspection with each page, inviting the reader to delve deeper and try to comprehend a labyrinth of clues and red herrings. What you get in the end? There is no "you win" page, like someone said before the ending is anticlimatic. That's because wandering through a maze is in itself the prize, not what you get when you come out of it. You are supposed to value the intellectual challange and the introspective atmosphere. Now, What is this Maze about? It's about thinking through each page again and again trying to find hidden meaning in each image and each message. The thing is, the Maze does have a hidden message and it's about ecology. I really think each room has some message to tell us about our environment and how we are destroying it. In most pages it's just a very light hint that only makes sense when you already know the answear to it's main riddle. But once you learn that the answear is Earth because we can all live in this planet or we can destroy it and then none will live here, once you learn that you can go back and revisit all the pages and most of them tell us something about a incoming disaster. The image of the ruined tower whcih appear in several places is one such an example of disaster that is coming. The room with the pit as well. The room with the dead tree. Once you know the anwear to the riddle is Earth you know what disaster the author is referencing: ecological catastrophe. That's my personal theory about the book. Kanthulhu fucked around with this message at 16:05 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 3, 2014 15:41
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Kanthulhu posted:If you go by the religious answear "heaven" then the riddle doesn't make sense because it's not true that everyone will live on heaven in any situation. Because some people just won't go to heaven, some will go to hell, remember? That's not what I said - "heaven" matches the clue "What house will none live in?" because no one who is in heaven is alive. It doesn't rule out there being people elsewhere, alive or not, but no one who is in heaven is alive. Thus, it is a house that none will live in. Kanthulhu posted:You have to remember this book predates the internet. Nowadays it's very easy to find information about myths and ancient symbolism but when it was written it was a huge task and took a lot of research to get all those mythological references right. It's not surprising that the author made at least one small mistake and I think it doesn't diminish the book at all. I don't think it's a "small" mistake when there was literally $10,000 in prize money hinging on the answer. That seems like the one thing you should make extra double sure you know what the heck you're asking for.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:19
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:That's not what I said - "heaven" matches the clue "What house will none live in?" because no one who is in heaven is alive. It doesn't rule out there being people elsewhere, alive or not, but no one who is in heaven is alive. Thus, it is a house that none will live in. I don't think there are two riddles with two different answears. Like "What house will all/none live in?" is to be understood as just one riddle, IMHO. The answear to it is Earth becasue either we will all live in this world or none will live in it (because we will have destroyed the ecosystem).
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Dec 3, 2014 16:27
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The hints asked you to choose between "all" or "none". Not to pick both of them. Only one leads to the answer. I have no clue where you're getting any references to the ecosystem. That sounds like projection on your part.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:30
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:The hints asked you to choose between "all" or "none". Not to pick both of them. Only one leads to the answer. Yes, you have to choose between making the world a place for all to live in or through inaction a world where no one will be able to live in. Either everyone works together to change the course of destruction of the ecosystem or we will all perish and then noone will live in this house.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:33
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:That's not what I said - "heaven" matches the clue "What house will none live in?" because no one who is in heaven is alive. It doesn't rule out there being people elsewhere, alive or not, but no one who is in heaven is alive. Thus, it is a house that one will live in. One thing I just thought: People who believe that good people go to heaven believe they will "live" there. To say everyone in heaven will be there but won't be alive is seriously not understanding how this "eternal life" thing works.
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Dec 3, 2014 16:53
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Kanthulhu posted:The bottom line is: Traditionally labyrinths and mazes are about self discovery. Like, walking through a maze you get yourself involved in deep thoughts trying to solve it but what you get when you solve it isn't a matherial prize you get for winning. What you get is all that time that you spent alone with your thoughts, it's a very introspective experience. I feel like the book is contradicting this interpretation, though, with the story about the Guide and the tour group. A chunk of the Guide's initial monologue is entirely on that theme: "Like all the others they think the Maze was made for them; actually, it is the other way around. They think I am some poet who will lead them through the symbols and spaces of this Underworld. They think I will teach them lessons. They should call me Cerberus.... I am the lesson." It's not entirely clear what the tour group wants, but it's obvious they see it as this sort of introspective exercise, something for edification and amusement. They have no concept that the maze even has a fail state, let alone the darkness waiting for them in the basement. The Guide knows, and that's the "lesson": that this isn't about fun, it's about life and death, and that there are forces out there who want you to fail. I've been meaning to make a huge effortpost compiling the pieces of evidence that I think point to the Guide being the Minotaur, but thematically, this is the big one. The Labyrinth of the Minotaur was a dangerous trap that ended in death for people who weren't Theseus, and the Guide's lesson is that this maze is no different, even if it looks more amusing. The Guide presumably looks innocuous and has had time to develop his mental faculties, but he's still the Minotaur at heart, devourer of seekers. The Lesson of the Maze is that what you think of as an idle self-improvement exercise may have stakes much larger than your amusement and that at the heart of every puzzle is something that would gladly eat you alive. (I suppose you could argue that this fits with the ecological metaphor you're describing, since environmental science is a field with huge stakes that a lot of people don't take seriously, but I feel like the ecology thing is reaching anyway. It's not like you need an outside metaphor to explain why the Maze has imagery of destruction and disaster...)
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Dec 3, 2014 20:29
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I agree the guide is th Minotaur and I think it fits my interpretation for the book having a message about ecology: the Minotaur has a dual nature: Half man, half beast. Half rationality, half voracious beast that wants to consume everything it sees. That's a pretty clear symbolism, isn't it?. The Minotaur represents all of us. That's why the guide says "I am the lesson". Either we use our rationality to solve the problems our planet faces or we use our voractious beast nature to consume it all and end everything. It connects with the riddle, as you can see. As for the point of the Maze being introspection, I believe that's the nature of all real-world mazes, even though the big one in mythology was meant as a trap and not a self improvement tool. The reason for that is if you actually go into a maze what you get is a lot of time to think about your life, all alone while you try to puzzle it out. That's just what mazes do. And I think the Book Maze does that as well. Edit: For the people that are going to say I'm reaching, in case this isn't clear - I agree I'm reaching. What I'm talking about is how I see the Maze. I think what makes this book so great is that it can be interpreted in different ways. This is how I see the Maze: The book has a riddle in every page, a riddle in the central room, a riddle in the path you take and the book itself is a riddle because it has a message that you have to figure out after solving all the other riddles. Pretty cool. Kanthulhu fucked around with this message at 01:58 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 01:50
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And here's the last update.  That is all. This LP is now complete. TONS of thanks to Into The Abyss where I got more than my share of "answers." This was my first SA LP. Anyone curious enough to check my channel will find a crap ton of casual Let's Plays. I meant what I said at the end of the video. I felt this Let's Play sub-forum required something better than my normal videos. I know I screwed up here and there, but I hope this LP was to your liking and to the standards of at least the mediocre SA Let's Players. Thanks for one crazy, introspective, and conspiracy filled November. Extra Credit: Who is the Guide?
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Dec 4, 2014 02:09
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Don't worry, for this rather unique type of game you did a fine job. I think the largest source of confusion on the part of the thread was more a product of the times than the Maze itself. This book was published in the mid-80's by an individual that had grown up during the Cold War. Hell, the Cold War was ongoing in '85. When the clue talks about the "house we all live in", I imagine that Manson was referring to the ideological conflict between the various ideologies, and pointing out that whatever our differences, we all share the same world. The riddle of the path follows suit with the suggestion that we, the reader, bare the weight of the world, as the world was still very much at risk of nuclear annihilation if the population let too many wing-nuts into power. I think I saw some posters make the assumption that the "house we all live in" as an ecological reference, which is a define possibility and would be at the top of the list if the book were published today. Also, the moment "Atlas" came up, I would guess the majority of the thread leap to the conclusion that the answer was some variant of "Weight of the world", because Atlas isn't really associated with much else. "Shoulders" was harder to come by, so if you just had "Like _____ you bear it on your _________ " the thread might have stuck with a simple answer, but since Atlas came up so quickly, everyone assumed the answer had to be deeper.
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Dec 4, 2014 04:18
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Grimwit posted:Extra Credit: Who is the Guide? Since the LP is officially over, I took a look at Into The Abyss, and of all the suggestions for the guide's identity, I like Hermes the best. Edit: I went through real quick, and every blank door has a one way door that matches up with it. KillHour fucked around with this message at 07:15 on Dec 4, 2014 |
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Dec 4, 2014 06:54
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It's "bear" the weight of the world, just fyi. Same as the animal, not the same as naked. I would love to see an effortpost full of Guide identity clues. I am way too lazy to look for them myself.
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Dec 4, 2014 09:57
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Thank you for the trip, OP.
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Dec 4, 2014 13:57
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Grimwit posted:And here's the last update. A Raven.
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Dec 4, 2014 17:19
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Spookyelectric posted:A Raven. How is he like a writing desk? If someone makes an effort post about the guide, I'll link in in the OP.
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Dec 4, 2014 18:07
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I support the idea of the guide being the Minotaur. He's just a different type of Minotaur. Instead of outright killing people lost in the maze he's either 1) Luring them down into the basement or 2) Leading them in circles. He's as dangerous and deadly as the Minotaur of legend, but just in a different way. I picture him trying to hide his monster body with one of the long coats and hats seen around the maze. Maybe with an umbrella he uses as a cane, too.
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Dec 4, 2014 19:01
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I vote for the Minotaur as well.
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Dec 4, 2014 19:07
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I always thought the Guide was...well Karma, Fate, Purpose, or similar. The maze is life and the choices you make. Sure you see the choices, but what they mean are blind to you, though there are "clues" to tell you the right one. It's all obvious in hindsight.
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Dec 4, 2014 19:25
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Vexrm posted:I always thought the Guide was...well Karma, Fate, Purpose, or similar. Like the puzzles in the maze, you think life doesn't have a solution, per se, and is open to interpretation? Should we have taken left when we took right? I don't speak that language. Things were so much simpler on the ground floor. I'm guessing the basement equates to drugs. 
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Dec 4, 2014 19:58
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I'm gonna make the worst pun before anyone else gets the chance. Thank you for this a-maze-ing LP, Grimwit.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:16
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 Good job. As to the guide, I have a feeling that 1) Manson had something specific in mind, 2) Manson did put clues towards the answer in the maze, but that 3) like the answer to the main riddle of the book, those clues will only make sense once you know the answer already and know exactly which inferences are valid and which are just coincidence. There are so many reasonable options and nothing absolutely conclusive, so I don't think we'll ever know.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:19
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I'll see if I can't compile all the little bits of information that we know about the guide, since they're spread out all across the maze. I probably won't be able to get to that till tonight though, if someone else wants to take a crack at that.
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Dec 4, 2014 20:49
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Okay, I'm going to give the Guide effortpost a shot and try to explain why I think these point to the Minotaur. In order of their appearance in the thread: Room 25: "…a high room with the image of a crown on the wall for everyone to see now. Though one of my parents might be lowborn, the other was close to a king…. I’ve always felt at home here." This pretty obviously establishes that the Guide has parents, and it implies a bit about their circumstances. I feel like having parents at all disqualifies Lucifer, and "close to a king" is interestingly weaselly. I think this reinforces the Minotaur theory; the Minotaur's mother was Queen Pasiphaë of Crete, who was of course close to King Minos, and his father was a bull, which is lowborn by anyone's standards. Room 7: "“Weren’t you ever irresponsible?” I asked, thinking of my childhood and how wild I had been." This establishes that the Guide both had a childhood, which disqualifies some mythological figures, and that his childhood was wild. A quick Wikipedia check gives a description of the Minotaur's early life: "Pasiphaë nursed him, but he grew and became ferocious, being the unnatural offspring of a woman and a beast, he had no natural source of nourishment and thus devoured man for sustenance." Hard to get much wilder than eating people, right? Room 16: "…a stone chamber which reminded me of my old neighbors. Of course, that was a long time ago now, but would you believe their descendants are still telling stories about me and my family to their children?" Through the doorway of Room 16, you can see a set of Greek columns -- Doric, I believe, in the same style used in the Parthenon in Athens. Athens is the most legendary "neighbor" of Crete, being the city tasked with sending the sacrifices to the Labyrinth, and the myth of the Minotaur still lives on in modern Greece and Western culture in general. (I realize that, with this one, you can argue that the stone chamber itself doesn't take very much from the Greek, but I think the columns are the clue here. That's Maze for you.) Note also that there's a visitor who catches a glimpse of the group and runs away; while the Guide suggests that the visitors frightened him, it seems a lot more likely that the Guide did. The hints that the Guide is in some way a frightening or malevolent figure are everywhere. Room 34: There's no direct Guide hints here, but we do see a picture of Theseus's black-sailed ship, which is associated with the Minotaur legend. Room 11: "…an airy room with many doors. It was a big space, but I still felt crowded. I’ve always hated confinement." The Minotaur was famously confined in the Labyrinth -- who could blame him for developing an aversion? Room 6: "I knew I shouldn’t have said anything. If you think of all the deceptions practiced in my family, particularly on my father…" This, I think, is a particularly interesting clue and one that hasn't been discussed much in the thread before now. The legend of the Minotaur begins with an act of deception: King Minos's refusal to sacrifice the white bull granted by Poseidon and substitution of one of his own animals, a deceptive act that enraged Poseidon and resulted in his cursing Pasiphaë. Next came the deception practiced on the Guide's/the Minotaur's father: the construction of the false cow which enabled the Minotaur's conception in the first place. Wikipedia even quotes the Heroides as describing the bull as "deluded." There's also the notice posted in the room. The very existence of the notice suggests that the Guide's true identity is malevolent (why else would a notice be necessary?), and note the wording on the last two lines, before it's destroyed: "no other tha[n] / th[e]." This suggests that the Guide's true name has a "the" in front of it, which points very strongly to the Minotaur on our list of suspects. Room 22: "It’s true, I am by nature extremely critical. Although my life is a lonely one I have not spared any of my guests the rigor of my judgment…. We all have our roles to play." This suggests that, in some way, the adversarial nature of the Guide is also a role he's been placed into, which mirrors the original fate of the Minotaur being placed in the labyrinth and his use as the killer of Athenian youths -- to sate his own hunger, of course, but also as a tool of King Minos's revenge on Athens. Trapping and destroying visitors to the Maze is both in the Guide's essential nature and a part of the role he must play. There's also a lot of sea-based imagery in this room. This has already been explained by the solution video as ultimately a red herring, but the inclusion of the trident makes me think of Poseidon, who's central to the Minotaur myth and caused the Minotaur's conception. Room 15: "Leaning on the sacrificial tripod I was suddenly moved to say, “Perhaps these numbers relate to each other in some specific combination…” Immediately I regretted this act of charity…sometimes I think, after all these years, that I don’t really know myself." This isn't a big hint or anything, but "sacrificial tripod" is specifically associated with Apollo and the Delphic tradition, and the guide recognizing it and referring to it properly suggests once again that he's of Greek origin. We also have a Theseus reference in this room, for another hint about the Minotaur. Room 32: "Their attitude was really beginning to irritate me. I have come to think of all the inhabitants of this House as members of my little kingdom. People can be so arrogant…in a very real way we are all of us animals, at least in part." I'm not even going to bother explaining this one, given how blatant it is. It's already been discussed in-thread, anyway, but come on.
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Dec 4, 2014 23:37
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Antivehicular posted:Through the doorway of Room 16, you can see a set of Greek columns -- Doric, I believe, in the same style used in the Parthenon in Athens. The curvy top suggests a Corinthian column to me. We see another one of those straight-up in room 44, along a statue of Pallas Athena (minus her spear) in the background. I don't recognize the other two statues. Antivehicular posted:Room 15: "Leaning on the sacrificial tripod I was suddenly moved to say, “Perhaps these numbers relate to each other in some specific combination…” Immediately I regretted this act of charity…sometimes I think, after all these years, that I don’t really know myself." To make the reference to Delphi doubly clear, "I don't really know myself" is probably a reference to the phrase "γνῶθι σεαυτόν", "Know Thyself", one of the Delphic maxims and which was inscribed on a wall in Apollo's temple at Delphi. Additional Guide clues: Room 23: "“Look at those two trees out there,” one said, looking over my shoulder, which is not easy to do." This makes it sound like the Guide is quite tall or perhaps has something obstructing the view over his shoulders. The Minotaur seems to fit both of those bills. Room 1: "They never noticed my crown, my pain, the fire in my eyes." No strong ideas what this refers to, but it's probably a clue. "Like all the others they think the Maze was made for them; actually, it is the other way around." The meaning of "the other way around" is ambiguous, but it could be interpreted as the Maze having been made for the Guide. The Cretan Labyrinth was built expressly to hide away the Minotaur. "They think I am some poet who will lead them through the symbols and spaces of this Underworld." This is a pretty clear reference to Virgil. The Minotaur does appear in Inferno, and Virgil has a brief interaction with him, but this is not really a direct connection given all the other random beings the two encounter in that work. More importantly, the real-world Virgil is perhaps most well known for writing the Aeneid, which does mention the story of the Minotaur. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Dec 5, 2014 |
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Dec 5, 2014 00:08
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Well.. I think we have the official goon candidate for the identity of the Guide. Unless someone can make a better connection, but I'm not sure about that considering how well molded the Minotaur is to these clues.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:09
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I feel like it's too obvious.
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Dec 5, 2014 03:39
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KillHour posted:I feel like it's too obvious. I can see that argument given the rest of the book. I feel like the clues hint towards the Minotaur if we assume Manson is playing fair, but given how manifestly he isn't, the Guide really could be anyone or anything. There's just a point where you have to approach it as a "fair" puzzle because otherwise, what can you even do?
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Dec 5, 2014 03:56
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Is there a right answer for the guide, something that's been verified by the author/publisher etc.? I would google it but I'm afraid of spoiling it for myself.
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Dec 5, 2014 05:05
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bawbzilla posted:Is there a right answer for the guide, something that's been verified by the author/publisher etc.? I would google it but I'm afraid of spoiling it for myself. No
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Dec 5, 2014 08:13
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Hyper Crab Tank posted:"Like all the others they think the Maze was made for them; actually, it is the other way around." It seemed fairly unambiguous to me that the quote meant the guests were made for the maze, which is true - they exist to facilitate the reader's journey through the maze, and their interactions are part of the puzzles.
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Dec 5, 2014 09:35
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What an amazing ride this has been. I still want to believe that this was just a very confusing viral marketing ploy for The Animals, because its the kind of detached-from-reality answer that The Maze makes. Alternative: It's an even MORE subtle viral marketing ploy for The Doors.  However, lets be a bit more detatched-from-reality. There is no Guide. Instead, he is quite literally the subconscious id of all of the guests, that impulsive drive that isn't quite obvious that you aren't really thinking things through before jumping into the unknown. It's the sense of mystery that everyone has, the 60s-Batman-Era level of solution grabbing, because THERE ARE NO SOLUTIONS. You need to be curious to live, and the id is literally your curious nature. The Maze is the solution. The question is "What will make you think like a child with infinite curiosity, no matter how old you actually are?"
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Dec 6, 2014 01:29
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Antivehicular posted:Okay, I'm going to give the Guide effortpost a shot and try to explain why I think these point to the Minotaur. In order of their appearance in the thread... I've linked to this and Hyper Crab's post about the guide in the OP. These are strong cases. KillHour posted:I feel like it's too obvious. Alive in Wonderland. Just say'n. This book is so open to interpretation that it's a matter of how far down the rabbit hole you want to go. We could look at it from the surface and say the Guide is just the architect of the Maze or we can say the Author is the guide. Here's another theory from Into The Abyss by "Just a Kid Again." Just a Kid Again posted:I think the Guide is Hermes, of Greek mythology. That should put the cats among the pigeons.
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Dec 6, 2014 16:10
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