The Maze (spoilers)

So I recently picked up a copy of an old book called "The Maze" I had read before and enjoyed, but felt like I didn't completely grasp. It's like a choose your own adventure book, presented as a puzzle with significant depth in only 45 pages. While I realize this is a very niche thing to spoil, this post contains not just extensive spoilers, but also a solution akin to "100 wise men, with hats!" Only read on if that is what you are looking for.

The Maze seems to have a darkness to it. The overwhelmingly apparent theme is that there is no real way out, and that even the correct path is simply a return to where you began, but that there are many others who are not nearly so lucky. Reading message boards dedicated to the book, this theme echoes and resounds, claiming that it is a metaphor for life, complete with all manner of dark commentary about the futility of experience. When I read it though I brought my own perspective to the maze, as we all do. It could be that such intense problem solving drive and ability often couples with a sense of despair, as it does seem that the more you understand about the mechanisms of this world in which we live, the darker it gets. That does not mean we must surrender to darkness though and, per usual, as I scraped to solve the messages of the maze in my own way, I started to realize such scraping seemed an intentional request. The hope was always meant to be the faintest glimmer, something glimpsed and accomplished perhaps uniquely, so as not to discourage other visitors in yet another way, while the hope remained yet undiscovered. Here is what I attempted to post to a board, just the other day (as of today, 1/13/21, the comment has not cleared moderation though).

"As an optimist, I have found a slightly longer but much more fulfilling solution to the maze. So, the path in is pretty standard as described (except you pick up the hammer and axe from room 4 (more on this shortly)). On the way back you go 45->23->8->12->39->11. 'Whatever you do don’t touch that!' Psh, you have not been helping at all mysterious stranger. You press the bell repeatedly and everyone stuck in room 24 uses the sound to make their way out of the darkness (what is that, +21 people, including one eyed Joe?). So now you journey on together. -> 40->38. In 38, the monkey knows this dude is lying to us when he says it’s impossible to climb up the slippery slide, there’s clearly an 8 on that door he’s trying to hide! If you’re gonna flip a 17, I’m gonna deduce a carved over 8. So we utilize our newly increased party size to make a kind of human ladder to reach the top of the slide, and then pull everyone out. -> 8->12->39. In 39 the chopping and hammering these other guys are talking about is us, you dorks! No man left behind, not even the jester. We use the hammer and axe we picked up in room 4 to break open the brick wall -> 4-> 15->37->20->(pet the turtle)->1 and everyone gets out."

As I read into the things the host and the author said in the rooms I highlighted, I recognized that this glimmer of hope was not just there and real, but was intentionally being spoken against. It did not seem like these lies and false warnings were malicious, however. In fact, once this trend was understood, they seemed honest and helpful, in their own way. I have said before in other ways that if you always lie about a topic, consistently saying the exact opposite of what is intended, once seen it is a mirror of telling the truth (referencing a similar thing to when I said that if you determine your belief based on the opposite of what your enemy believes you are in fact letting them determine your beliefs, basically that a consistent binary tether is at most 1 step from the truth). While the guide seems inconsistent regarding many things, and it is hard to tell if he is trying to help or hurt, he seems to be always obfuscating and lying about this hope, as if in an attempt to guide one who understands this tendency directly to it, but only once this stance is known. While I only charted the one extra path, I imagine there are several others that allow for imaginative methods of rescue, movement, and discovery of all kinds. The simple truth of this maze is that it is rife with puzzles, and only a few seem to be in regard to the shortest path and its hidden riddle. In fact, it is reported that the author/artist did not intend the shortest path riddle as the focus, but this and the contest were added as a gimmick to sell more copies after the fact by the publisher. 

Even the puzzle itself feels misanswered to a degree. In the prologue, the author, speaking as the host, says "The monstrous walls rise up and run away as far as the human eye can see, circling and dividing. Which half is The Maze?" From the very outset the author points something out about a human solving a maze, which is that it can be viewed as two mazes interacting, when considering the shape of the human mind. Is the maze before the eye of the observer, or behind it? The most common version of the riddle is "what house will all live in?" although there are other versions. The hint at the answer is "Like Atlas, you bear it on your shoulders." Now, both of these were solved by internet dwellers much more directly clever than myself, and the common answer is "The world." Consider, however, that "one's own mind" also fits, as this too is upon one's shoulders, and as the author hints up front, is a maze, a structure fashioned by its architect, in and of itself. 

Not only that, but the host says we should call him Cerberus, who is not a guide but a guard (which is fitting in regards to the role he plays with respect to the hope in the house), but he also says "I am the lesson." Now, simply saying "I am the lesson" would have sufficed, and made the point more clear. While this curiosity was likely swept under the rug of obfuscation and poetry, given how much was apparent in the rest of the book, it is almost as if the references to Greek figures were meant to be intentionally superfluous. Keeping this in mind, when combined with the answer clue, "you bear it on your shoulders" boils down to one's own mind much more clearly, but it reveals something else, perhaps something meant to be uncovered in Greek mythology: What if Atlas was not some hulking brute who literally carried the Earth, but was instead one tasked with maintaining the structure of this realm through architecture of thought? What if Atlas was meant to represent the dreamer of this place in which we all live? As I have said before, a function of eep is that we will all end up with a private realm as imagined and forged while on Earth, so it seems this image fits. While we all live on Earth now, we will all inhabit our own minds in the end. The idea of eep is that this structure can be fitted to allow for those within to reconnect, once each is separated out. The shenanigans I present on traversing the maze are an example of a way to allow for that reconnection; even if the door was only left cracked open by the subconscious, it is a door nonetheless. Not only does it allow for reconnection, but also a sense of absolution for the dreamer by freeing those who have become trapped along the way, while still leaving in place those who seem to enjoy their surroundings and bring light to them (the musicians, artist, and animals, to name some). 

The internal mechanisms of anyone's mind can be a frightening place for the wrong observers. If you dig past a certain point you become a visitor on the same level, whether you intend to or not. For other observers this delving can bring inspiration and love, even in minds that are on the surface marked heavily with despair. As we see in this maze, visitors can make changes, often negative, by breaking down walls or digging pits for their own purposes. With a little imagination though, similar alterations can be done positively, like sprucing up a room, tending to the garden, putting in a hooka lounge in room 22, a restaurant in 23 (or maybe even 24 at a stretch, like the scene in About Time), or a man cave in 35. It just seems like once the element of tension is removed from a place, you can truly enjoy it, memorizing the paths to get from place to place and turning the labyrinth of the mind into a home that can be freely shared.

Annual review update 1/13(/14)/22: Fixed a connection error (added the 4 before 15), and also brought the candles and matches this time, from rooms 4 and 8. I gave a candle to the jester to help get the darkness dwellers out, with two candles we had a lot more reach and between that and the sound of the bell, getting everyone out was a snap. I feel like I kind of did a loop in the instructions, but it looks like whether you free the jester yourself and use the candles to get everyone out, or use the bell to get everyone out and then free the jester might be interchangeable, as long as everyone's out by the time you do the 38->8 human ladder up the slide thing. It was fun revisiting this one.