From:"Jimmy Williams" Wed 11:29 PM Subject: RE: The Maze To: "john bailey" John, I was thrilled to find the material on the Maze on the web. I'd looked a few years ago and figured I would find something, but never did. I guess I looked just slightly too early since most of the discussion appears to have happened in 1999 and 2000. But I have some to add that me and my brother came up with years ago that I feel is "right", so I thought I'd share. Someone forwarded the idea that each room has a "solution" to lead them to the next room. Maybe it only makes sense for the rooms that are on the shortest path to have solutions, but I feel like I "solved" one that is not on the shortest path in the official answer. Maybe others have already thought of this, but I didn't see it in the correspondence posted, so I thought I'd write. You may want to look at the page again yourself, so I'll leave some spoiler space. Grab your books and turn to Room 34, or follow this link to the on-line version: http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/german/books/holt/books/maze/rooms/34.html The answer to the room is actually a word, which I take to be the key to which door to pick. The answer is something that appears in most of the items in the room. The word is "eye". There's a picture of a potato, which has eyes. The ship has an eye on it (though the ship could stand for something else as well.) Maybe someone can tell me how the picture of the supposed Washington Monument fits in. I don't have my book and can't see it well, but I don't remember it fitting in. The other two items are puzzles in themselves, and are what really make me feel I have the answer. The cane with the tag that says "quick" is almost obvious once you have the answer. A cane is held in the hand. And as we all know, the hand is quicker than the eye! The three words on the paper on the table are jibe, pine, and compass. These form their own puzzle with a word as an answer. The answer for the paper is "needle". To "jibe" someone means to joke them or to goad them. Needle can mean this as well. Of course a pine tree has lots of needles, and a compass always has a needle. And a needle is just one more thing that has an eye! So how does the word "eye" give an "answer" to the room? Well, pronounced, "eye" is the same as "aye" which means "yes". Therefore the correct door to choose is the one with "yes" above it, or room 25. Maybe this answer has nothing to do with the path, riddle, or answer, but was put here as a red herring to get you to think that the room was important because it has an answer. If so, it makes me wonder how many other rooms have "answers" that no one has discovered. One last note, I don't subscribe to the view that every room has a corresponding letter (or two) (mordacai.txt) but some rooms do since there are the ones that spell out "shoulders" in the clue to the riddle's answer. If this room were to have a corresponding letter, the letter would obviously be "I". Maybe that's what eye is supposed to refer to. I would feel more confident that the answer indeed refers to door 25 if I knew door 25 would lead one more quickly to the center of the maze than 10 would, but I haven't figured that out for sure. I had lots of other little ideas about the book years ago, but I'm not sure any were grand enough to be posted. But I'd love to hear others' tidbits. Feel free to e-mail them to me. Jimmy (omajim@megsinet.net)