Maze: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle Paperback – November 15, 1985

THE BOOK IS AS OF YET UNSOLVED:Despite the efforts of thousands of people since its publication, this book has yet to be fully solved. At least four chat groups have appeared and disappeared over the years devoted to cracking the puzzles in this book. If you search online you will find the solution to the 16 room path and the hidden message in the center room but that leaves 29 rooms unsolved and many rooms on the 16 room path have puzzles that have yet to be solved. The $10,000 prize originally attached to this book in 1985 went unclaimed for many months. Eventually they distributed the amount to the individuals who were the closest to a solution. Solving a room, or part of a room, can take weeks, but the feeling of satisfaction is huge... "I solved a room of one of the world's most difficult puzzles!"THERE IS A SUPPORT GROUP: [ IntoTheAbyss.net ]The solution to the main puzzle and attempts at solutions for the other rooms can be found at the forum IntoTheAbyss.net launched this year (2013). The multitude of posts shows just how popular and difficult the book is.IT IS THE WORLD'S GREATEST SOLVABLE PUZZLE:I am a fan of puzzles and am very familiar with the scope of available puzzles, in my opinion this is by far the greatest puzzle ever created. It is a masterpiece. The sheer brilliance of its construction is staggering once you delve into it. A few years ago a mathematician attempted to show the relationship between the rooms visually, the result looks like a diagram of the internet. One of the unsolved puzzles is the identity of the unseen "guide." People have theorized that the guide is the Minotaur, King Minos, Icarus, Hades, Christopher Manson (the author), God, Satan, a demon, even an umbrella. Somewhere in the book is the answer.An example of a solution:In room room 32 is banner which says "Sea bag O.K." If you take "Sea" instead as "C" then it becomes an anagram for "Go Back." This solution is confirmed by the fact that unless the reader returns the way they came they will wind up in one of the inescapable trap rooms or stuck in a loop that goes back to the entrance. However the room also contains a bird and a missing statue, how do these relate to the message? I figured it out, the answer is not online and I'm not telling.An example of a yet to be solved room:In this room are four pictures. 1. A scale tipped to the left. 2. A tail. 3. The phrase "WOMANS JEWELRY" written from bottom to top in 3 letter increments. 4. A sign that says, "H+OO." In the center of the room is a trident. As of yet I have not heard from anyone who has a good idea of what this room is trying to say, and I have no clue. No doubt the solution is a phrase of some kind. And since the room is a trap, the phrase probably conveys in some way that the reader is doomed.INCREDIBLE MOODY, ATMOSPHERIC ARTWORK:The ink cross hashed images are exceedingly detailed. Manson's ability to convey shadow and light using this method is amazing. The style (and mood) is reminiscent of Edward Gorey, the artist most commonly known for illustrating the introduction to Masterpiece Mystery. There is nothing scary in the book, but much of it is oddly disturbing. A quote from room 31, "... a melancholy little courtyard surrounded by a brick wall too high to see over. A dead tree lifts its bone white branches to a sky filling with gray clouds." The picture fits the description, it's just a tree in a courtyard. But as I study the page for clues I notice that the branches look like bones, the faces on the doors look strange, and suddenly I feel a chill. This kind of experience is almost universal for people who really get into the book.FOR SEEKERS, NOT CHILDREN:This book is not for young children, it may give them the willies and they will get nowhere. This book is for fans of eerie, practically unsolvable puzzles who are MENSA candidates or artistic free thinkers. It is for people who like the Twilight Zone, LOST, and House of Leaves. It is for people who stray from normal life, past where the sidewalk ends, and wander down the rabbit hole. It is one of the most curious and unique books ever made. Christopher Manson once said that with every book he made he was seeking to create a perfect book... he may have succeeded.

I love these kinds of puzzles. Interesting art. So much ambiguity that people will look at the rooms and come up with completely different conclusions; or more usually the case, not come up with an answer at all and just enjoy the confusion. You won't even know if you're still on the right path, but every room is interesting. So many directions your mind can wander. It's fun to play with someone else, bouncing ideas off each other.That said, often when I was most sure of an answer, I was supposedly wrong. There are solutions that I just can't agree with. I've read answers online, and some of them feel much less logical to me than what I came up with. And many of them I couldn't come up with any answer for. So if you're looking for a satisfying triumph, you're very unlikely to find it. You can at least graph out the maze to figure out the correct path, which is what I actually ended up doing. And I can at least agree the final riddle and answer are more tangible, but I was not close to figuring out that one, and it seems a little removed from the atmosphere of the story. I hear that's because the publisher wanted to run a contest with a concise answer. In fact the story hits pretty heavily on a different question, but the answer to that one is pretty unsatisfying.Speaking of the story, I like the narration throughout. It's dark and mysterious. But the book gives you no hints about what are the actual hints to solving rooms. You can't distinguish from clue and red herring. I understood that the Guide was dropping hints, but sometimes the hint is what the other characters say, and from a story point they are just bumbling through the maze without a clue so I didn't pay as close attention to them. And sometimes you'll recognize what objects in a room reference too, but won't know whether that means to select a door or avoid a door. Often you'll see a reoccurring object, and might have a theory about it, but still not know where to go with it from there. I was confused about the way doors work at first. It seems logical that once you know where a door leads to, that you can go back through it in the other direction. That is not the case. Otherwise you could make it through the maze in a much shorter path. And some doors have pictures instead of numbers, so I thought perhaps you could find out the meaning of a picture to link it to a number. So I wouldn't say this is a 100% a puzzle book. It's better to call it a puzzling book, an art book, and an experience.Note the book doesn't come with any answers, but there are mostly unofficial answers online (the author did confirm some answers).

One of my favorite books and I can't ever find others like it. It was in great condition at a reasonable price.