A Maze to Amaze
1: MAZE and Into The Abyss
The book worth $10,000 if you’re smart enough
In 1985, a publisher released a book with a contest: the first person to ‘Solve the World’s Most Challenging Puzzle’ would win $10,000. The book was MAZE; not really a book, but a building in the shape of a book. They had to extend the contest deadline twice, and in the end they split the prize money between the twelve people who kind of got near but didn’t quite solve it.
That’s not the best part.
Each page of the book was a ‘room’, with gorgeous art depicting the room visually, and a short passage. Woven into the beautiful art were puzzles and clues; solved, the puzzles revealed more clues. And just in case you missed one or couldn’t solve another, each page held more than one clue to point you to the right answer (or tempt you to the wrong one).
Here’s what the first room looked like (this is a truncated image, because copyright). Each numbered door led to a room/page, and there was one ‘correct’ way to navigate the rooms and find the answer. Clues were hidden in the narration; in plain sight, and in metaphorical meaning amid red herrings.
That’s not the best part.
MAZE inspired several generations of puzzle-solvers and art-lovers and idea-thinkers and game-players; purportedly MYST was heavily inspired by this, as was a Lara Croft level and a tribute puzzle using entirely words. To solve it you need math, Wikipedia, a classical education in literature, hardcore logic and rationality, and a willingness to solve a puzzle that basically nobody really understood or knew or cared about.
Doing difficult things is fun.
But the best part for me is IntoTheAbyss.net. A fan of MAZE solved 44 of the 45 puzzles in every room to his satisfaction, contacted the original author, got permission, and put up all 45 rooms online, with images analysis, invited comments from others and even solved the room he couldn’t figure out.
MAZE is pretty much a work of genius; intricate, beautiful and governed by rules. IntoTheAbyss is a labour of love — carefully mapping every room, curating comments and additional solutions, explaining each detail, solving and explaining every puzzle so you can appreciate the genius, the hard work, the hints and teaching you to taste all the little notes and nuances. A guide to the MAZE, for a much better experience. And, ingeniously, it allows you to play through MAZE itself, and discover its beautiful ideas.
Annoyingly, the creator of IntoTheAbyss kept up with the site for 45 months, and then announced he would no longer be posting. 1 month for each room, and then he (or she) abandoned all work on the site. He even added a treatise about the specific date of publication, the numerology and the choice of months, paying homage in his own way to the puzzles and ideas.
2: Deep Depth and Density
Good food and great ideas taste better with effort
I’ve written before about delicious ideas; ideas which have depth and density and texture and nuances in the taste. Like a wine, mulled over time or a dish carefully prepared to bring out the full range of flavours. Hard work, intensity, and love — these are all aspects you can taste in ideas.
Jokes, puzzles, stories, photographs —there is an art to creating them, even if you do not consider them art. And if they make you feel something, then you can also sense the work and effort that went into building it. We love elaborate set-ups and punchlines and intricate puzzles and horizon-broadening stories and mind-blowing photographs, especially if they are rare or hard to create or recreate. We can taste the effort like the wok hei of a stir-fried dish : unmistakeable, aromatic, and a true mark of mastery.
One of the favourite things I’ve read is a 17-page treatise, composed by a fan on Tumblr, extensively crowdsourced and cross-referenced across primary and secondary sources and social media, about how Taylor Swift was dating Celebrity A. The core argument is to convince you that these two are dating, but it’s done with such aplomb and intent you must applaud.
Also, they did it for literally no money.
3: For Love or Fandom
The secret ingredient is
Into the Abyss represents a labour of love; I’ve just discovered the author created it to revitalise interest in MAZE, create a community and excite the people. The first post appeared in 2013, and the work ran for 3 years before the 45-month deadline with thousands of comments from contributors. I’m pleased to see the latest comment was 18-Jan, just a few days before I wrote this.
Without IntoTheAbyss, I would not have discovered MAZE; so the website has served as an effective trap and opened the door to lure me into its mysteries. Without such a wonderful explanation with the answers to the puzzles, I would not have cared about MAZE, or gone to google it. And these are the fruits that fandom has wrought: a forum thread where people collectively tried to solve (and successfully!) navigated the MAZE; the aforementioned word-only puzzle-tribute-homage, a MAZECAST YouTube video series/podcast with only 251 views, but still ongoing, and even this blog.
Good work inspires fans to create their own work.
Now, open the door…
