MAZE: The World's Most Challenging Riddle

Long before social networks, online videos, and the Web itself, riddles required phone calls, handwritten notes, and enormous patience. They could even take the form of a book, burning millions of brains for years on end. That was the case with MAZE, a 1985 publication that promised a prize of ten thousand dollars to anyone capable of solving it…

A barrel full of water weighs 20 kilograms. What should you add to it to make it weigh 15? There is something simply irresistible about riddles. For some, it's the challenge as a whole—walking through every step and understanding the mechanism, rather than reaching the correct answer. Throughout history, we have encountered riddles with no answers, enduring even longer than the identity of their creators. If an answer does exist, it seems meager compared to the effort and determination of the one who tries to find it.

Sometimes, a riddle is nothing more than a path to a deeper level of thinking (like the “sound of the palm of one hand” and the “original face” of Buddhism), but in general, its goal is entertainment. Let's travel back to 1985. In October of that year, Henry Holt & Company, a publisher with almost 150 years in the market, published a book called MAZE: Solve the World's Most Challenging Puzzle, created by Christopher Manson.

MAZE: A Riddle That Still Baffles

Manson's proposal is this: MAZE is not really a book, but a maze disguised as a book. Each page is a room with puzzles inside, and its doors lead to other rooms. In total, MAZE consists of 45 pages, and Manson's final challenge is divided into three tasks: go from room 1 to room 45 and back to room 1 in sixteen steps, correctly interpret the riddle of the last room using visual and verbal clues, and discover its hidden solution through the shortest path found in the first task.

Complicated as it may be, that's for sure, but the publisher, along with a law firm, added something to stimulate readers: a prize of ten thousand dollars for the first one to achieve it. In September 1987, the contest was declared over (after being extended twice), and four months later, it became known that the winners (or rather, those who came closest to the solution) were ten, albeit with a detail: all found the 16-step route, but none of them solved the riddle of room 45. In a classic Solomonic decision, the prize was split equally.

Eventually, the riddle was solved, but that is not the point at all. It is estimated that the book contains more than 100 riddles, and only about 20 percent have been documented. Its fans believe it is impossible to create a real “map” of MAZE, due to the strange and unexpected connections between rooms. The book was adapted into a video game, The Riddle of the Maze for the Macintosh in 1994, while the famous Myst saga took MAZE as one of its many sources of inspiration.

Manson always had the idea of making a sequel with a hundred rooms, but the publisher never gave him the green light, despite the spectacular reception the first book received. The most challenging riddle in the world, a legion of enthusiasts who almost forty years later continue to get lost in the rooms, and an incalculable legacy, all generated by a genius with an empty bank account, who placed his hands in warm water to ward off cramps from so much drawing and writing. And the best part? MAZE is still available at a more than reasonable price. If you decide to buy it... good luck. You'll need it.

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