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You wake up in an underground maze, at the location marked with $X$ in the below image. A voice tells you: "You need to find the exit of the maze if you want to live!". You begin to panic and run around the maze, but just after a few minutes you find the exit and escape. You are still in a cave, so you head to what seems to be an exit, when suddenly a crazy man jumps in front of you with a gun in his hand and says: "If you followed all the clues in the maze and don't want to get shot you would be able to tell me what's the color of the sky outside right now!".

What do you tell the crazy man?

Maze

Notes

  1. I will only accept an answer that can explain how you came to the solution.
  2. The "cave" you enter after leaving the maze is just meant to prevent you from the seeing the color of the sky. You can imagine that the end of the maze is just a small room with an obvious door at the end saying "exit".

Hint 1:

The only thing that you have to figure out is the maze, the text has no clues in it.

Hint 2

If you are at a computer the device to help you solve this should be close to you.

Hint 3

As people have guessed already the device is a keyboard

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    $\begingroup$ Microsoft Paint FTW :') $\endgroup$ Mar 17, 2015 at 12:11
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    $\begingroup$ I'm waiting to see the answer before I upvote or downvote your question. This is either really clever or arcane, and it's too soon to tell which... $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Mar 18, 2015 at 4:14
  • $\begingroup$ More relevant to the puzzle, I just tried a reverse image search of the maze on Google and got nothing useful, so that's not the trick... $\endgroup$
    – Kevin
    Mar 18, 2015 at 4:16
  • $\begingroup$ It seems the author drew the picture him/herself. Besides, I interpret the second hint as a separate device that can help you solve it, not the computer itself. Would be really disappointed if the "device" was actually a software, since it's described to be "close to you". A mouse/keyboard seems like the first things to think of, but I don't know. $\endgroup$
    – RickardNi
    Mar 18, 2015 at 8:29
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    $\begingroup$ I would guess that hint 2 refers to a keyboard, and that the path through the maze encodes a letter sequence on the keyboard. $\endgroup$
    – Gamow
    Mar 18, 2015 at 9:29

9 Answers 9

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The color of the sky is:

white

There are 6 Fs that can be identified in the maze, which means the color is #FFFFFF

enter image description here

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  • $\begingroup$ nope thats not it :) $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 18, 2015 at 6:17
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The colour of the sky is

Grey
There are 9 key strokes used, URD-LUR-ULU. If you add the keyboard code of each to get a RGB value this comes out as R 117 G 114 B 113 or #757271 or a mid grey

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  • $\begingroup$ nope sorry and what did you mean with keystrokes? $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 18, 2015 at 11:35
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    $\begingroup$ In order to navigate out of the maze e.g. using your keyboard, you need to use the up (U) arrow, right (R) arrow, down (D) arrow etc. Each arrow key has a computing code. L=37, U=38, R=39, D=40. $\endgroup$
    – Digbyswift
    Mar 18, 2015 at 12:13
  • $\begingroup$ interesting but thats not it :) $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 18, 2015 at 12:15
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    $\begingroup$ This is better than the 'real' answer, which doesn't make any sense. $\endgroup$
    – GreySage
    May 13, 2016 at 17:38
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enter image description here

He got out of the cave and entered into the other cave as shown in the image. So that, means he didn't understood that he is entering in to another cave in the same maze. Which means it was perfect dark. That means night (darkest night). So the color of the sky will be black.

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  • $\begingroup$ Nope this isnt what i was going for, also added a note for clarification on what the "second cave" looks like $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 17, 2015 at 12:46
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I think its time to post the answer to this puzzle, i should have made a better job at describing everything, oh well here it goes :)

The image is actualy a overlay for a keyboard. The intersections in the maze tells you which letters to take(apart from the starting position). So with this you just need to find the correct position and the only one that roughly provides a word is if you put the starting position over the letter N which then spells out NIGHT, so since its night outside the color of the sky is BLACK.

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    $\begingroup$ I don't understand the solution. What are intersections? How do they correspond to keyboard letters? Maybe include a picture. $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    Mar 19, 2015 at 6:51
  • $\begingroup$ Intersections are places in the maze with multiple possible paths. Imagine printing out this picture and then placing it on top of a keyboard so that the starting place is at the letter N $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 19, 2015 at 7:02
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    $\begingroup$ I can't see how someone could have figured that out. And if someone had posted this solution, I would have thought it to be grasping at straws the same way the other posted solutions area. There's lots of steps that are unclued and don't get confirmed: overlaying on a keyboard, starting at (and including) the letter N, looking at maze intersections, and taking the anagram. A lot of the maze structure and the story gets ignored. I think the idea was cool, but the puzzle turned out way harder than you intended. $\endgroup$
    – xnor
    Mar 19, 2015 at 7:19
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    $\begingroup$ I did exactly this. Because I thought the device was a printer, so I printed it, and tried different markings, like the dead ends, the turns. Then I placed it over my keyboard to try to find words that made any sense. Even after spedning quite some time doing this, I couldn't figure out the answer, and still don't understand fully. Even when marking the intersections I can understand it, as there is no intersection for the letter N. $\endgroup$
    – RickardNi
    Mar 19, 2015 at 8:19
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    $\begingroup$ No, I don't think this is correct. When I overlay the maze on my keyboard, with the starting position above "N", I get the following key presses from the intersections: nui fgtr5. $\endgroup$ Dec 9, 2015 at 19:41
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An idea nobody seems to have tried yet:

Logo commands. Link in case people don't know what I'm on about.

Your path out of the maze, imagining you're

the Logo turtle,

would correspond to the following list of commands:

FD300
RT90
FD100
RT90
FD400
RT90
FD400
RT90
FD300
RT90
FD200
LT90
FD200
LT90
FD200
RT90
FD300

(by some rough length measurements made on my computer screen). This could be made even more complicated if you want to allow for the possibility of trying dead ends and doubling back, but then the solution would be non-unique.

Maybe these letters and numbers can somehow be turned into a colour code?

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It's a shame it's hinted that the answer is something to do with the maze and a keyboard because the following occurred to me:

The crazy man states, "if you followed all the clues in the maze and don't want to get shot you would be able to tell me what's the color of the sky outside right now!"

So, given that at the time I am escaping I am unaware of any clues existing in the maze, visual or otherwise and given that I am panicked as I escape, I can assume that I did not follow any clues whilst escaping.

The crazy man states that I'll be able to tell him the colour of the sky if I followed the clues AND don't want to get shot. Therefore I can't tell him the colour of the sky because only one of those statements is true.

Therefore to answer the question "What do you tell the crazy man?", I tell him "I can't tell you the colour of the sky."

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    $\begingroup$ It's a riddle, and it was already mentioned that you explored the whole maze as visualized in the original question, and that the crazy man was added mainly for a story telling part. Granted it's not perfectly worded or told, but I think everyone can see the riddle concept, given the clues and comments. $\endgroup$
    – RickardNi
    Mar 18, 2015 at 15:34
  • $\begingroup$ @RickardNi I am not questioning whether it is a riddle - it certainly kept me frustratingly entertained! I'm just offering up a different and perfectly valid answer based on the information provided. I hoped that my initial sentence mitigated against anyone thinking that this was anything but food for thought. $\endgroup$
    – Digbyswift
    Mar 19, 2015 at 13:28
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It will just be SKY BLUE :D

The runner was just finding the exit but was in the cave where there cannot be seen any light. But the man with the gun asked for the color of sky while he was running in the maze.

I guess he would just say sky's original color, sky blue.

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  • $\begingroup$ In fact this is always the answer. The sky is always sky blue, even at night; only your eyes can't see it. $\endgroup$
    – Joshua
    Jun 2, 2016 at 15:26
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He just said the color of the sky because the maze has no roof, only walls

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    $\begingroup$ It states you're in an underground maze, and once out, you're in a cave. So yes, I assume there is a roof. $\endgroup$
    – Digbyswift
    Mar 18, 2015 at 12:37
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The answer is blue (or possibly black).

The question clearly states that I'm the protagonist of this story. That means that I'm wearing my watch (which states the time). Given that I too have trained under a master of chronobarbology I can also estimate the passage of time by my beard-growth to within a fair degree of accuracy.

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  • $\begingroup$ nope thats also not it $\endgroup$
    – Vajura
    Mar 18, 2015 at 6:17
  • $\begingroup$ You and your wacky answers ;-) See also puzzling.stackexchange.com/a/3299/5373 $\endgroup$ Mar 18, 2015 at 12:45
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    $\begingroup$ And I have the gun and I will shoot you. $\endgroup$ Mar 18, 2015 at 14:45
  • $\begingroup$ This is the second ever documentation of the word Chronobarbology on the entire internet! Well done richard! $\endgroup$
    – Aric
    Aug 24, 2016 at 9:29

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