# Room 1 of the Maze

You wake up in a dark room that you don't recognize. The walls are made of some material you've never seen before. There is a door with a keypad next to it, and a small platform suspended in air in the center of the room. You approach the platform, unsure of how it remains in mid-air. On that platform you see a note that reads:

Welcome to Room 1! This is the first of many rooms that comprise what we like to call the Maze. It's not so much a physical maze as it is an intellectual one; fail to find a way out and it is your mind that will be lost!
Each room provides 2 keys. Key 1 will be integral to determining the answer to Key 2; sometimes it makes sense of Key 2, sometimes it explains what to do with Key 2. Once you have the answer, enter it into the keypad by the exit. Enter correctly and you will proceed. Enter incorrectly, and the room is rigged to open a portal that sucks you into one of three alternate universes: one made entirely of pure itchiness, one exactly like this one but where the only thing you can drink is Bud Light Lime, and the last leads to a universe that we dare not describe and will tell you only that it is called Trumptopia.
With all of that out of the way, here is the information you need to make it out of this room. If it matters, we based our information on your planet from your oracle named Google, but we expect that your numbers need not line up exactly with ours to get near the same answer. Good Luck!!

Key 1: (BRUSSELSBELGIUM to TEHRANIRAN)+(WARSAWPOLAND to FRANKFURTGERMANY)
Key 2: ABERDEENSCOTLAND to

You take a look at the keypad by the door and see that it is comprised of only the 26 letters of the alphabet, with no punctuation or space keys. What do you enter to move on to the next room?

This room has now been solved. Here is Room 2.

• "[A universe] exactly like this one but where the only thing you can drink is Bud Light Lime" - truly a fate worse than death. – MikeTheLiar Aug 3 '15 at 16:26
• Where'd the sudden influx of puzzle mazes come from? First the 20 doors, now this. – Joe Z. Aug 4 '15 at 5:00
• It's too late to change it now, obviously, but since the challenge that these rooms comprise seems pretty linear, gauntlet might be a better name than maze. – Doug Warren Aug 10 '15 at 17:14

Take the given routes as vectors and sum them, then apply the resulting vector to Aberdeen. Using latitude and longitude isn't quite accurate because of the curvature of the earth, but it's close enough.

Brussels=50°51′N 04°21′E
Tehran  =35°42′N 51°25′E
Brussels to Tehran: -15°09′ +47°04′

Warsaw   =52°14′N 21°01′E
Frankfurt=50°07′N 08°41′E
Warsaw to Frankfurt: -02°07′ -12°20′

Total vector: -17°16′ +34°44′

Aberdeen=57°09′N 02°07′W

Aberdeen+Vector: 39°53′N 32°37′E


This point is in the outskirts of Ankara. The answer should be ANKARATURKEY.

• You enter this result in the keypad and the door becomes translucent. You pass through it hesitantly and watch it solidify again behind you. Look for the addition of Room 2 soon. – NeedAName Aug 3 '15 at 15:37

I'll take a stab at it...

LAHARPEILLINOIS or LAHARPEILLINOISUSA

I got this by

adding the distance in km given by Google. Brussels to Tehran is 5138.9 km. Warsaw to Frankfurt is 1082.0 km, and the sum is 6220.9 km, rounded to 6221 km.

Using that sum, the city I first found using Google that was that distance away from Aberdeen, Scotland was

La Harpe, Illinois, USA, although there are many others, so this might not be the intended method

• Here's a map tool that's drawn a radius on the map of 6200km, so we can use that to search for places at that distance. – Samthere Aug 3 '15 at 15:07
• Well JLee, enjoy your one-way ticket to Trumptopia(determined by Random.org)! All I can say is: DONT FORGET THE DIRECTIONS – NeedAName Aug 3 '15 at 15:08
• @NeedAName this just in... JLee returns quickly from the hell that is Trumptopia, ready to attempt room 2 – JLee Aug 3 '15 at 15:45
• @JLee, welcome back! I didn't mean to make it sound as if you were banned from the series somehow. Go get 'em – NeedAName Aug 3 '15 at 15:59

Here's something I was thinking about, but I don't feel like it's a solid enough lead to jump through the portal on. I'll keep pondering and leave my notes so far ;)

Regardless, one option could be that the place names are referring to differences in population. The increase in population from Brussels (177k) to Tehran (8154k) is approximately 7980k. Add the increase from Warsaw (1711k) to Frankfurt (688k), which is -1023k and you get 6957k. Add this to Aberdeen's population (229k) and you get a pop. of 7.186mil. According to Wikipedia, that's closest to HONGKONGHONGKONG (7.235mil), followed by TAIPEITAIWAN (7.045mil).