# A puzzling image maze!

I was inspired by Rainbow Road Rabbit Hole to make a two-dimensional image maze where each image points to its neighboring rooms. Start here:

## Clarifications and corrections:

### Reassembly

"Either... or..." statements are inclusive or. This means that both sides can be true at the same time.

### Half the Picture

If you went directly to this room, you'll need to come back later.

### Block Cipher

The block on the right should be Nether Brick, not a Stone Pressure Plate.

### Mind Games

The location of the small circles within the big circles is irrelevant.

### Ill Omens

The first four characters of the fourth line should be at the end of the third line instead, and the first four characters of the third line should be copied to the beginning of the fourth line (so that there are twelve characters in line 3 and eight in line 4). Click here for a corrected version of these two lines. The corrected transcript for these lines is here.

### Multiple Parts

There is no wordplay involved. The letter counts for the left are (3,7,4,8) and for the right (3,8,2,3,5).

• Pity I don't have time to work on this right now... Looks fun. – Alconja May 16 '16 at 7:53
• 5 sudoku's in one? – Klyzx May 16 '16 at 9:16
• Don't think I'll be able to do this - I am colour blind and the line on the right looked black to me until I read all the text and closely inspected the line (probably due to the "data"). And the sudoku just looks lie a mess of yellow to me – Jonathan Allan May 16 '16 at 9:17
• OK, so fiddling with saturation and hue I can pick out most of the sudoku - could you tell me what colours make up the 2 in the bottom-right block please? – Jonathan Allan May 16 '16 at 10:03
• I'm just loving that this exists. I'm gonna take my time and get through it on my own (I hope). Excellent puzzle from what I've seen so far! – Dan Russell May 17 '16 at 2:03

# Solved

Map:

Individual Puzzles:

As per @Henkie's post, the second door from EXAMPLE ROOM solved

On the first page, the right side is encoded as morse.

COLLISIONS solved

Each paragraph describes one of the individuals who are particles...
1st J/psi meson J
2nd proton p
3rd B meson B
4th Kaon K
5th Lambda baryon Λ, wearing a belt: A
yielding JpBKA (REASSEMBLY)

REASSEMBLY solved

The correct solution (from Henkie) was HAF/DCI/EBG.

GET TWO FREE solved

There are three sudoku: a cyan one, a magenta one, and a yellow one
(blue=magenta+cyan; green=cyan+yellow; red=magenta+yellow; black=magenta+cyan+yellow).

The exit wall is repeated cyan, magenta and yellow pixels (could there be three rooms or is that just a hint for the colours employed?)

There is a grey 2 at the top-right of the bottom-right block - do we need to also "get this free"?

If I got it all right, then all three are uniquely solvable with the grey 2, without it: Cyan has 38 solutions (only one has a 2 there, 20 have a 4, 11 have a 5, 6 have a 9); Magenta still has just the one solution; Yellow has 4 solutions, the other three having a 1 in the grey 2's place.

The sudokus, with solutions using the grey 2 on the right.
Cyan: .7..1.2.....7....86..592....52.348....1...3....468.12....361...1....7.....6.2..3.

· 7 · | · 1 · | 2 · ·      4 7 9 | 8 1 3 | 2 6 5
· · · | 7 · · | · · 8      2 3 5 | 7 4 6 | 9 1 8
6 · · | 5 9 2 | · · ·      6 1 8 | 5 9 2 | 4 7 3
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· 5 2 | · 3 4 | 8 · ·      7 5 2 | 1 3 4 | 8 9 6
· · 1 | · · · | 3 · ·      8 6 1 | 2 7 9 | 3 5 4
· · 4 | 6 8 · | 1 2 ·      3 9 4 | 6 8 5 | 1 2 7
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· · · | 3 6 1 | · · ·      9 8 7 | 3 6 1 | 5 4 2
1 · · | · · 7 | · · ·      1 2 3 | 4 5 7 | 6 8 9
· · 6 | · 2 · | · 3 ·      5 4 6 | 9 2 8 | 7 3 1

Magenta: .....2.1.136......7.451.6.....2..571...495...582..1.....5.497........846.4.8.....
· · · | · · 2 | · 1 ·      9 5 8 | 6 7 2 | 4 1 3
1 3 6 | · · · | · · ·      1 3 6 | 9 8 4 | 2 5 7
7 · 4 | 5 1 · | 6 · ·      7 2 4 | 5 1 3 | 6 8 9
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· · · | 2 · · | 5 7 1      4 9 3 | 2 6 8 | 5 7 1
· · · | 4 9 5 | · · ·      6 7 1 | 4 9 5 | 3 2 8
5 8 2 | · · 1 | · · ·      5 8 2 | 7 3 1 | 9 6 4
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· · 5 | · 4 9 | 7 · ·      8 6 5 | 1 4 9 | 7 3 2
· · · | · · · | 8 4 6      2 1 9 | 3 5 7 | 8 4 6
· 4 · | 8 · · | · · ·      3 4 7 | 8 2 6 | 1 9 5

Yellow: ......6144....8.35213.6.....94..1...8.......6...8..49.....7.84.12.4....7745......
· · · | · · · | 6 1 4      5 8 7 | 3 9 2 | 6 1 4
4 · · | · · 8 | · 3 5      4 6 9 | 7 1 8 | 2 3 5
2 1 3 | · 6 · | · · ·      2 1 3 | 5 6 4 | 7 8 9
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· 9 4 | · · 1 | · · ·      3 9 4 | 6 2 1 | 5 7 8
8 · · | · · · | · · 6      8 5 1 | 9 4 7 | 3 2 6
· · · | 8 · · | 4 9 ·      6 7 2 | 8 5 3 | 4 9 1
------+-------+------      ------+-------+------
· · · | · 7 · | 8 4 ·      9 3 6 | 1 7 5 | 8 4 2
1 2 · | 4 · · | · · 7      1 2 8 | 4 3 6 | 9 5 7
7 4 5 | · · · | · · ·      7 4 5 | 2 8 9 | 1 6 3

If we were to overlay those on the right there would be FIVE black numbers:
. · · · | · · · | · · · 6
7 · · · | · · · | · · · ?
@ · · · | 5 · · | · · · H
------+-------+------
I · · · | · · · | · · · Q
R · · 1 | · · · | 3 · · Z
[ · · · | · · · | · · · c
------+-------+------
d · · · | · · · | · · 2 l
m · · · | · · · | · · · u
v · 4 · | · · · | · · · ~

All the letters on the right are 8 more (in ASCII) than those on the left, so the numbers 1,2,3,4,5 yield TlXwC (MAZES IN MAZES)

MAZES IN MAZES solved

Note that you start by entering Red and inside Red you enter a Yellow then inside that Yellow you enter another copy of Yellow then pop back out of that Yellow into the previous Yellow then out of that Yellow back to the original Red then ... then you exit the maze from the original Red:

yielding Ue3b6

HALF THE PICTURE solved

XORing the Reassembly image with the Half image, we get . Reading off the red, green, and blue channels, we get:
C1en2 (MIND GAMES)
2bzyR (BACKTRACKING)
k5E2V (BLOCK CIPHER)

MIND GAMES solved

This is a game of Mastermind: the blues represent misses, the reds are hits but in the wrong place, and the greens are hits but in the right place. The solution is DtvqW.

WHERE ARE YOU? solved

That $\oplus$ symbol is "xor" (the operation where you take the bits in either A or B but not both; if you're xoring several things together it doesn't matter what order you do them in.). The equation says that xoring all three of the rooms together gives us 4sP~u; since you can undo an XOR with another XOR, I just XORed all three 5-char strings together to get LahLf.

ILL OMENS solved

These characters are a Unicode text file reinterpreted as extended ASCII. Reading off the Unicode characters, most are from the Sutton Sign Language block; these, plus modifiers to label capital and lowercase, spell r2HDr.

These are all descriptions of Stack Exchange badges! The badges, in order, are Revival, Research Assistant, and Populist. Extracting the letters, makes "ARAPANOVECV - 6". Applying a Caesar shift of -6 results in "ULUJUHIPYWP", which is the red key.

BACKTRACKING solved

There is a gray character hidden (or sometimes not hidden) in each of the puzzles on this path. Those characters, in reverse order, are Qv2RX (GOAL IN SIGHT).

GOAL IN SIGHT solved

The images refer to other "visual" puzzles, the numbers refer to puzzle solutions (from left to right):

H : A well balanced puzzle: Logic puzzle(s) in visual disguise
P : Perplexing Fireworks
B : Hidden Message: Of Shapes and Numbers
W : Lepidopterology needed!
S : The Writing's on the Wall
B : A hunt for long forgotten treasure ...but beware the pirate's curse!
D : Find the secret phrase in this encrypted image (Part 4)
R : The Musing Of the Eggs
B : The markings of Mictal
U : This is important. I need you to listen…
O : Little bits of food

So the green key is HPBWSBDRBUO.

BLOCK CIPHER solved

This is a screenshot from Minecraft. Each block in Minecraft has a "data value", a number used internally to store what type of block is in which location. Reading the data values of the blocks in a row out as ASCII gives 14k9p (MULTIPLE PARTS).

BLOCK CIPHER (solution 2)

If you read the IDs of the lower blocks you get "Red5T0nE". Using a DES cipher on the base64 sign text with this as the key gives you nCXwy (FIFTEEN PUZZLES).

MULTIPLE PARTS solved

Both clues refer to Stack Exchange puzzles that have been duplicated in format by many people. The first refers to The hangman game backward and the second refers to The Security to the Party. Extracting the letters we're told to from each of the question titles, we get EWNCGGMESRO+5. Applying a Caesar shift of +5 makes JBSHLLRJXWT, which is the blue key.

FIFTEEN PUZZLES solved

Each of the puzzles has a 4x4 grid with a square missing in the bottom right corner. These can be treated as scrambled 15-puzzles, and the arrows here tell us how they were scrambled. Undoing the scrambles, we get... nothing really. But, if you then undo the scramble of ALL the solved puzzles using the last arrow as a reference, you get:
This looks like 4w9g8, and in fact it is. (TAKING IT APART)

TAKING IT APART solved

Deciphering "APLASTICBAG" with the keys yields:
red: GERRYMANDER
green: TAKEASFLAGS
blue: ROTTHIRTEEN
So we gerrymander to put 3 of four regions in Greens favour (currently way behind Red in the polls)
Then treat the lines as flags as per semaphore in the direction their region's number is facing
Then rot 13 the letters
Yielding:

Reading those in the direction of the region numbers gives us:
GOOD JOB YOU HAVE FINISHED THE MAZE (!)

On the first page, the right side

It is encoded as morse.