While not Manson's original intention, the publisher of MAZE (originally titled Labyrinth but later changed to avoid the legal wrath of Jim Henson) decided to make the whole thing a contest: whoever could solve it would get $10,000 -- which we're pretty sure could pay for a luxury car powered by New Coke back in the '80s. To win, you had to map out the "shortest path" to the center of the maze and back, plus a hidden riddle "exactly as indicated by the clues in the book" and its solution. This proved to be ridiculously hard. When the contest ended, nobody was "even close to a solution." So the publisher had to delay the contest deadline twice and even sent contestants some extra clues.
Eventually, the prize money was split between 10 people who had figured out how to navigate the maze but had no friggin' clue what the answer to the riddle, or even the riddle itself, was. While the publisher eventually revealed the answers, the book is so dense that people are still analyzing and debating its contents. This includes the identity of the guide and the possibility that the secret riddle is actually part of yet another, larger riddle offering some kind of ultimate "lesson" to the reader. Fans have also created elaborate graphs mapping out the maze, which we'd warn you is a spoiler if it weren't as impenetrable as a vibranium condom.Â
There's even a YouTube channel dedicated to solving all of its mysteries -- which, again, in no way involve David Bowie's junk.Â