Puzzles

Crematorium Oven Door Puzzle (Hospital)

Location: Nightmare Hospital, Basement 3

What appears on the locked oven door, or whether it's even locked at all, depends on your riddle level, in addition to the corpse placement on gurneys around the room. Find the appropriate solution below.

Easy

Here there is no puzzle; the oven will be open with a key inside.

Normal

The oven cover will display a four-by-three chart that contains the roman numerals I, II, III and IV in four randomized slots.

Additionally you'll find 10 gurneys placed around the room, some with covered corpses and some empty. Between them all they count from 0 through 9. They will always be placed like so in respect to the oven at the top of the room:

It potentially matches up with the chart on the oven door, doesn't it? Note that there's only four gurneys that contain covered corpses, the same number of roman numerals on the oven cover. Your job is to match them to each other to decipher the code.

To do this is quite simple. Note the position of the roman numeral "I" and find the gurney in that same position amongst the gurneys. It will be one of the four covered corpses – the number written on it will be the first number of your code. Do the same with the other three to reveal the rest.

The gurney numbers will always be the same each time, but the covered corpses and the numerals on the oven door will be randomized so you'll have to uncover the code yourself. But let's go through an example:

If this were your oven door, your resulting code would be 5172. Note that while the solution is randomized, you will always have a 7 in your code which corresponds to the corpse of Stanley Coleman as revealed by the mystery caller on the Men's Locker Room telephone.

Hard

This time there will be a very complex puzzle based on the nursery rhyme, "Who Killed Cock Robin?", with a five-verse riddle etched into the locked oven door. Each gurney either with a covered corpse or empty also carries a brief poem related to a single character from the same literature.

The key to this puzzle is that the first four of the five verses on the oven each describe a character. It is your task to match up each of those verses with the correct character based on the corpse memos. The code will be deciphered from the gurney numbers of those corpses, in the same order the verses are listed on the oven.

The riddle reads as follows:

I've singled out the four verses on the side (A-D) that correspond to a specific character. Below you will find the memos from each gurney listed by their numbers. I've also marked which above character they correspond to with the same markings (A-D) but we'll go over the full solution below.

If you are familiar with the nursery rhyme "Who killed Cock Robin?" you may be a little more at home here, but either way it doesn't make a big difference since this stands as its own independent riddle. So go ahead and find and read the original rhyme wherever if you wish, but it won't really help you here. Let's go through the oven verses and try to identify the corresponding character for each one.

VERSE A:

Burn the one who knows no death
Pure, adored by those above
No prayers within, just simple love

Which bird "knows no death"? How about the Rook, "Who hears the gods in the skies; His whispered petitions go on without end". Perhaps it is debatable if "glassy and dim are his eyes" suggests he has risen above death or is in fact approaching it through old age, but the first line does say he's the "praying sort" while verse A says "No prayers within", so we can cross him out after all.

What about the Wren? "He shall never grow old" matches "knows no death", while "pure heart" fits "Pure, adored by those above; No prayers within, just simple love", with themes of love and purity. "Makes us laugh" also perhaps aligns with him being adored by those above. This one's a solid fit. The Wren's verse sits upon corpse number 9, making 9 the first number of the code.

VERSE B:

And now the pining hunter
The flames longing for his rebirth
A distant breath within the earth

The phrase "pining hunter" is key here since it means the bird must be a hunter and on the decline. So who fits? The Owl, Thrush, Dove, and perhaps the Lark all sound like birds on the decline, but only the Owl stands out as a bird of prey that hunts other birds and even fish, while the others feed on insects and worms.

Looking more closely, "The Owl who forgot the sky; Resigned to his poor earthbound state" certainly fits as a pining hunter. "A distant breath within the earth" strongly corresponds to his "earthbound state" as he ate away until he became too heavy to fly. The middle line about flames and rebirth conjures up images of a Phoenix, but no such bird exists in this puzzle and everything else perfectly suits the Owl, whose number 2 represents the second number of the code.

VERSE C:

Burn up that heavy body of his
Make it wind, dancing in the sky
That bottomless gut now a cloud,
now a sigh

Wait... "bottomless gut" sounds just like the Owl who "ate and he ate and he ate", but we already determined him to be the pining hunter. And he's not the only bird who likes to eat. The Sparrow has blood on his lips as the murderer of Cock Robin, the Thrush "so loved to eat", and there's even the Wren with his "feeble lip-smacking", but he already represents verse A.

We can eliminate the Sparrow who really doesn't line up with the rest of the verse while the theme of heaviness and eating does suit the Thrush fairly well, who "sank even deeper" from eating. But perhaps sinking into his destruction and fatal distress doesn't fit "Make it wind, dancing in the sky" which is at the other end of the spectrum, and he is not the correct bird here. So what gives... who is verse C then?

Speaking of sinking, we're going to have to dive deep to uncover this one, which goes so far beyond birds that I can't fault anyone for getting confused by it. But do any of these verses stick out as a little peculiar or invoking images outside of this puzzle? How about number 7, the Linnet. Give it another read:

He seeks out her soul by his own
black ambition
Frightening her out of her wits
Whispering love songs into her ear
What cruel Linnet wants, he gets

It is the only verse that mentions "her". All the others say "he", "his" or "him", don't they? So who is this "her" then, since it's clearly not Cock Robin nor the Linnet who is also a "he".

Let's take it further. Does this sound like anyone familiar? How about that sicko Stanley Coleman who left memos for Heather everywhere in this hospital? Seeking out Heather's soul, frightening her out of her wits, whispering love songs into her ear... these are exactly the things he's been doing.

After all, remember the mystery phone caller in the Men's Locker Room said Stanley's new name is number 7 and is underground now. What's the Linnet's number? Number 7. You can even hear him breathing his last breaths as you approach the corpse for the first time. It all makes sense now... This verse is much more about Stanley than the Linnet and is a total curveball.

But what connects the Linnet's verse and Stanley Coleman to verse C on the oven door? Well, "Burn up that heavy body of his" hints at the potential burning of the subject's body while Stanley does lie in a crematorium, and we know he's number 7 and thus a corpse from the telephone call.

But what of "heavy body" and "that bottomless gut"? Perhaps it is referring to Stanley's endless hunger for Heather and her affection. The man even explains in one of his memos, "Your pristine glance; Like a feast, when you smile". Perhaps "now a sigh" refers to Heather being able to relax after his body has been burned, no longer the subject of his creepy affection.

Now it would be even stronger if we could make a connection to that sick keypad riddle about biting and tasting a poor girl, but as Stanley reveals in his nearby memo it was written by a quack doctor rather than him. But we've made enough of a connection anyway through Stanley's endless hunger for Heather.

But there is still somewhat of a connection to the Linnet bird itself too. "Burn up that heavy body of his; Make it wind, dancing in the sky" conjures up the image of a Phoenix rising from the flames, or the colours of red and orange. The Linnet aka Stanley "seeks out her soul by his black ambition". Red, orange and black together all make up colours of the Linnet.

And there you go. That one certainly required a lot of analysis and creative thinking, leaving us with the Linnet and Stanley's number 7 as the third number of the code. The hardest part is over.

VERSE D:

The sweet blood on his laughing lips
Now calls him to the gates of Hell
There burns evermore that soulless shell

Who has blood on his lips? That would be the Sparrow who killed Cock Robin. "To him, honey-sweet is their sobbin'" further aligns with verse D and the "sweet blood".

The Kite's verse does mention "Sweet shackles" and "Red blood" but otherwise the connection ends there. And the Thrush's "sweet" is from eating the grass which gave him happiness, so he's not a fit.

And it shouldn't be difficult to realize why the murderous Sparrow is the "soulless" one called to be burned at the gates of Hell, while we see no reason for the Kite to be called there, instead only "hot, crazy, and panting mad" rather than a murderer. Therefore it is the Sparrow's number 1 that represents the final number of the code.

That leaves you with the final resulting code of 9271, which is always the same on this difficulty.