After surviving the deadly game of silence, our heroes find themselves at the front gates of an even more frightening challenge – Murderer’s Mansion.

The heroes enter the building, but to their horror, the front door closes behind them…and locks.

“Does anyone have a wire or something?” asks Jonouchi, “I can open this door with something like that…”

“You have some strange talents, Jonouchi,” says Anzu.

The heroes all split up to look for a way out. Yugi finds a message attached to the outside of a knight’s helmet.

Yugi wonders what it could mean.

Suddenly, a holographic Kaiba appears above them.

“Welcome to Murderer’s Mansion,” he says, “Let me explain why I call this the Murderer’s Mansion…Do you remember what happened last summer at the camp near Domino Lake? Ten Boy Scouts staying at the camp were murdered…all in one night…after that, the suspect came to be known as the Chopman.”

A nervous gulp runs through Yugi and his friends.

“You’ve figured it out, haven’t you?” Kaiba continues, “The Chopman is hidden in this mansion! However, I couldn’t have you call this game unfair…so I’ll give you a hint to find the way out of the mansion. Look at the wall behind you.”

The four heroes look behind them and see a wall with four holes in it.

Kaiba instructs each of them to place their hand inside one of the holes. As the heroes do so, their hands suddenly get latched in, unable to pull them free. Kaiba explains that behind each of the holes, there is a switch. Only one of them will free their hands. If they press the right one, they win! But if they press the wrong one, then…

…a guillotine will come down and chop off their hands. (Yikes!) And if they don’t pick the right switch in five minutes, the guillotine will come down anyway. Kaiba says he left a hint somewhere in the room. He wishes the players good luck and disappears.

The clock begins.

Yugi thinks hard about what the solution might be. He focuses on the set of numbers above each hole: 00, 01, 10, and 11. Anzu recognizes the numbers as computer code. (Funny enough, I was taking a Digital Circuits class in college when I read this chapter for the first time. Didn’t expect that stuff to show up in my Yu-Gi-Oh! manga.) Yugi remembers the scrap of paper he found earlier in the mansion and suspects this might be the clue Kaiba was talking about. It has the word “blood” on it, but spelled with two L’s.

Suddenly, Yugi cries out, “Anzu, push your switch!”

Anzu does so, and stops the guillotine just in time.

The latches release, and the heroes pull their hands out of the holes. Anzu asks Yugi how he got his answer. Yugi explains that the work “bllood” can be separated into sets of ones and zeroes, as such:

Yugi also noticed that the second “l” in “bllood” had an arrow at the end of it, pointing down. Thus, Yugi concludes that the exit must be in the basement, and thus the 11 switch was the correct one, since it had the arrow on it.

As if on cue, Honda finds a trap door on the floor with the work EXIT on it. It was exposed after Anzu pressed her switch. Now, our heroes are finally free from the horrors of the mansion…or so they think…

…because in reality, their nightmares have only just begun.

Images from the Yu-Gi-Oh! manga were obtained form https://www.viz.com/shonenjump/chapters/yu-gi-oh

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