Crematorium Puzzle



The Crematorium Puzzle is a puzzle Heather Mason encounters in the Otherworld version of Brookhaven Hospital in Silent Hill 3. While exploring the alternate hospital, Heather is able to take the elevator to a mysterious third basement level completely absent from the map. The B3 level is evidently used as a crematorium, where corpses are stored and cremated. Heather is able to obtain the Cremated Key from within the cremation oven here on easy to start with, however on Normal and Hard riddle difficulties, the oven door will be locked and a puzzle must be solved to open it.

The puzzle involves the ten corpses on gurneys placed inside the room. The oven door is locked by a combination lock which requires four numbers to be entered.

Solution


Each corpse and gurney is marked by a number, ranging from 0 to 9. The clues to solving the riddle differ between normal and hard difficulties, however the gurneys are arranged and numbered the same in both instances. If looked at from above from a bird's eye view, the gurneys would be arranged into a 4 x 3 grid and numbered as:

The correct numbers are chosen using the clue written on the oven door. The number 7 will always be in the four-number code regardless of difficulty.

Normal
On Normal difficulty there will only be four corpses present, and the oven door will be etched with a diagram similar to the above. On the diagram, however, will be four consecutive Roman numerals in place of the numbers (I, II, III, and IV); the Roman numerals mark which gurney belongs in the code, and in which order. By finding the correct gurneys that corresponds to the Roman numerals, the four-numbered code can be deduced.

For example, should the diagram on the oven door read:

Then, by comparing the two diagrams, the correct code is found to be 2 9 7 4. The placement of the Roman numerals on the diagram is random for each game, however there will always be four of them, and one must always correspond to gurney number 7.

Hard
On Hard difficulty a poem will be engraved on the oven door. The poem reads:
 * "Burn the one who knows no death
 * Pure, adored by those above
 * No prayers within, just simple love


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


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


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


 * Four bodies return to ashes
 * Thus the door is opened
 * Thus the door is opened"

The first four verses are most important, as they point to the correct four digits. Along with the oven door, each gurney now holds a poem of its own, each relating to a unique bird. The poems found on the gurneys read:


 * 1 Song of the Sparrow
 * "Who killed Cock Robin?
 * 'The Sparrow,' they said
 * 'He wants them all dead
 * To him, honey-sweet is
 * their sobbin'"


 * 2 Song of the Owl
 * "The Owl who forgot the sky
 * Resigned to his poor earthbound state
 * Hungry or full didn't matter at all
 * He ate and he ate and he ate"


 * 3 Song of the Thrush
 * "The grass the Thrush so loved to eat
 * Gave him sweet happiness
 * He sank ever deeper and finally fell
 * To destruction and fatal distress"


 * 4 Song of Cock Robin
 * "Cock Robin, who hid the key away
 * Is ash in the oven, all right
 * The place he held is empty now
 * And the doors remain shut tight"


 * 5 Song of the Lark
 * "The Lark's child lost all his words
 * And walled himself up all away
 * Heart and mouth both locked up tight
 * In a cage where none want to stay"


 * 6 Song of the Dove
 * "The Dove's hope died; he chose his path
 * His flapping wings fell still
 * Drenched in scarlet here they lay
 * His cheeks pale white and chill"


 * 7 Song of the Linnet
 * "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"


 * 8 Song of the Rook
 * "The black Rook is the praying sort
 * Who hears the gods in the skies
 * His whispered petitions go on
 * without end
 * And glassy and dim are his eyes"


 * 9 Song of the Wren
 * "The Wren, with pure heart as
 * yet unrefined
 * Makes us laugh with his feeble
 * lip-smacking
 * But still we all know he shall
 * never grow old
 * And he knows not how much
 * he is lacking"


 * 0 Song of the Kite
 * "The Kite, hot, crazy, and panting mad
 * Sweet shackles that tease and excite
 * Death itself would drive him wild
 * Red blood that turns milky white"

Unlike the riddle on Normal difficulty, there is always only one answer here. The key to finding the four digits is in matching the correct songs to the first four verses on the oven door.
 * The first verse and the Song of the Wren both contain the word "pure". The song also says that "he shall never grow old", which would mean he "knows no death". Thus, the first number in the code is 9, the Song of the Wren.
 * The second verse and the Song of the Owl both allude to the earth. The owl is also depicted as a hunter who is no longer able to fly. Therefore, the second number in the code is 2, the Song of the Owl.
 * The third verse is arguably the most difficult, as there is no direct clue to which bird it refers to. It turns out that the verse is based on the Song of the Linnet, which is attached to Stanley's body (as the mysterious voice on the locker phone said Stanley is #7). Stanley's diaries are clues in relation to the third verse of the poem, as his "bottomless gut" refers to his bottomless hunger for love, and "that heavy body of his, make it wind, dancing in the sky" refers to his wish to fly from the hospital's rooftop, which is impossible because, being human, his body is too heavy, and thus by burning his body and turning it into ash, it would be made wind, allowing him to dance in the sky and fulfill his wish. Just as well, in relation to the bird itself, the linnet is known to eat three times its weight in seeds, sometimes to the point of being unable to fly. Furthermore, Stanley "sighs" Heather's name as she approaches his body. Thus the third number in the code is 7, the Song of the Linnet.
 * The fourth verse alludes to a bird who has "blood on his laughing lips", is called to the "gates of Hell" and "burns evermore". The most likely candidate to this position is the Sparrow, who is the original murderer in the poem and wants everybody dead. Therefore, the final number in the code is 1, from the Song of the Sparrow.

Put the clues together and the final product of the riddle is the four-digit code: 9 2 7 1.

Trivia

 * The riddle in Hard difficulty is derived from the English nursery rhyme  Who Killed Cock Robin.


 * It is confirmed that the corpse on gurney #7 belonged to Stanley Coleman. The Song of the Linnet that is found on the corpse also alludes to his personality, and the Happy Birthday Caller said that "his new name is... number seven". This is most likely the reason why the number 7 is always in the four-digit code, and why a sigh is heard when Heather is finally near him.