Silent Hill 2 Remake Puzzle Solutions: Apartment and Hospital

Silent Hill 2 Remake keeps the old riddles but spreads them across a lot more rooms. The apartments and the hospital are where the puzzle traffic really piles up, and a couple of these gates can stop your run cold if you don't have the numbers handy. Here are the steps and codes for the head-scratchers in Wood Side, Blue Creek, and Brookhaven, plus what changes when you crank the riddle difficulty up.

A quick note on names: a few of these puzzles get called things online (the "locker code," the "piano puzzle," the "directory," the "elevator keycard") that don't quite match what's in the game. The sections below use the assigned labels but tell you what the puzzle actually is, so you don't waste time hunting for a piano that isn't there.

Wood Side Apartments Locker Code Puzzle

Small honesty first. The locked box people call the "locker" in Wood Side is really a safe sitting inside room 206. Same deal either way. You crawl into 206 through a gap in the wall, the wardrobe slides back behind you, and now you're sealed in. The front door won't budge, so cracking the safe is the only way out. The Man coin tucked inside is also one of three you'll need for the cabinet puzzle down the hall, so don't even think about skipping it.

The codes

It's a left-right dial job. Turn the dial the way each line tells you, stop on the number, and the lock clicks forward to the next step. The combo shifts with your riddle difficulty.

| Riddle level | Safe combination | |---|---| | Light | Right to 15, Left to 11, Right to 13 | | Standard | Right to 13, Left to 7, Right to 11 | | Hard | Right to 13, Left to 7, Right to 11 |

Standard and hard share the same combo here. Only light is different, which is a little odd, but handy.

Finding the code in the room

If you'd rather solve it than punch in numbers, 206 hands you everything. There's a short poem tacked on the wall right behind the safe. Then three little drawings are hidden around the room, and you'll want to flick your flashlight on to pick them out of the dark. Each drawing lines up with a line of the poem, and the words tell you the direction ("right," "left") and roughly how big the number is. A "short, tense" step means a small number, a big sweeping motion means a larger one. Match drawing to line, dial it in, and the door pops.

What the safe gives you

Inside is the Man coin, plus your way back out. The Man coin feeds into the Coin Cabinet in the apartment wing, which wants all three:

• Man coin: from the Room 206 safe.
• Woman coin: jammed in the clogged garbage chute. Grab the Canned Juice near the 3F chute access and throw it down the chute to knock the coin loose into the inner courtyard.
• Snake coin: sitting in a red baby stroller in the apartment pool. You reach the pool area through Apartment 116.

Drop them into the cabinet in the order the poems show for your difficulty, flipping each coin so the right picture faces up, then finish by pushing any one of the three into the top slot. The layout does change between Light, Standard, and Hard, but that's a placement puzzle rather than a code, so it gets covered down in the hard-mode section.

Blue Creek Apartments Piano Puzzle Solution

Reality check before you go hunting. There is no piano in Blue Creek. If you're crawling the place looking for keys to press, you can call off the search. The big brain-teaser in this apartment block is the grandfather clock in room 212, and it's the gate that lets you push forward. The actual music-and-figurines puzzle lives way later at the Lakeview Hotel, which is probably where the "piano" idea got mixed in.

The clock is missing its hands

The clock has no hands on it at all when you find it. You track down three of them scattered around Blue Creek, slot each one in, and point it at the right number. The final time lands on 9:10:15, and yes, it's the same on every riddle level.

Hour hand, set to 9

Grab the Hour Hand out of the chained-up radio in room 307. Lower the radio to pop the hand free, stick it on the clock, and set it to 9.

Minute hand, set to 2 (which is 10 minutes)

The Minute Hand is floating in the toilet in room 210 (yes, really). Fish it out, pop it on, and set it to 2. Each number on the clock face stands for five minutes, so 2 means 10.

Second hand, set to 3 (which is 15 seconds)

This one's locked behind the moth combination lock. Solve that to get into the bedroom of room 202, then pull the Second Hand out of the hole in the wall. Set it to 3, which points at 15 seconds.

The moth lock in the way

Before the second hand, room 202's combination lock wants a three-digit code. Count the symbols on the wings of the moths pinned around the apartment to crack the equation next to the lock. The answer:

| Riddle level | Moth lock code | |---|---| | Light | 582 | | Standard | 373 | | Hard | 522 |

Slot all three hands in at 9, 2, and 3, and the clock reads 9:10:15. That trips the next part of the path and you're moving again.

One side note: room 210 also holds the seesaw puzzle while you're in there grabbing the minute hand. Combine the Wooden Swan Head (room 211) with the Malformed Figurine Part (room 209 bathtub) to build the Swan Figurine, set the Pigeon Figurine and the Swan on the seesaw, then nudge the Swan two spots left to balance it. Not required for the clock, but it's right there and it's quick.

Brookhaven Hospital Directory Puzzle Steps

When you walk into Brookhaven, swing by the booklet holder in the main lobby and grab the hospital maps. That little board is basically your directory for the building, and you'll want it close because the layout is a tangle of locked doors. There isn't one single "directory" puzzle, though. The two code-gates that actually move you through the hospital are a padlock in the Reception Office and a keypad at the Nurses' Station.

Step 1: Reception Office key-locker padlock

Head to the Reception Office. There's a key locker in there with a padlock on it, and the Basement Key waits inside. To learn the combo, pick up two notes:

• The Key Locker Note, pinned on the noticeboard inside Reception.
• The Nurse's Memo, sitting in a desk drawer in the room next to 1F Examination Room 3. Smash the glass to get in.

The padlock code:

| Riddle level | Padlock code | |---|---| | Light | 287 | | Standard | 724 | | Hard | 152 |

Punch that in, open the locker, and you've got the Basement Key. That sends you down to fire up the generator before you can poke around the upper floors.

Step 2: Nurses' Station keypad

Later, up on the second floor, the Nurses' Station door is locked behind a keypad. The hint is the Keypad Combination Note on the bulletin board in the 1F Doctors' Lounge. The code:

| Riddle level | Keypad code | |---|---| | Light | 3578 | | Standard | 3578 | | Hard | 7456 |

Light and standard share 3578 here. Hard flips to 7456.

Other hospital gates you'll bump into

Two more locked things live deeper in the building, just so you're not caught off guard. The X-Ray Viewer puzzle on the third floor hands you the combo 4-37-12 for the Room D1 lock (Right 4, Left 37, Right 12), and it's the same on every difficulty. Then there's the Director's Office hand puzzle, where you stack three bracelets on a stone hand in the order Bloodstained, Marked, Filthy (top to bottom) to read out 92-45-71 for the safe behind the curtain.

The bracelets come from across the building. The Filthy Bracelet is on the bed in 3F Room D1 once you crack that lock. The Marked Bracelet sits on a red book in 1F Medical Records, which you reach through a hole in the wall from the 2F Utility Room. The Bloodstained Bracelet is behind a crying-eye wall inside the drained first-floor pool, so you have to drain the pool first with the Maintenance Key (fished out of a drain in the Pharmacy with a Medical Tube and the Bent Needle). All three of those numbers are fixed across riddle levels, so you only ever learn them once.

Hospital Elevator Keycard Puzzle Walkthrough

One more naming wrinkle. In the Otherworld version of the hospital, the elevator doesn't take a keycard. It takes a button. The whole "key" to getting the lift running is a chained box on the second floor, and once you crack it, James yanks the -1 Elevator Button loose during a cutscene. So that box is the real puzzle. Here's the full chain, start to finish.

Grab the Lapis Eye Key first

The chained box needs a key before the codes even matter. The Lapis Eye Key comes from a dummy bolted into a surgical chair in 3F Exam Room 4. To pull the key out you need two items used on the dummy:

• Instrument of Force: on a medical table right next to that dummy. Use it on the dummy's right arm.
• Key of Bliss: in a hole in the wall of a small room northwest of Medical Records on the first floor. You drop down to it through the Kitchen.

Use the Instrument of Force on the arm and the Key of Bliss on the dummy's eyehole, and the Lapis Eye Key drops.

Code one: 1622, on the left combination lock

The first code lives on a Calendar Page memo on the floor under the bed in 2F Room M2. Break the wall out of Room M3 to get in there. The memo's hints map to four digits:

• One year.
• Six pills sitting in a sink.
• Two hours on the clock in Room M1 after you move the hand.
• Two flashes from a ceiling light when you peek through the hole.

That gives you 1-6-2-2.

Code two: 9659, on the right keypad

The second code is in 3F Room I7. Follow the red cable to a generator and fire it up, then use the machine next to the treatment stretcher. It flashes 9659.

Open the box and ride down

Back at the chained box on the second floor, here's the sequence:

1. Stick the Lapis Eye Key in the keyhole.
2. Enter 1622 on the left combination lock.
3. Enter 9659 on the right keypad.

The box pops open, James grabs the -1 Elevator Button in the cutscene, and you slot it into the elevator to ride down to the basement. Both codes are fixed on every difficulty, so this whole stretch is one you can speed through.

The Trick or Treat quiz, during the ride

On the way to the basement, the elevator speaker cracks into a goofy radio game show called "Trick or Treat." You can't answer during the ride. The answers go into a Decorative Box in the Pharmacy later, once you're back on the first floor with Maria and the two rings in hand. The correct code is 231:

• Q1, "How many souls were lost during the plague?" Answer 2, which is 67. Read it off the memorial statue in Rosewater Park.
• Q2, "What road takes you from Sanders Street to the lumber yard?" Answer 3, Wiltse Road. Check your Map of South Vale.
• Q3, "Billy Locane's sister, murdered by Walter Sullivan?" Answer 1, Miriam. Newspaper clipping back in Wood Side.

Get it right and the box spits out two boxes of shotgun shells and two syringes. You only get one try, but there's a save point right outside the Pharmacy, so you can reload if you flub it. Get it wrong and James eats some damage, so it's well worth the reload.

Tips for Solving Hard Difficulty Puzzle Variants

Silent Hill 2 Remake splits difficulty in two. Combat difficulty is how hard the monsters hit. Riddle difficulty is how tough the puzzles are, and it has three levels: Light, Standard, and Hard. Crank riddles to Hard and the hints get fuzzier and a fair chunk of the codes change. Here's how to stay ahead of it.

Know which puzzles actually change

A lot of players assume everything shifts on Hard. It doesn't. The puzzles that move with the difficulty are the smaller code locks, and here are all of them in one place:

| Puzzle | Light | Standard | Hard | |---|---|---|---| | Room 206 safe (Wood Side) | R15 / L11 / R13 | R13 / L7 / R11 | R13 / L7 / R11 | | Room 202 moth lock (Blue Creek) | 582 | 373 | 522 | | Reception padlock (hospital) | 287 | 724 | 152 | | Nurses' Station keypad (hospital) | 3578 | 3578 | 7456 |

Notice the Wood Side safe and the Nurses' Station keypad barely move. Standard already matches Hard on the safe, and only Hard differs on the keypad.

Know which ones don't

These stay fixed, so on Hard you can walk straight past the hint-hunting and just key them in:

• Blue Creek clock: always 9:10:15, hands at 9, 2, and 3.
• X-Ray Viewer / Room D1 lock: always Right 4, Left 37, Right 12.
• Director's hand and safe: always 92-45-71.
• Otherworld chained box: always 1622 and 9659.
• Trick or Treat quiz: always 231.

That's a big chunk of the game where Hard difficulty saves you no extra brainpower.

Read the room, literally

On Hard the memos stop handing you numbers and start handing you riddles. The Room 206 poem is the classic example. It never says a digit, just talks about directions and "short, tense" steps. Slow down, read each line, and match it to a drawing. The flashlight matters more than you'd think for picking those sketches out of the dark, so keep it on whenever you're combing a puzzle room.

A few practical habits

• Screenshot every memo. Some Hard hints refer back to notes from earlier areas, and you really don't want to backtrack through a monster-filled apartment block for one poem.
• Grab every map. The hospital and the apartments are confusing enough on Light. On Hard, the maps pull real weight.
• The hint notes are usually fair. If a code feels random, you probably skipped a memo nearby. Circle back before you guess.
• If you just want the story and not the math, there's no shame in dropping riddle difficulty to Light for a rough section. Combat and riddle levels are independent, so you can keep the monsters mean while making the puzzles gentle.

The Chained Box is the friendliest example of all this. Since 1622 and 9659 never change, on Hard you can grab the Lapis Eye Key, skip every hint room entirely, and have the elevator button in your pocket a couple of minutes later.