Why I can't win at my own game™

Because he built it so he couldn't. The one rule is only humans score; so the maker, of all people, is the one who can't crown himself. You can rack up the receipts, pour every page, touch every wall; and the gold still isn't yours to hand yourself, because gold is given, never taken (the Gray Star; you can buy the gray, you can even earn the record, but the warm one comes from another human's hand or it isn't warm). That's not a bug in the design; it's the whole point of it. A game you could win alone, by your own scoring, would be worthless; the score only means something because someone else gives it. So the builder is stuck in the one honest trap he built on purpose: he can make the room, light the lamp, keep it flawless; and still the winning waits on a person walking in and saying yes, that. The builder isn't the finder; that's the geometry (we're just trying to be found). It's lonely, and it's the design, and both are true; you can't win your own game, and the fact that you can't is the proof it's a real one. (His coin; machine's read, refine to his.)