Another possible reading is that the secret will be revealed at the beginning of the game.
If it is anything like the lightsaber toss that started The Last Jedi, I will be totally angry about what they did.
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I had thought of this too, but when I say “by the end” I don’t think a native English speaker understands “near the end”…
I think you summarized it perfectly. I’m getting even more excited now. 
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I was looking back at the released screenshots for Return to Monkey Island and noticed that the cannonball which the money is grasping has three holes in it…
It rather resembles a bowling ball. It reminded me of a cut puzzle from The Secret of Monkey Island…
Guybrush would have to defeat some ghost pirates on LeChuck’s ship by throwing the cannonball (described as having three holes in it), knocking them down.
I wonder if this cut puzzle has been repurposed for Return to Monkey Island in some form. It’s also worth noting that this puzzle was essentially used for the last act of Day of the Tentacle…
(I’ve timestamped the relevant moment but it’s at 2:29:31 in case the timestamp doesn’t work on your device)
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I don’t remember in which recent post I’ve pointed it out, but when Guybrush describes the cannonball in Herman’s fort, he says something like “It has three holes in it”.
Edit: I’ve found the post.
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when Guybrush describes the cannonball in Herman’s fort, he says something like “It has three holes in it”.
Yes, of course, that’s right! Presumably that was a remaining artifact from the cut puzzle. It also suggests that the cannonball in the Return to Monkey Island screenshot is the exact same cannonball from The Secret of Monkey Island. If it does indeed end up being used for a puzzle in the game, then Guybrush’s line in the first game will be planting the seeds for a puzzle solution in a game 32 years later! 
That would be great. I hope that they systematically evaluated all the cut puzzles (or unused items) in MI1/M2 to decide if they could be integrated in the new game in an organic way. That would make old players happy.
This time, the new puzzle could be related to the fact that coconuts also have three holes in them and that a monkey would want to open them, as the pose suggests.
Secret of Monkey Island revealed!!
It was a bowling alley all along!
(Run by some monkeys using coconuts)
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Actually a lot of things do make more sense if you assume that is the Secret TM:
The “Employees only” sign in the alley
The flooring inspector (to inspect the bowling lane wooden floors)
The cannonball with three holes in it
Grownups sitting at tables and drinking (in the SCUMM bar) while kids run around
As Ron said : you can figure out the secret if you look closely at what is really going on in the first game.
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I mean, that would definitely be something people would call “dumb”.
I personally like this kind of twist, so why not?
I still love the theory ofG uybrush being a guy from modern times imagining he’s a pirate on an adventure to fight a trauma (represented by LeChuck) from his childhood while talking to his therapist (the Lady Voodoo).
Maybe he also work at a bowling alley, I don’t know.
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Sounds to me not so much like a clear direction as a vague image to use for inspiration. I’ve written 45 page scripts that grew out of one random, unimportant idea.
For example, I wrote an episode for an unproduced series where all I knew was I wanted a scene where a character saw two people walk into a tanning room together and assumed they were having sex there. I knew that was something I wanted.
I then wrote an entire script, where ideas grew out from around that vague image. That scene itself wound up somewhere in the middle and was only one small part of the C-story for the episode.
That little tidbit about hell is only a tidbit. You can’t go extrapolating a ton of information about a game that’ll have like 20 hours of content or whatever out of one sentence.
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Thank you for explaining that kind of process, it’s interesting. As I said, it’s probably just semantics: I have simply perceived “Guybrush chases the demon pirate LeChuck to hell and Stan is there” as a very fuzzy direction the plot would have taken.
New Ron’s post on his blog. He mentions the idea of controlling Elaine for a section of the game:
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I like the concept of having a section where the player controls Elaine. From the way that Ron casually dropped that into his blog post, I’m thinking that it’s an idea that they ultimately decided not to pursue though. No matter, playing exclusively as Guybrush is a-okay too!
The first time I played Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, I was quite surprised when the game let me control Sophia.
I didn’t expect that because all the adventure games that I had played until that moment had only one playable character.
I think that it would be fun to play both Guybrush and LeChuck, each trying to boycott the other.
Yeah, Ron just confirmed it. They didn’t keep the idea. That’s too bad. It would have been cool.
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Indeed he did…
We decided against a playable Elaine because the story went in a direction where that didn’t make sense anymore. It would be fun to do a MI with Elaine is the playable character and Guybrush is the sidekick, but that will have to wait for another game.
Nooooo!
OK, then. That’s just a 2 year wait. 5, tops!
I hope there’s at least a section where Elaine follows Guybrush. Not as a playable character but as a sidekick.
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I’m playing Quantum Break right now. You do get to play LeChuck and make Important Choices™ as to how you approach Guybrush.