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Maze

Adapted from Wikipedia · Discoverer experience

A beautiful hedge maze at Longleat, perfect for a fun puzzle adventure!

A maze is a special kind of path or group of paths that leads from a starting point to a goal. People use the word "maze" to talk about two main types of these puzzles. The first type has many different paths, and someone solving it must find the right way through. The second type has just one path that twists and turns but always leads to the goal without any choices.

A hedge maze at Longleat stately home in England

We often use the word "labyrinth" to mean the same thing as a maze. But sometimes, a labyrinth is a special kind of maze that has only one path with no choices along the way. Most mazes have walls and paths that stay the same while you solve them, but some fun puzzles even change their walls and paths while you’re playing. These changing puzzles are still called mazes or tour puzzles, like the tour puzzles people enjoy solving.

Construction

Mazes can be made from many different materials. Some mazes are lasting, built with things like hedges, turf, walls, rooms, tiles, and paving stones or bricks. Others are temporary, such as corn stalks, straw bales, books, snow, or crops like corn or maize. These big maize mazes are usually made just for one season and can change each year, making them popular tourist attractions.

Inside buildings, there are mirror mazes where many paths look real because of reflections in mirrors. Some mazes are made of rooms connected by doors, where finding your way means moving through these rooms. Mazes can also be drawn on paper to follow with a pencil or your finger.

Generation

Maze generation is the process of creating the paths and walls inside a maze. There are many ways to make mazes, using different maze generation algorithms. These can be done by hand or with a computer.

There are two main ways to generate mazes. One way is called "carving passages," where you mark out the paths you can take. The other way is "adding walls," where you place obstacles in an open space to create the maze.

Solution

Finding your way through a maze means discovering a path from the beginning to the end. Some ways to solve mazes are meant for someone walking inside it without knowing the whole layout, while others are for a person or computer that can see the entire maze.

The mathematician Leonhard Euler was among the first to study mazes using math. His work helped start a field of math called topology. Mazes without any loops are called "standard" or "perfect" mazes. These are similar to something called a tree in graph theory. If you could stretch out the paths in such a maze, they would look like a tree.

Psychology experiments

Mazes are often used in psychology experiments to study how animals find their way and learn new things. Scientists usually use rats or mice for these tests. Some common mazes used in experiments include:

Types

Ball-in-a-maze puzzles

These are puzzles where you roll a ball through a maze or winding path.

Fractal maze

This type of maze has smaller copies of itself inside.

Hamilton maze

In this maze, the goal is to find a special path that visits each spot exactly once.

Logic mazes

These mazes work like regular ones but have extra rules to follow.

Loops and traps maze

These mazes have special doors that only open one way. They can guide you on the right path or send you back to the start. Once you pass through a door, you can't go back the same way.

Picture maze

Solving this maze creates a picture.

Turf mazes and mizmazes

These look like a long rope folded into a pattern without any crossings.

Gallery

  • Standard maze: Find a path from and back to the star.

  • Circular maze type: Find a route to the centre of the maze.

  • Loops and traps maze: Follow the arrows from and back to the star

  • Block maze: Fill in four blocks to make a road connecting the stars. No diagonals.

  • Number maze: Begin and end at the star. Using the number in your space, jump that number of blocks in a straight line to a new space. No diagonals.

  • Obludiste – a hedge maze in the Czech republic

  • Diagram of a loops and traps maze

Public attractions

Asia

Dubai

  • Gardens Shopping Mall, Dubai (world's largest indoor maze)

India

Japan

Pacific

New Zealand

Europe

Austria

Belgium

Traquair House Maze, Scotland

Czech Republic

Denmark

  • Samsø Labyrinten (The world's largest permanent maze, 60.000 m2)

Germany

Greece

  • Labyrinth Park near Hersonissos, Crete (extends to approximately 1.300 m2)

Italy

  • Castello di Masino, Caravino 10010, Torino, Italia
  • Porsenna's Maze [it], Chiusi, Tuscany (see Pliny's Italian labyrinth)
  • Villa Pisani, Stra, near Venice (45°24′35″N 12°00′47″E / 45.409587°N 12.013131°E / 45.409587; 12.013131 (Maze))
  • The labyrinth of Franco Maria Ricci at Fontanellato (44°51′14″N 10°08′47″E / 44.853989°N 10.146446°E / 44.853989; 10.146446 (Maze))

Netherlands

  • Waterlabyrinth, Nijmegen, designed by Klaus van de Locht, 1981 (51°51′01″N 5°51′38″E / 51.85016°N 5.860471°E / 51.85016; 5.860471 (Labyrinth))
  • Doolhof Ruurlo, Ruurlo, designed by Daniel Marot, based on the design for Hampton Court Maze (52°04′42″N 6°26′01″E / 52.078266°N 6.433654°E / 52.078266; 6.433654 (Doolhof Ruurlo))

Portugal

Spain

Maze at Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis

United Kingdom

  • Blake House Craft Centre, Braintree, Essex, England (Open July–September)
  • Carnfunnock Country Park, Northern Ireland. A hedge maze in the shape of Northern Ireland and winner of 1985 Design a Maze competition.
  • Castlewellan, Northern Ireland, world's largest permanent hedge maze
  • Chatsworth House garden maze, planted with 1,209 yews.
  • Cliveden House Originally laid out in 1894, the maze was restored and re-opened to the public in 2011, consisting of 1100 Yew trees.
  • Crystal Palace Park, South London. Laid out in the 1870s, this is the largest maze in London.
  • Glendurgan Garden, Cornwall. A cherry laurel hedge maze created in 1833.
  • Hampton Court Maze. A famous historic maze in the Palace gardens.
  • Hever Castle Maze, Hever, Kent. Yew tree maze and a splashing water maze
  • Hoo Hill Maze, Shefford, Bedfordshire, England
  • Norwich Cathedral, Norfolk, England. A labyrinth in the Cloister Garth. Laid to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of HM Queen Elizabeth II in 2002.
  • Richings Park Amazing Maize Maze, Richings Park, near Heathrow, England (Open July–September)
  • Saffron Walden, an Essex town with its historic Bridge End Gardens hedge maze and the England's largest turf maze
  • Saltwell Park, Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England. A yew-tree maze restored to its original condition in 2005 and open to the public during park opening hours.
  • Somerleyton Hall, Suffolk, England. A yew hedge maze designed and planted in 1846 by William Nesfield.
  • Traquair House, Peeblesshire, Scotland. A beech tree hedge maze designed by John Schofield.
  • York Maze, near RAF Elvington, with a different design each year

North America

Canada

  • In 2012, the Kraay Family Farm in Alberta, Canada created the world's largest QR code in the form of a massive corn maze, popularly known as The Edmonton Corn Maze.

United States

  • The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado in 2015 installed a 10,100-square-foot hedge maze on its front lawn, using 1,600 to 2,000 Alpine Currant hedge bushes. Previously the hotel had no maze, though one was featured prominently in the 1980 film adaption of Stephen King's novel The Shining, which is set at the hotel.
  • Dole Pineapple Plantation, Oahu.
  • Tanglewood Music Center Hedge Maze, Lenox and Stockbridge, Massachusetts.
  • The Wooz was a maze attraction opened in 1988 in Vacaville, California by Sun Creative System, a Japanese company that had seen success with the concept in Japan. Despite initial interest, high admission cost and hot summers led the park to close in 1992. The failure of the Wooz scuttled Sun Creative System's plans for additional maze attractions in the U.S.

South Africa

Chartwell Castle in Johannesburg claims to have the biggest known uninterrupted hedgerow maze in the Southern world, with over 900 conifers. It covers about 6000 sq.m. (approximately 1.5 acres), which is around 5 times bigger than The Hampton Court Maze. The center is about 12m × 12m. The maze was designed and laid out by Conrad Penny.

Caribbean

Cuba

The colonial city of Camagüey, Cuba, founded in 1528, layout resembles a real maze, with narrow, short streets always turning in one direction or another. After pirate Henry Morgan burned the city in the 17th century, it was designed like a maze so attackers would find it hard to move around inside the city. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

South America

Brazil

  • Labirinto Verde, Nova Petrópolis, (Circular hedge maze built in 1989; Latitude 29°22'32.71"S Longitude 51°06'43.68"W)

In popular culture

Video games

Main article: List of maze video games

Maze games are a type of video game that started in the 1980s. In these games, the whole play area is a maze, and players must solve it to escape danger, beat an opponent, or finish before time runs out. After the game Pac-Man came out in 1980, many more maze games followed the same rules.

Television

Both Nubeluz in Peru and American Gladiators in the United States used a giant maze in their shows. Contestants had to find their way from the start to the finish as fast as they could. On Nubeluz, players had one minute to get through, while on American Gladiators, two players raced together with 45 seconds to solve the maze.

The Shining

The 1980 movie based on Stephen King's book, The Shining, has a scene where characters Jack and Danny Torrance are in a hedge maze.

Images

A fun circular maze perfect for solving!
A large hazel maze in Dolní Pěna, Central Europe – a fun puzzle for visitors to navigate!
Follow the arrows from and back to the star in this fun maze!
Follow the arrows through the maze to find your way to the star!
Solve the maze by filling in four blocks to create a path connecting the stars!
Follow the numbers to navigate through the maze! Start at the star and jump the number of blocks shown in each space to find your way to the end.
A colorful maze diagram showing different paths with arrows to help guide the way.

Related articles

Labyrinth
Tour puzzle
List of maze video games
Turf maze
Hampton Court Maze
Stephen King

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Maze, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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