Mazes to Visit This Summer

In America we don't have the stately hedge mazes found in Britain, but we do have many fence mazes. Fence mazes may lack the beauty of hedge mazes, but strictly as logic puzzles they usually surpass hedge mazes. Unfortunately, all our fence mazes are goofy-looking roadside attractions that promise fun-for-the-kiddies.

The mazes really are fun-for-the-kiddies, but they're much more. Here's what happens when you visit a fence maze: At first you'll say, “Okay, this doesn't look too hard. I should be out of here in no time. I'll just go down this corridor, then this looks like the way to go, then I'll turn here, then . . . wait! I've been here before. Have I taken that other path? I can't remember. What should I try next?” Pretty soon you're hopelessly lost. This can actually be a little scary, but it's also a great challenge. What happens next is the best part: You wander around, re-travel various routes, and begin to learn what corridors go where. During this time you recognize other patrons of the maze and you all laugh when you pass each other for the third and fourth times. Slowly a mental map, at first vague and imperfect, begins to form in your head. After more details of the map become clear, you have a sort of aha! experience: You understand enough about the maze to know in what general direction you should head, and you are on you way to finding the solution. One caveat though: this great intellectual experience only happens in a well-designed maze.

“So,” you'll probably ask, “what maze should I visit if I won't be anywhere near Myrtle Beach?” I don't really have a good answer for this. I can point you toward a fairly complete list of all the mazes in this country (and in the world). Go to www.mazemaker.com and click on the section called “Adrian Fisher's World Maze Database.” Besides the list of mazes, this is a fascinating site with lots of general information about mazes. Also check out www.americanmaze.com. This site will give you a list of most of the cornfield mazes that will be around this summer. Cornfield mazes are a lot of fun, even when they aren't too well-designed.

Of the mazes I've visited, the chief flaw I've found is poor handling of false paths. A lot of designers think you just have to draw a true path to the goal, have various false paths branch off the true path, and have each false path go directly to a dead end. A maze like this is boring and easily solved. That flaw is most obvious in a large maze in Panama City Beach, Florida, and in the old maze in Vacaville, California. A better way to handle false paths is to have them lead into loops, or to other false paths. Even better is to have a section of inter-connecting paths that you can wander around in. There should be only one exit from this section, and it should take you to another section of inter-connecting paths. Another flaw is to have multiple goals to visit (at each goal there's a machine that punches a number on your time card). That flaw is in many mazes, including one in Daytona Beach, Florida. With multiple goals, you just wander at random and you're sure to come across one goal after another. The worst flaw happens when a designer creates a very large maze (like one of the large cornfield mazes). The designer then realizes the maze is too hard, so he puts in two or more separate solutions to the maze. And, finally, a maze should not be solvable by the right-hand rule.

In spite of all these flaws, I hope you visit a maze this summer. Even a poorly-designed maze can have some interest. I've visited most of the mazes on the East Coast, but I haven't visited any in Colorado or in Southern California, so there might be some good mazes that I don't know about in these areas. And I'd like to propose a project: If you do visit a maze, write a review, or just a short evaluation, and send it to me. I'll print some reviews in this column, and, if we receive enough reviews, we can print an entire guide to mazes before next summer.