Robert Abbott’s Mazes
Robert Abbott's Mazes--including interactive mazes in Java and JavaScript, walk-through mazes-with-rules, reviews of Mad Mazes and SuperMazes.
  What’s new . . .   11/10/99:  Andrea Gilbert’s tilt mazes
10/29/99:  Maze pictures from last summer
R



Robert Abbott’s Mazes
 

    During September and October, Ann and I had a lot of fun visiting my walk-through mazes-with-rules. As I’ve reported previously on this site, The American Maze Company builds three of my small mazes next to each of their large cornfield mazes.

It was exciting for me to see my abstract ideas take real form, even when the implementation only involves stakes in the ground and ropes to define the paths. And it was fun to talk to the people trying to solve the mazes.

I took lots of pictures, and Steve Ryan sent me some great pictures of the mazes in Camarillo, California. You can click here to see a collection of the pictures (but I should warn you that it can take 5 minutes for all the pictures to load).

If you haven’t seen it already, you might also take a look at my section describing how this concept of walk-through mazes-with-rules developed from 1993 through 1998.

Currently I’m working on new mazes with new rules for the summer of 2000. They should be fantastic! Check this site around next June to see where these mazes will be.


Puzzles: This site has many puzzles, the best of which are two Java mazes: the Sliding Door Maze and Theseus and the Minotaur. They are programmed by Oriel Maxime and are based on mazes from my books. I should warn you that they are extremely difficult and few people have been able to solve them. And Oriel and I have taken an oath not to reveal the solutions.

There is also a series of four number mazes that I programmed myself in JavaScript. The first is the Easy Number Maze. Not only is it easy, but it will even display its solution if you ask it to. No solution is provided for the other three mazes, and each is more difficult than the previous maze in the series. They are the Not-So-Easy Number Maze, the Changing-Rule Number Maze, and the No-U-Turn Number Maze.

Probably the most creative part of this web site is a collection of “rolling-block” mazes that are in a section called Things That Roll. These mazes aren’t even interactive. Instead, you’re asked to print the maze, tape some dice together to form a weirdly-shaped block, then roll the block across the maze. The mazes were created by many different people in the kind of collaborative effort that could only happen on the Internet.


And
finally:		 This web site has two essays. One is about Life-Size Mazes, giving my thoughts and some recommendations on full-size (conventional) mazes you can walk through. The other essay is an appreciation of Andrea Gilbert’s tilt mazes.

And the site has reviews of my books SuperMazes and Mad Mazes, and it has stuff you can buy from me.

Click here to send me e-mail. Or you can write to this address:

Robert Abbott
P.O. Box 2596
Jupiter, FL 33468

By the way, this web site is optimized for a display size of 800x600 and for a color setting of “True Color (24 bit)” (or better). The pictures will look especially bad if your color setting is “256 Colors,” which, not everyone realizes, is the lowest setting.