A Maze A Week

Fred requested a maze that has multiple layers.

For this maze, start in the top left or bottom right, where the 1/4 visible discs are located.  Wait until paths open up between the circles and make your way to the other disc.

patiently enjoy paths that connect the circles in the corners

This maze is for my brother Fred.

“Piled Higher and Deeper” logo by Jorge Cham
www.phdcomics.com

help the student achieve a PhD!

For my mom, for her birthday.

I don’t know if it really counts as a maze, but it’s hand drawn with love (and post-processed with Gimp).

for Ma, with love

Help the blue disc get out of the maze via the exit to the right.

Simple at first, this maze becomes a bit dizzying after a bit!

technically easy, but slightly dizzying: get the blue disc out

Another of the mixed path variety, this maze may be a bit more difficult than the previous one.  Go from one heart to the other.  Paths cross under other paths when surrounded by dark areas.

go from heart to heart, crossing under paths when in darkened zones

This maze tries to mix two types of paths: normal paths, and what I call “noodles,” or paths that cross over and under other paths.

Paths become noodle paths when they are surrounded by thick black areas.

Try to get from the circle to the diamond, or the other way. There are several viable paths; can you find the shortest?

go from diamond to circle. paths become noodles when over dark areas

Without leaving the safety of the shelves, get from one arrow to the other.

from one arrow to the other, without falling off the shelves

Navigate from the big dot near the center to the three circled dots on the right.

Though an extension of the hexagon theme, this is a normal maze.   Get from one ball to the other.

follow white paths from one ball to the other

I just enjoy looking at this pattern. Nevermind that it’s a maze!

Inspired by Andrea Gilbert, this maze is like her Step-Over Sequence Mazes.

To solve it, the pawn can jump over colored bars, landing in adjacent hexagons with each jump. The catch is that the pawn must jump over colored bars in the sequence indicated by the key in the bottom.

Welcome back, Roy G Biv! Red Orange Yellow Green Blue Indigo Violet… finishing a few repetitions, you can jump across violet and out of the maze onto the ball in the lower right.

help the pawn reach the dot by jumping over colored lines in sequence

After scanning this maze, I decided the red and orange bars looked too similar, so I used gimp to fill in the red bars with a brighter red color.

This maze is for Lin.  🙂

Start and end at the arrows near the bottom middle, using the flower at the top to change between black and white paths.

from arrow to arrow, using the flower to transition

The upper portion of this maze was drawn by hand; try to get from one big bulb to the other.  Paths cross over and under one another.

The lower portion of this maze is much easier to solve, and was much easier to draw.  Most of it I did with gimp, as I toyed around with selections and bucket fill.  Find a path from one big circle to the other.   Paths go under the upper maze.

After a chat with my friend Patrick, I decided to use gimp to make a maze.  I didn’t really know what to expect, but I hoped it would allow me to easily make something that looked like a drawing done with CAD.  I don’t think it did that, but it pretty handily duplicated a complicated pattern into a 2 x 2 quadruple pattern which I tweaked to make a relatively difficult maze.

Go from one dot to two dots, or the other way around, as you see fit.

from dots to dot or dot to dots

The center of this maze started as an experiment in a new way to draw a maze.  It seems to have worked out nicely!

Go from arrow to arrow to arrow, repeating as desired.

This is a maze for Karen!

To solve this maze, we recall ROY G BIV, the abbreviations for the color names (in English) of a rainbow.

Start with the red line on the left hand side, and trace it to a connected orange line.  Follow this to a connected yellow line, then green, blue, indigo and violet, as in the key in the bottom left of the maze.  Following the pattern twice, I can reach the violet line on the right hand side of the maze.  Can you?

follow colors of ROY G BIV

I used gimp again for this maze, wanting to use slight variations of repeated patterns to make a complex-looking maze actually be a bit complex.

S and G stand for Start and Goal, or Go and Stop, as you prefer.  The circles are just cosmetic.

from Start to Goal, or from Go to Stop

This piece started with a bunch of right angles drawn on the page, all in one of four different orientations, hence the word “aligned” in the title.   I then drew lots of curves to connect the right angles until they were all used up and a maze had appeared!

Try to get from one dark ball to the other.   There are two distinct paths that I’ve found.

Try to get from one ball to the other, then back by a different route

I offered to make a maze for my friend Greg Mullinax after I accidentally overlooked an email he had sent.  I asked how difficult he’d like it to be.

Clearly it needs to be extremely accurate so that my gps works
and so devilishly difficult that i need a gps.

I hope this fits the requirements.  There are dots in opposite corners; try to get from one to the other.

go from dot in one corner to dot in opposite corner

We were trying to think of good names for this.  Soness suggested along the lines of “angles” and I joked that we could call it “angels” in an apparent misspelling, like “from all angels.”

For this maze, go from one black triangle to the other, using the black lines as paths.

This maze was named after the lighting I used when drawing it, out on the balcony here in Chigasaki.

I’m publishing it on a non-Tuesday because it was already published online, available at this permalink: http://art.robnugen.com/sm11

Fred decided he solved it by navigating between the two adjacent dots, but I think one might be more satisfied by going from the solo dot to the pair of dots.

get from the lone dot to two adjacent dots