Thursday 5 April 2012

Maze blackouts

I had a feeling you could kind of run a maze by drawing (or imagining) a dividing line between the two end points, then blocking out any dead ends nearby, and using the unblocked areas as a guide. From there, you just repeat the process until the way becomes clear, like a path of light among the shadows. So I gave it a try on a page from my "Office Time Wasters" desk calendar that has occasional mazes in it.
It turns out this is a much slower way of running simple mazes, and that fact, ironically, makes them more fun for me, because they last longer than just finding the path the traditional way. Also, it turns out not to handle loops at all, since they are areas with no dead ends. They amount to alternate paths to the goal, but longer ones that aren't worth it. Still, I plan to do all the mazes in my desktop calendar this way from now on.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - In the example picture, I've blacked out the loops, too.
PPS - Just because it looked neater.

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