This page was revised on September 20, 2006.
I added a dot maze that could be used inside the magazine.
Another revision, January 18, 2009.
I removed that maze for inside the magazine.
I came to think that it wasn't very good.



 

Dot Maze:




Travel along the roads from Start to Goal and go through the dots in the order red, green, yellow, red, green, yellow, and so on.

Answer, page 00
A larger dot maze, page 00




Notes: A possible theme could be a cityscape with buildings in the city blocks and traffic signals instead of dots. Each signal would have three lights, but only one of the lights would be on. This scene would be awfully hard to draw.

If you like that theme but can't fit it on the cover, then here is a reduced version of the maze. It's easier than the first version, but it still has some complexity. The rules are the same.







Solution to the first Dot maze: The capital letters N, S, E, and W indicate the direction to go at each intersection. Corners are considered to be intersections, and we include an asterisk to indicate when you reach a corner. The lowercase letters r, g, and y indicate when you go over a red, green, or yellow dot.

r-E-Ng-W-*Sy-E-Er-N-W-Sg-W-Ny-*E-E-

S-S-Sr-S-Wg-W-*Ny-E-Sr-Eg-E-*Ny-Er


Solution to the reduced Dot maze:

r-E-Ng-W-*Sy-E-Er-N-*W-Sg-W-Ny-*E-E-

*S-S-Sr-S-*Wg-W-*Ny-E-Sr-Eg-*N-Ey


The origin of the Dot maze: The rules and the layout are original with me. I'm pretty sure I'm the originator of mazes with colored dots, but I can't remember when I first started doing them. GAMES had a two-color dot maze of mine sometime in the early 1990s. I had a three-color dot maze in SuperMazes. I reduced that maze by about a quarter and modified the layout to create the cover maze here.


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