This page was revised on November 18, 2006.
The Quilt Maze was re-themed and became
the Starry Night Maze used on the cover
of the December, 2006 issue.



Quilt Maze:

Goal


Start


Begin on the blue moon at the bottom and make a series of moves that will take you to the green flower at the top. On each move, travel for any distance along a row of hexagons. The hexagon where you end a move must have either the same symbol or the same color as the hexagon at the start of your move (ending on both the same symbol and the same color is also okay). The maze also has a no-U-turn rule. After you've ended a move, on the next move you cannot turn completely around and travel back. Here is an example: From the blue moon, you can only travel north two squares and land on the yellow moon. It is important to note that could not travel from the blue moon to the blue flower or to the blue chess rook. Neither of those moves follow a row of hexagons. On your second turn, you could not travel south from the yellow moon to the yellow star, because that would violate the no-U-turn rule. You can, however, travel northeast to the yellow flower. Hint and solution, page 00



Notes on the Quilt maze: You can, of course, use any set of five symbols here (you could even use the letters G, A, M, E, S). One of my symbols was supposed to be a chess rook, in case you're wondering what that was. You might want to make this look more like a quilt, or you might use a completely different theme. You can also use any four colors, but I think these bright colors work best.

Finding the solution is pretty hard, a lot harder than you'd think given the small size of the maze. In case the maze is too hard, I've provided a hint. It's in the next paragraph, but don't read it until you've solved the maze. If you'd rather not give a hint, you can leave it out.

Hint for the Quilt maze: Early in this maze, you travel from the yellow flower north to the yellow fish. If you could go south from that fish, you can make it to the goal. But you cannot go south, because that would violate the no-U-turn rule. However, you can go somewhere else from the yellow fish. You might then be able to loop around, make it back to the fish, and perhaps be in the right position to travel south.

Solution to the Quilt maze: The letters indicate the direction of each move (north, south, northeast, etc.), and the numbers indicate the length of the move.

N2-NE1-N1-SW3-SE2-SW1-N2-NE1-SE2-SW1-NW2 (see note below) S2-NE1-NW2-NE3-S3-NE1-N2-NW2.

Note: The last four moves took you around a loop. An alternate path is to go around the loop in the opposite direction.

Further possibilities: If you decide to use this maze, I could create a JavaScript program that would be an interactive version of the maze. It could run on the GAMES web site. And there are more possibilities: The program could be expanded to include many layouts. It could then remain on the GAMES web site, or it might be sold as a download. It could even run on the Xbox 360.

Update, August 30, 2006: I wrote a preliminary Quilt maze program and put it on my site at this location. Update, November 18, 2006: This program was revised and became the Starry Night program on the GAMES web site.

The origin of the Quilt maze: The rules and the layout are original with me. I had a large quilt maze in SuperMazes that had 37 cells. I cut it down to 19 cells for this small cover maze, and I created a new layout. Surprisingly, the small maze is almost as complex as the large maze.

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