Maze of the Week #67 - Taj Mahal Maze

April 10, 2023

My most popular mazes from 2022 were famous buildings from around the world. It inspired me to look for more buildings to maze like Maze of the Week #67, the Taj Mahal. Certainly this is a building that most of the world has heard of ! Completed in 1648, it is still an amazing structure located in Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India. Check out this video showing the grounds and inside !

Photo: flickr, Christopher John SSF

Maze explanation: To add more detail to the structure I made this a poster sized maze. The size is 43 x 28 and it is difficult to solve printed on small pieces of paper. Also, because of the detail I had to work around a lot of things to create the maze - so I created 2 ! The main maze is from tower to tower, with a bonus maze in the central dome.

And the maze: Huge and black and white

Taj Mahal Mazes in black and white — Taj Mahal Maze

I hope you enjoy the maze. Maze download is available on the site. A also did a case study on improving the maze.

Case Study#9 - Improving a Maze - Taj Mahal

Coming next week:

A sign maze

Maze of the Week #66 - Jallianwala Bagh Memorial Maze

April 3, 2023

Maze of the week #66 is of a memorial located in Amritsar, Punjab, India. It is the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial which sits on the location of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre in 1919. Here is a video without audio showing a walkthrough to the memorial.

Photo: flickr, P.L. Tandon

The Maze: A simple full color maze.

I hope you enjoy the maze. Free maze download is available on the site.

Coming next week:

The most famous building in India

Maze of the Week #65 - Bridge Guardian Maze

March 27, 2023

It’s that time of year again. Baseball season starts March 30th. Maze of the week #65 was my attempt to celebrate that fact. It is a maze of the Guardian from the bridge that overlooks Progressive Field in Cleveland, Ohio. Specifically it is one of the Guardians of Traffic sculptures (1932). You can read about them in Cleveland Magazine or check out this short video about the name change:

Photo: flickr, Erick Drost

Guardians of Traffic bridge statues in Cleveland, Ohio — Guardians of Traffic

The Maze: One color. Not my best maze. I made this a few years ago and never used it (until now). I post it here to show you how some of my mazes get developed over time. This is NOT the final product.

Guardian of Traffic Maze — Bridge Guardian Maze

And now to look into my improved version:

Photo: This photo from flickr, and Heather McLaughlin, will become important.

Jacobs Field Cleveland OH — flickr, Heather McLaughlin, Jacobs Field

And now what I did to improve (hopefully) the maze and make it more interesting.

1. Colors changed - The initial maze was one color. I changed the overall color to be darker and added a secondary color. I also added shadows in many places.

2. Details added - I went back and found a better photo of the truck and added additional details to it. I added some new details to the face, added fingernails, etc. You can compare the mazes and find even more !

3. Extended the maze - I made the maze longer and extended it to the bottom of the page. The actual structure is very large and the previous “floating” version of the maze was not accurate. I also added the side panels that were missing from version 1.

4. Changed the Maze - I kept this an easy kids maze. I changed the non-core maze portion at the top and deleted the lower portion of the maze.

5. Added background - I wanted to try this as mixed media. I thought about doing a blue sky but the location of this bridge overlooks the baseball stadium, so I found the photo above to make this a mixed media maze !

6. Start and goal changed - I felt that this would look better by changing the arrows to an internal lettered start and goal.

7. Letter and branding moved - I moved the branding and lettering to the top of the page. I also re-sized the title to be larger than the city name.

8. Wider cuts - There are a few places where I “cut” through the illustration to connect the parts of the maze. I slightly more than doubled these for easier solving.

And so here is the “After”. Which maze do you prefer ? Did this improve the maze ?

This maze has it’s own page where you can download it. Happy mazing !!

Coming next week:

A monument in India

Maze of the Week #63 - George Rogers Clark Memorial Maze

March 13, 2023

Maze of the week #63 takes us to a monument in Vincennes, Indiana with the George Rogers Clark Memorial maze. I liked the building and that is usually enough for me to consider a maze. GRD was a famous soldier in the early US. You can read about GRD the man, or the memorial on the Wikipedia page.

Or just watch this video to see the building and learn about it’s history:

Photo: From alan berning, flickr: