I have made a few thousand mazes for this website, although only half of them remain because I got rid of the least popular ones. What is left are the mazes people seem to search for and download the most. If you stop by on Mondays you will see the new maze of the week which a more artful maze (usually) than the daily mazes I was making for my first few years tending the site. I think the extra days of design means a better maze.
Today I want to take you through the 5 Hardest Mazes on this site. All of these come from the earlier version of the site where daily mazes were the norm. By the end of this year I expect to have a Part 2 with complicated picture mazes, but for now here are the big 5:
#5 and #4 Playing Card Mazes
Specifically the King of Diamonds and Queen of Hearts playing cards. As of this writing each is featured on the home page, neither has a downloadable solution available, and both feature long dead ends. What do I mean by long dead ends ? Well I did not make the incorrect pathways obvious quickly for the solver. I also made multiple branches off of wrong pathways, so you might make a wrong turn, go back to the last intersection and go the other way just to realize later that is also the wrong pathway. Because of the level of detail each should be printed on large size paper to solve !!
King of Diamonds Maze
Queen of Hearts Maze
#3 Slide Arrow Maze(s)
The thing about a slide arrow maze is that if you make a large one with only one correct solution it can become impossible to solve without “backward solving”. In a slide arrow maze you can move to any other arrow the arrow you are on is pointing to (but no jumping gaps). So the number of possibilities gets large quickly and your chances of making the x# of moves in a row correctly are near zero. Any slide arrow maze would work here but I picked one where there are 13 possible second moves.
#2 Empire State Building Maze (at night)
First I want to mention that I made this in Microsoft Paint a pixel at a time before I discovered how to make digital mazes much more easily. It took months. The maze is based on a scale model I found online. Although it does not say so, there are 2 ways to solve the maze. From the start at the base to the top. Or go all the way up and then back down to the start. The maze has 2 pathways up/down. This is also my largest maze at 3 feet wide and 9.5 feet tall in full resolution. I did not make a solution file. The sheer size of this makes it difficult in addition to the fact it was an early maze of mine before I understood how to design an enjoyable maze soultion.
#1 Mega Arrow Maze
While this maze may or may not be the Largest Arrow Maze in the World, it is definitely difficult to solve. The thing that I like about Arrow mazes is that there are no dead ends, only incorrect loops that you can get caught in. Of course, that is also what makes them maddening when you choose the wrong pathway.
It has it’s own section on the site. And starting Tuesday I will be giving daily hints (5 in total) to help you solve it. Go there to get the directions on how to solve an arrow maze and the mazes download. Good Luck ! You will probably need it !
Hey, did you notice this is only Part 1 ? Well there are future collections of hard mazes coming. If you want to be notified when new collections of hard mazes are made send me your info below !