Maze of the Week #1 - Horseshoe Bend Maze, Arizona

Welcome to our first maze of the year ! We start off with a landscape maze featuring Horseshoe Bend near Page, Arizona. This is a full color maze (using only 6 colors) and uses a draw and cut maze construction. It is not a typical maze to solve because of the use of the natural shape of the stones which create the walls, but I think you will enjoy it.

Some information about Horseshoe Bend

Horseshoe Bend is a large bend in the Colorado River a few miles from the town of Page, Arizona. From a geological standpoint it is an entrenched meander. If you want to learn more about the bend I suggest you check out the Wikipedia page. If you are more interested in visiting the bend, you have options to fly it, hike it and raft it. You also have the opportunity to visit Antelope Canyon which is just 7 miles away ! Seems like a nice vacation.

If you like videos here is one with some great travel information about Horseshoe Bend that I recommend,

Let’s take a look at what exactly I am mazing with an amazing photo of the subject courtesy of Francesco Ungaro, who you can follow on Instagram @ _francesco_ungaro_. And now we can confirm that the bend does indeed look like a horseshoe !

Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

The Maze:

This maze only comes in one format (I tried to make a black and white version but the bend gets lost). Good Luck trying to solve the maze !

Permanent home of the maze is located here.

Coming next week hint:

Another landscape maze from a nearby place….so if you enjoy this maze come back on Monday January 10th for a similar maze !

My 2022 Website Outlook - Less mazes, higher quality

For the past 3+ years I have been posting daily mazes on this website. In 2018 and 2019 the theme was based on weird holidays. In 2020 and 2021 I featured a different type of maze each month and concluded most months with a free downloadable book. This gave me a guideline to design each daily maze and focus my work. In April of 2021 I started the Laberinto portion of the site for Spanish speakers.

For a typical 30 day month I need to do the following: 1 - Create a maze. 2 - Format and save the maze for display on the website. 3 - Create a downloadable file for the site. 4,5,6 - repeat steps 1,2, and 3 in Spanish by translating and updating each file. So each month I make 180 different files in order to populate the site. It takes a lot of time. Even for simple mazes. I work on other, more complicated mazes than the ones that I post daily. Those are the mazes I like making the most. The daily mazes are taking up a lot of time…but they do not produce a lot of enjoyment for me (typically). So they are stopping in 2022.

So what is going to happen in 2022 ? A weekly maze. 52 mazes for the year. Each maze will be more intricate. Each maze will be closer to what I call maze art. Each individual maze will have it’s own linkable section of the website for after the week is over. Each weekly maze will have a blog post telling you about the maze, possibly about how or why it was made and give more background. I also might include some additional coloring options for each maze. I like to think of it like a comic book, where each maze has an alternative cover !

I think you will see better mazes that are more shareable and more likely to be printed out and solved. Now, I will spend the same amount of time making mazes, but instead of producing 180 files for 30 days, I will make 12 files of 4 mazes for 28 days. And I will like a final product that has much higher quality (and I hope you will to!)

What type of mazes will I see on the site ?

• Sign Mazes - for some reason I like making this type of maze

• Building Mazes - a nice subject to create a maze with

• Landscape Mazes - I have not perfected these yet, but with some practice I think these could become interesting

• Landmark/Statue Mazes

When will mazes be posted ?

• Every Monday except for the first maze which will post on January 1.

• Each maze will also include a blog post to accompany it.

• Many mazes will be posted during specific weeks to honor a specific holiday / anniversary, etc. Some of my favorite mazes are already slated for September/October !!!

What makes a good subject for a maze ?

• Buildings are normally very good

• Anything that has a block like shape.

• Items that have a lot of “open” space that can hold a maze within them

  • i.e. skinny items can be difficult since they have difficulty containing a maze

And a poor subject ?

• Besides the skinny items, I have a lot of trouble with faces.

• Similar to faces, any picture/item that relies on shadows. There is a way to make these (varying the thickness and spacing of lines) but I have not yet mastered it.

How can I suggest a maze subject ?

• Maze suggestions. Please do !! I love when I get suggestions.

Now would be a good time to give you an example. Let’s start with a maze I have featured before as an example of ‘maze art’. The Playhouse Square Sign in Cleveland Ohio. Obviously, the example is smaller than when it prints on regular size paper and is solvable (and easier to see the maze!).

Playhouse Square Sign Maze

Cleveland, Ohio

From across the room this looks like a picture and not a maze (hopefully). Only when you get up close do you realize that what you are looking at is actually a maze. That is my goal.

I hope you enjoy the new format ! Let’s have a great 2022 !

My 2021 Year in Review

I wanted to write a year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. Yes, I made a lot of mazes, but I did more than that, expanding what I did and how I did it. This post might just be for me, but I am happy to take you along on the journey. Enjoy. And since I did this exact post the year before…why not show 3 years !!

Daily Mazes posted:

640 in 2021 vs. 366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

I was up against a leap year from 2021 so I was destined to be at 365…until I decided on April 1st to create the Spanish Language section of the site (Laberintos) which added 275 additional mazes. Some of these had no changes but I am not going to count individual translations.

Blog Posts:

291 vs. 102 vs. 26

Some of my most popular content is still from 2020. In 2021 I tried some new things to improve my SEO and that included deleting large sections of the website and creating 100 blog posts, each featuring a best maze from 2018-2020. This did not work. But I did blog significantly more than LY and that did work, My goal was 3 times a week or 156 posts and even after dropping the 100 maze project I crushed that number,

Name Mazes Made

4 vs. 247 vs. 1,499

The SEO on this section of the site dropped off significantly this year. You can read about how I chose the names HERE. So 2021 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, and not many were, although this may become a project for 2022…maybe…

Books posted online:

12 vs. 8 vs. 19

In the 2 years prior to this one I created a lot of free downloadable content. By my count that was 27 books, some of which have been retired or improved. For 2021 while I started off with a few monthly books, I got away from this to focus on other content. Somehow I still managed to make 12 books !

Books Published on Amazon:

0 vs. 3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. And with a bit of help I translated 2 of them into 3 additional languages. I also have one of the few Kindle maze books available since Arrow mazes are solved with your finger/eyes and not a writing utensil. My books did not sell very well so I have 3 additional books sitting on the shelf, ready for publication if I come up with a marketing plan.

Website Traffic growth:

242% vs LY, +1000%+ the PY

The website traffic grew year over year by 242% and it has the potential to grow by the same in the future as I learn more about image SEO. I am also looking at changing the future content of the site to attract different people.

Different countries visiting the site:

100 vs. 99 vs. 20

Well this was a weird category that I really wanted to grow in 2021…and I did technically grow it. But I lost 11 countries along the way (none with high traffic in 2020) while gaining 12 new countries. My largest new country was Barbados, followed by Guatemala. Thank you ! While I thought my largest growth would come from Spanish speaking countries (it did not), it was instead from Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Vietnam and Singapore.

Requests for Maze use:

About the same to slightly higher

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

Zero created, but views were up !

YouTube Subscribers:

Up.

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Up +18. Has bounced around during the year…

Books Sold on Amazon:

Slightly down

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting some interesting mazes !!

Stop back on Thursday for my 2022 website outlook. There will be changes to the site coming on January 1 !

Hidden Message Maze Letter Design templates

So you want to design your own hidden message maze, but you want a little extra help. Today I show you 4 different mazed alphabet sets that I have made. Each was a grid background that will help you make the letters on your own. Some letters are consistently difficult to make into a maze form….I think B, K, G, N, X and Z always seem to be difficult. Every once in awhile if you have an odd letter size you will have trouble with an E.

Mazed Alphabet #1:

A collection of standard “mazed” letters. I will say that these letters are actually labyrinths because there are no choices to be made once you enter a letter (vs. the choices you would find in a maze). To give these a maze feel add some gaps in the letters that lead into false pathways. You may also add gaps inside letters that have closed sections (A,B,D,O,P,Q, and R).

And here is a few examples of alternative constructions that can be used if you prefer how they look ! They also give different alignments if you are spelling something and want a different exit/entrance combination.

Click below to download the template as an svg file. Available for personal use ONLY, no commercial use without prior consent.

Mazed Alphabet #2

And here is a larger size template at 15x19. Notice that I did include gaps for false pathways in the letters A, B, D, O, and Q. Just like my example above of alternative letter alignments, many of these letters can be re-configured if you like. The bottom of the G could be done back and forth so that it ends at the bottom instead of higher up.

Click below to download the template as an svg file. Available for personal use ONLY, no commercial use without prior consent.

Mazed Alphabet #3

And with my third template I have made an even larger group of letters. It includes multiple versions of L, T and Y. Almost all letters have entrances and exits that align for easy combining (P can be adjusted - check some of the other templates for examples).

Click below to download the template as an svg file. Available for personal use ONLY, no commercial use without prior consent.

Mazed Alphabet #4

The fourth template uses Alphabet #1 and puts it into an Axonometric grid to give it a dimensional effect. I also added a few false exits in some of the letters if you want to make the hidden messages more hidden ! For stand alone mazes (non-hidden words) you could add a depth to these letters to give them a 3D look.

Click below to download the template as an svg file. Available for personal use ONLY, no commercial use without prior consent.

If you get stuck making your own letters, use these as reference.

You could use these letters to make a maze of your name. I have 5 different How-to make a maze of your name versions that would might interest you. And if you just want to print out your name as a maze, I probably have it done already in my name maze section, and if I do not you can request it !