My 2022 Year in Review

This is my year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. In the past, I made a lot of mazes, but this year I focused on making less mazes and each being of higher quality. I do this post each year and I keep the previous years data.…so 4 years of progress !!

Weekly (Daily) Mazes posted:

54 in 2022 vs. 640 in 2021 vs. 366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

This was the big change for the website. Daily Mazes became weekly mazes. I did one each week, with a few weeks containing variations. Basically a few more than 52.

Blog Posts:

132 vs. 291 vs. 102 vs. 26

I cut back on the number of posts. Each weekly maze has it’s own blog post, and I still do maze movie reviews. I also spent some quality time updating any post from previous years that still had a high amount of traffic.

Name Mazes Made

13 vs. 4 vs. 247 vs. 1,499

This was one of my first projects. You can read about how I chose the names if you are interested. So 2022 and 2021 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, and not many were. Maybe it is because I have covered all the important names already ?

Books posted online:

2 vs. 12 vs. 8 vs. 19

In my first 3 years of the site I created a lot of free downloadable content. By my count that was 39 books, some of which have been retired or improved. When you make hundreds of mazes a year this makes sense. This year - not so much, just a few Christmas books I had never published before.

Books Published on Amazon:

0 vs. 0 vs. 3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. I have 3 additional books sitting on the shelf, ready for publication if I come up with a marketing plan.

Website Traffic growth:

+47% vs LY, 2021: 242% vs LY, +1000%+ the PY

Hoping for even more growth in 2023 ! Each year growth gets a bit smaller as I grow the site.

Different countries visiting the site:

100 vs. 100 vs. 99 vs. 20

I think that the countries are actually higher than 100, but the analytics dashboard stops there ? Largest growth came from Jamaica, Chile, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia and Hungary.

Requests for Maze use:

About the same to slightly higher

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

Zero created, but views were up to LY by about 50%.

YouTube Subscribers:

Up. 2X LY technically.

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Fluctuates during the year. Currently flat to LY.

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 !!

Maze of the Week #52 - Large Snowflake Maze

I hope you had a great holiday and are able to enjoy some time off. My final weekly maze of the year, weekly maze #52 is a VERY LARGE Snowflake Maze.

If you are looking for a good collection or book for Kids that includes many different types of holiday mazes you can find them here.

The Maze: Black and white. Very large. Colorable. A LONG solution !

Large Snowflake maze

Snowflake Maze

I hope you enjoy the maze. This Snowflake Maze download is available

Coming next week:

A new year !

Tale of Tales (2015) Movie Review

Tale of Tales (2015) IMDB Prime

Tale of Tales (2015) movie poster

Tale of Tales is a movie about a variety of fairytales intertwined into 3 different storylines that revolve around kings and queens. You get some nice performances from Salma Hayek, John C Reilly, Vincent Cassel, and Toby Jones and the cinemaphotography is also good. It is also a movie that won a lot of awards for costume design, which I did not know until researching the movie after having watched it, and I must say it makes a lot of sense.

There is a maze scene in the movie because Salma Hayek’s queen character has a stone maze outside her castle. Check out the screengrab below. While most movies would have gone with a traditional hedge maze in the gardens, this stone version looks daunting.

Tale of Tales (2015) maze scene

Overall, there are some nice moments in the movie, and it is worth a watch if you like movies from this period or enjoy any of the actors.

I give it a 6.3/10.

Shock Labyrinth (2009) Movie Review

Shock Labyrinth (2009) IMDB PRIME

Shock Labyrinth movie poster

If someone said to you - ‘Hey do you want to watch a movie or would you rather be punched in the face 5 times ?’ you would naturally say, I’ll take the movie. But that is the WRONG answer. First you need to see what the movie is. If it is this movie take the beating. Not only is it horrible and make no sense but you have to read the subtitles. I will grant one exception. This movie may cure insomnia. I can’t confirm it, but I think someone should give it a try.

There are kids stuck in a mazelike hospital…blah blah blah. There is a 3D version which seems like it could be used for advanced torture ? This is a hard pass obviously.

I give it a 3.3/10.