Maze of the Week #53 - Museo Soumaya

We start 2023 with one of my favorite mazes that I have ever made. It is of the Museo Soumaya located in Mexico City. The maze is of the building named the Plaza Carso, opened in 2011 and designed by Mexican Architect Fernando Romero. You can read the wiki about it here, or visit their website and plan a trip.

Now this maze made me rethink what the possible solutions are to a maze. One of the most popular options that people inquire about is the hidden message maze where the solution is a word. The solution to this maze is a variation on that theme. You’ll have to solve it to find out what it is !

Check out a video of the museum:

A Photo of the Building:

Diego Delso, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The Maze: Almost completely black and white. Large. And a very fun solution !

Museo Soumaya Maze

I hope you enjoy the maze. A download of the maze is available.

Did you know I have a YouTube channel ? I will be uploading maze videos there starting today ! Check it out !

Coming next week:

A building from Azerbaijan !?

My 2023 Website Outlook

In 2022 I switched from daily mazes to weekly mazes and really preferred this schedule. This allowed me to put more work into each maze and create mazes that were more like artwork. Each Monday I launched a new maze with a blog post.

For 2023 this format will continue - a new maze each Monday launched with a blog post. I will also be makig weekly videos.

What type of mazes will I see on the site ?

• Building Mazes - a nice subject to create a maze with, & my favorite

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

• Scene Mazes - new. you’ll understand when you see it. Update - like this walking Street.

• and a few new one off experimental subjects to keep things interesting !

What will be new ?

• YouTube Videos - I will show some of the mazes being made in steps, edited into short videos. This will also include videos of mazes being solved. You can check out my channel here.

• New Shapes - I have already made a few mazes that are very wide and a square shaped maze. Expect more interesting shapes in 2023. I have found that if I make a make that is of a subject with a weird shape, I shouldn’t try to fit that maze to a standard sheet of paper. If I do I end up with a maze with a lot of white space or with a maze too small to solve. The maze size is the maze size regardless of the paper. Deal with it.

• Multi Maze Pictures - I have already made 2 mazes that include multiple mazes within them. One has 10, the other has 4 !! For what is coming in the future, these are subjects where some zones are impassable so multi-maze makes a lor of sense. Also, very large mazes where multiple mazes will fit. Check out this example of a famous building maze.

• More International Mazes - 44 mazes from 2022 were from the USA with only 4 other countries represented. There will be many more International mazes !

How can I suggest a maze subject ?

• Suggest a Maze subject. Please do !! I love when I get suggestions.

Let’s have a great 2023 !

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. For a detailed breakdown of my mazes of the week see the bottom section fo this post !

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 !!

2022 Maze of the year voting results (thank you to all who voted):

And now the top 5 mazes of 2022 as voted on by you! Of course we had a tie at #5 so 6…let’s get to it !

• Maze of the year #5 (Tie) Sydney Opera House

• Maze of the year #5 (Tie) Chich’en Itza Pyramid

• Maze of the year #4 The Louvre

• Maze of the year #3 Sit and Spin Laundromat Sign

• Maze of the year #2 Epcot Center Spaceship Earth

• Maze of the year #1 Rock n Roll Hall of Fame Museum

Some statistics about the 52 mazes of the week that I featured this year:

• It includes 19 sign mazes, 16 building mazes, 5 monument mazes, 4 landscape mazes, 4 sculpture mazes and 4 miscellaneous mazes.

• 44 were based on things in the USA, with only 4 other countries represented: France, Australia, Mexico and UAE.

• 11 were made in black and white, 12 in both color and black and white versions, and 29 in full color !

Here are the 52 weekly mazes in order (with links to their downloads):

1. Horseshoe Bend

2. Monument Valley

3. The University of Alaska Museum of the North

4. Holiday Bowl Sign - Sign Maze section

5. Sit and Spin Laundromat Sign - Sign Maze section

6. Blue Mustang Sculpture

7. Alabama Theatre Sign - Sign Maze section

8. Abraham Lincoln Sculpture

9. Piet Mondrian tributes

10. The Alamo Mission

11. Agora Sign - Sign Maze section

12. Waterbury Clock Tower

13. Clayton Theatre

14. Rockford Tower

15. The Orange Shop Sign - Sign Maze section

16. Fox Theatre Sign - Sign Maze section

17. Tough Guy Lanes Sign - Sign Maze section

18. Miles the Monster Monument

19. Fresno Van Ness Avenue Sign

20. Cabana Inn Sign - Sign Maze section

21. Dolles Salt Water Taffy Sign - Sign Maze section

22. Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch

23. Wrigley Field Sign

24. Emo's Dairy Sign - Sign Maze section

25. National Center For Civil and Human Rights

26. Mesa Verde National Park Cliff Dwellings

27. Lincoln Memorial

28. Playhouse Square Sign - Sign Maze section

29. Thread City Sculpture

30. Grandview Hotel Sign - Sign Maze section

31. Ponce De Leon Lighthouse

32. The Louvre

33. First Baptist Sign - Sign Maze section

34. Bok Tower

35. Rock n Roll HOF

36. Key West Point Marker

37. New London Lighthouse

38. Hoover Dam

39. Epcot Center

40. Spillway Lanes Sign - Sign Maze section

41. Don Carter Lanes Sign - Sign Maze section

42. Sydney Opera House

43. Castle Craig

44. La Catrina

45. Air Force Cadet Chapel

46. Free Stamp Sculpture

47. Nampa Rollerdome Sign - Sign Maze section

48. Burj Al Arab

49. Chichen Itza Pyramid

50. Welcome to Las Vegas Sign - Sign Maze section

51. Christmas Tree

52. Large Snowflake

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 !

Snowflake Maze

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

Coming next week:

A new year !