The plan for Weekly mazes in the second half of the year

The first half of the year has focused on me remaking previous mazes with 2 techniques to improve them. I called them Maze of the Week Re-duxes. Generally it worked and I am happy with the results. For the second half of the year we will return to new mazes. I actually have made more mazes than I need for the rest of the year. First, I will clean out the random mazes that include some scenes, items, landscapes and insects. Then starting in Mid-August new mazes will be from my Air, Land, Sea and Space collection. I wanted to create some mazes for kids but with improved illustrations. I ended up making vehicles of all types, thus my name. Planes, trains, cars, buses, rockets, and boats are all included. I made 47 in total (and may make more). I am going to select the best ones for the Maze of the week. The goal will be to create a kids book out of the mazes, including those that don’t make MOTW status. In order to make all the mazes available on the website, I will write a blog post introducing the extra vehicle mazes each Wednesday and a few more on Friday. They are mix or color (some with backgrounds), and black & white versions, including some that are perfect as coloring pages. It starts Monday with a maze I started, then abandoned of a famous monument in the US.

I also will be launching books in the Fall - a mix of both free versions on this site and paid versions on Amazon. If you want to be alerted to these launches sign-up for my free book alerts.

Maze Comic Book Cover #78 - RAD

Issue #78 in my comic book cover series is called RAD and features the maze of a Radish. This is definitely an evil radish. This is the last of my 4 experimental comic book characters, a chili pepper, mushroom, pickle, and radish. They form the core of the Legion of Shroom ?

My comic book cover mazes can be found in 2 places:

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 1 (Issues #1-53)

Comic Book Cover Mazes - Year 2

Radish Maze Comic Book

To receive a book of my first year of comic book book mazes (Volume 1 with mazes #1-53) you can sign up for my book alerts - any time I launch a free maze book, or paid book (on Amazon), I will send you a note about the new book launch.

Maze of the Week Re-Dux #36 - Key West Buoy Maze (MOTW #182)

This is another maze I wavered about changing, but in the end I gave it a shot. I always feel that when you make a maze of a real world object, it can end of floating on the white page. This is a great example of it. So MOTW #36 is now also MOTW #182.

Here is my original post:

Maze of the Week #36 - Key West Southernmost Point Buoy Maze

Here are the enhancements I made to improve the maze:

1. Changed Start/Goal. I shifted the start and goal from the arrows to written out words inside the buoy. I think it improves the overall structure (but from far away you will no longer have the cue that this is a maze).

2. Added the Sky, ocean and ground. This combination was to change the floating white buoy on the page and giving it context. The ground and ledge is made from concrete so I gave it texture.

3. Changed Sizing. The previous maze was centered on a regular page, while the new revision is square to fit the maze.

That’s it. The result is more colorful and grounded.

Here is the before and after:

The new maze looks more realistic is a slight improvement. I think the larger scale also make it more enjoyable to solve.

Some data: The new file is 603MB from 55MB.

I will be replacing the maze on the homepage with the new maze going forward. You can find the maze download there !

If you like this type of content check out all of my case studies:

A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve your Mazes

A Chump at Oxford (1940) Movie Review

A Chump at Oxford (1940) (IMDB)

A Chump at Oxford movie poster

I never thought I would be reviewing a Laurel & Hardy movie or this website, but I was pleased to find that this movie might contain a maze in it. This is a typical Laurel & Hardy movie where they have an uncanny ability to escalate the simplest of situations into chaotic disasters. You get tons of gags, physical comedy, and misunderstandings. The comedy is more timeless than you would think for such an old movie.

As far as the maze scene, I can confirm that this is a maze movie. Once at Oxford, about 20 minutes into the film a student gives them directions (long directions) through a hedge maze to get to the deans house. It goes about as well as you think it would for these 2. Here is a screenshot of the maze.

A Chump at Oxford hedge scene

I give it a 7/10.