Maze of the Week #86 - Tiki Totem Maze

Maze of the Week #86 takes us to Hawaii and a maze of a Tiki Totem. It is the first of a series of mazes that I originally made, abandoned, then re-imagined for the site.

You can read about what tikis are on this Hawaii website. But my laymen definition is they are mythical symbols of gods and guardians. An example would be Ku - the god of war.

YouTube: Here is the making of a tiki head that is really fun to watch !

Photo: Here is a photo from Hawaii that shows the tiki my maze was made of (the tiki on the left). A wonderful photo showing the tikis in black and white against the powerful ocean in the background. They are located in PUʻUHONUA O HŌNAUNAU NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK - flickr, Stephen Hinde

Tikis - flickr, Stephen Hinde

The Maze: Originally this maze was abandoned and made my list of mistakes in maze making.

Why I abandoned these 10 mazes - Mistakes in Maze making

This maze has a story that I will go into later in a Case Study, so if you like before/after and maze design I suggest you read that, but here is the final product after much work !! The maze is easy to solve and the maze construction is free hand drawn.

Tiki Totem Maze

I hope you enjoy the maze. Maze download is available on the homepage. Check out my YouTube channel where you can watch this maze be made and solved !!!

Coming these next 5 weeks: Mazes with case studies !

A tiki maze (this week)

A maze of a statue - (next week)

A maze of a performing arts center

A maze of a sign

A maze of ruins

Book Review - The Curious History of Mazes

The Curious History of Mazes by Julie E Bounford

192 pages, AMZN

Before I delve into my review of the book I want to mention that the Amazon page for this book is excellent if you click on the link above. Specifically, the “From the Publishers” section - each chapter has an illustration and a quick summary.

The book is a great mix of the history, uses, and symbolism of mazes and labyrinths around the world. The illustrations and examples are excellent and I really enjoyed the breaks to solve unique mazes along the way.

What I learned in this book (at least some of it):

• “In some Meso-American cultures, it was believed that the wicked could be “mazed” in the underworld, so their souls would not return” ; Which to me seems like a nice pitch to a new horror movie

• I have never seen a Sidereal maze before, based on the constellations. Very interesting and fun to solve (page 45 in kindle version). Or the Switch Maze (Page 105).

• I learned about the city of Saffron Walden in England, a city with a hedge maze and the largest turf maze in Europe at 132 feet from corner to corner. Seems like a nice place for a maze museum ?

• That Francesco Segala, an Italian architect from Padua in the 15th century may have created the first picture mazes ever (with illustrations in the book !)

• The first 3 dimensional maze was built in the 1830’s by Stuart Landsborough using wodden board to create a second story on a maze.

• The strategy game Nine Men’s Morris that was popular to be played at turf mazes.

• There are 270 labyrinths on the London Underground, created by English artist Mark Wallinger in 2013 to mark the Underground’s 150th Anniversary. You can see some of them here.

• Cloud cities by Argentinian artist Tomás Saraceno, which you should just see to understand.

• There is a nice illustration comparing the classical and medieval labyrinth designs (figure 2 page 46) that I found interesting.

What this book does best: The mix of mazes with history and examples makes for a fun reading experience. The mazes are a break from reading - unless you get to a hard one - then the reading is the break!

The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World

The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World (Probably*). I wanted to test out my method of making square labyrinths and make sure I got the math right, etc, and decided to go for the world record. A record that does not exist and could easily be beaten. If you have seen my How to Make a Labyrinth section I feature over 20 different options for many different shapes. My previous largest labyrinth with directions was for the 27 circuit classical labyrinth.

I will not be doing directions for this one - but I will be showing you a few point in the process, and if you want you can adapt this blog post of an 11 circuit into directions for any size easily. Here is the starting seed pattern.

Seed pattern 99 circuit square labyrinth

The math of this is that each of the 4 sections have 25 pathways, so that is 50 across the whole pattern. To determine the circuit # the math is 2x pathways minus one, or 2 x 50 - 1 = 99 circuits. So to make a seed pattern for an X size labyrinth use that formula.

I wanted to show you how this looked after connecting only the top portion of pathways. As you can see things get large quickly !

And let’s just skip to the final 99 Square Circuit Labyrinth, The Largest Square Labyrinth in the World (probably*).

99 Square Circuit Labyrinth

For most of you (99.8%) that is going to look terrible because it is so large compared to your screen. Now take your finger and travel the pathways for the next few hours and….yeah no, do not do that.

I will mention a tip common in making labyrinths that you may have noticed. The center point changes from the starting seed to the final labyrinth drastically. So, if you are making this, or any other labyrinth start it lower on the paper to account for this. See the illustration below shown in red and blue:

So that is it. I would say it was fun to make but it really wasn’t. If you liked this post you may also like these:

The Largest Arrow Maze in the World (probably)

A Comparison of 5 different types of 11 Circuit Labyrinths

Maze of the Week #85 - Chicago Theatre Sign Maze

Maze of the Week #85 is a sign maze of the Chicago Theatre. Built in 1921, this famous theatre continues to operate and hosts all types of performing arts performances. It is located in the Loop area of Chicago and is a part of the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. And of course it has a famous, great looking sign which interested me.

If you plan on visiting here is their website !

YouTube: You just need 40 seconds to watch this one!

Photo: flickr, jphilipg

flickr, jphilipg

The Maze: I went with a full color sign while adding the details of surrounding buildings in black and white. I put the maze in the gold colored border around the sign with the Start and Goal at the bottom. I really like the structure and hope you do too ! And I left out the corporate branding on top.

Chicago Theatre Sign Maze

I hope you enjoy the maze. Maze download is available on the homepage. Check out my YouTube channel where you can watch this maze be made and solved !!!

Coming next week:

A totem maze.