Anyone familiar with Maze?

I stumbled across this one on YouTube, a sort of choose your own adventure affair combined with a think outside the box sort of puzzle, all wrapped up in a little book. Here’s a scan if you like this sort of thing:

https://archive.org/details/mazesolvetheworldsmostchallengingpuzzle1985/page/n7/mode/1up?view=theater

It’s a simple idea, you have a picture of a room, a cryptic description, and based on those things you pick which numbered door to go through, and you turn to that numbered room in the book, rinse and repeat.

The goal is to get from room 1 to room 45 and back again via the shortest route.

In room 45 is a hidden riddle, figure out that riddle and solve it and you win. Oh, and the rooms on the shortest route all have clues to help you on your way.

Also avoid room 24, it is certain death. Many ways in, but as you might notice, no doors out:

I do like stuff like this. But I’m no Sherlock Holmes and I don’t have the sort of brain to figure out these kind of puzzles. I used to find point and click puzzle games excruciating. But alas, I’m still drawn to this book.

I did brute force the shortest path though, here’s a snippet of my workings:

I’ve yet to get the riddle in room 45. You’re probably not supposed to brute force the solution, but I figured if I know where I’m supposed to go, I’ll be able to look back at the clues that point me in that direction. Then I’ll know how the book thinks.

As a taster, here’s room 1 and its description:

So anyone here fondly remember Maze? Or are you still buried in it? Or do you hate this sort of thing?

The front cover has a red herring on it… what does that mean?

4 thoughts on “Anyone familiar with Maze?

  1. Steve Jackson in the 1980’s wrote some softcover books of solo dd journeys, you basically jumped around the book pages depending on your choices so the book in theory never lost value with its many multiple choice routes.

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