This sure was a confusing puzzle. First I thought the puzzle was a variant of Lights Out. I guess I missed the part where he said it was a "timed maze". I played with this for a while before I got frustrated. So, I read the discussion page for some hints. This page even had a map of the maze, but I still couldn't make the connection with how the arrows move you through the maze. Even after reading the answer to the puzzle, I didn't understand the rules. The answer shows the map and the sequence of steps through the maze, and it had this vague statement: "Movements based on puzzle module. Not map." OK, I thought this was the answer, not another puzzle.
Finally, I studied the source code. You can read it by right clicking in the puzzle and picking "view frame source" with Firefox. Alternatively, you can go to this url and view the source to the page. Finally, I was able to understand the rules, which I will describe below.
You are in the northwest corner of an 8x8 maze. You are facing to the west.
The arrows are the directions you can go. Up means forward, down means backward, right means right, etc. The trick is that once you move, you are now facing the direction that you moved.
So, at the start of the maze, you can move backward (east on the map using the down arrow on the screen) or back and to the left (southeast on the map using the down left arrow on the screen). Back and to the left is in the southeast direction, and after you move there, you are now facing southeast.
I'll admit that I feel pretty dense for taking this long to figure out the puzzle. Hopefully I'm not the only person who feels this way.
Leave a comment