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How to Design Your Own Maze

The Greeks and Romans built mazes more than 4000 years ago. They built them into patterns on their floors and into their art work. The Greek myth of Daedelus and the Minotaur tells of the Minotaur, a bull-like creature, who was said to live in the most complex maze ever created; only the builder, Daedelus, could find the way out. Mazes created from stone by ancient Scandinavians still exist today. From the 1500s on, wealthy English landowners created mazes in their gardens. In 1993, the first corn maze was built and became an instant success; the tradition of building corn mazes has expanded to all areas of the US. Corn maze design kits simplify the process of creating this type of maze. Paper-based mazes can be hand drawn or made using software or an online maze generator. Teachers often use mazes in the classroom to build visual-spacial skills and to improve a student's attention to detail. Other people simply enjoy designing or working mazes for fun.

Things You'll Need

  • Corn Maze
  • Corn maze design software
  • 4-wheeler
  • Corn mower
  • Corn field
  • Computer-Generated Mazes
  • Computer
  • Maze Software, optional
  • Paper
  • Mazes By Hand
  • Blank paper
  • Pencil
  • Eraser
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Instructions

  1. Design Your Own Corn Maze

    • 1

      Drive around your corn field on a 4-wheeler with your Nomad maze software. This will generate a GPS image of your field and save all of the details for you to use later.

    • 2

      Synchronize your Nomad software with your home computer to transfer the GPS picture of your corn field to the desktop Nomad program. You will see the boundaries of the field appear on the screen.

    • 3

      Use the Nomad maze-drawing tools to draw the exact maze you want within the boundaries shown. Load the maze you designed into the hand-held Nomad software.

    • 4

      Attach the Nomad and GPS receive to your mower. Begin to cut your maze. Everywhere you mow will be shown on your screen. Continue mowing until the entire maze is complete. Periodically re-mow your maze during the season.

    Design Computer-Generated Mazes

    • 5

      Navigate to glassgiant.com/maze. Select the number of columns you want your maze to have. This maze generator allows up to 40. Select from 1-40 rows using the drop-down menu.

    • 6

      Select the size of the maze and the difficulty level. Difficulty choices range from very easy to very difficult. Use the drop-down menu to make your selections.

    • 7

      Select the foreground color and the background color for your maze. You can pick from white, black, red, pink, green, blue and a few other colors. Consider the amount of ink you will need when picking your colors. A white background and black foreground may use less ink than other color combinations.

    • 8

      Tick the box next to "Show start and end points" if you want the beginning and ending points of the maze to be marked. Click "Generate Maze." Print.

    • 9

      Use the Maze Creator Pro software for Windows XP and Windows 2000 according to the developer's directions. At the time of this writing, the software was $250 USD. A shareware version of the software is also available. It comes with more than 8 templates and saves in several different image file formats. Updates are free for the first year. Support after the first year may be purchased.

    Designing Mazes by Hand

    • 10

      Make an outline of your maze on a blank piece of paper. Leave a space for the entrance and exits. You will fill the outline in with your maze pathways.

    • 11

      Create the pathways by drawing lines inside of the maze boundary. Work from the edges in. Be sure to keep all of the paths the same width. Leave a break in the path where you want another path to branch off. Use a solid line across the path if you want to make a dead end. To make the maze harder, draw pathways from both the start and finish points instead of just drawing the maze from the start point to the end.

    • 12

      Connect the pathways, leaving all of them ending in a dead end except one. The one that is not a dead end should lead to the maze exit.

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