Customer Rating:      Summary: Another unsupported "puzzle product" by the auther and publisher. Comment: I LOVE products of this type. There have been other contest-based mind-bending puzzles that have come out in book or computer-based form in the past.
However, there is a trend with all of them, including Maze.
The publishers and authors fail to support the product after a few years.
If you intend to buy this book, note that it is interesting, intriguing, and quite appealing. However, there are NO answers to be found, in the book or online in an OFFICIAL capacity.
You can find countless sites online where people have "theories" up, mostly involving mathematical matrices, but there is no official site to go to for page-by-page solutions to the puzzle, therefore making any attempt to solve the puzzle a guessing game only.
For instance, if you are on page 26 and are attempting to decide which door to take, you could spend hours, days, weeks or months trying to come up with reasonings as to what door is correct. However, any "answer" you come up with is nothing but a guess. You have no means to verify that indeed, you came up with the right solution to that page. Conversely, if you are stuck and cannot solve a page/puzzle... you can never move on, ending your experience with the book.
I have a Mensa level IQ, and tackle puzzles like this all the time. But without verification of the answers- and this does not mean a simple list of the rooms you should go through, but rather a page-by-page WHY do you go through door X on page Y, you're frankly wasting your time. I have six different ways I've come up with things telling me to choose a particular door on one page, but my whole point is this: Those six things I've come up with my simply be nothing but me grasping at thin air- I have NO means to verify, and going to a website that lists the order of rooms is NOT verification. It bypasses the WHY, the most important part.
You might "solve" it... but you really won't have solved it, for you can't confirm you didn't just guess your way through any particular page or avoid a door because you know it leads to a dead end- this defeats the whole purpose of the book.
It's sad to see another publisher fail to support a puzzle product, but it's happened to all of them- The Merlin Mystery, Masquerade, Treasure, Treasure Quest... the authors and publishers reveal them to much fanfare and excitement, then pull their support after a few years, leaving the fans with nothing more than a paperweight in book form.
If Henry Holt, the current publisher, would obtain the page-by-page answers and throw them up on a text-based website, they'd break this cycle of neglect for products.
If those answers ever came- my rating would be a 5 star, easily, because then the book becomes possible to work with.
Until then- note that the jacket for this product should read: No answers are available, ever. And Maze will end up in on a book shelf, or in a storage box, much to my dismay.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Help where is the solution. LOL~~~~ :) Comment: Hard, YES. I have yet to solve this maze. It is not your typical maze more like walking thru a fun house and you can never find your way out.
I work at it about an hour then give up always ending up in the same wrong place.
If you like a challange then this is the puzzle for you.
Customer Rating:      Summary: Good fun! Comment: The concept of this book/puzzle is simple: each page is a separate room. Left-hand pages include brief descriptions of the rooms, while right-hand pages feature detailed illustrations of the rooms. The two major puzzles of the book are: 1. to get to the "center" of the maze (room 45), and find the shortest route back to page 1, and 2. to solve the riddle feature in the center of the maze.
The illustrations are fun to look at and, to my eye, resemble the work of Chris Van Allsburg ("Jumanji", "Polar Express", "Zathura", "The Mysteries of Harris Burdick").
I recommend this book for lovers of riddles and puzzles or anyone who enjoyed "MYST" or the old Infocom games, like "Zork".
Customer Rating:      Summary: Unusual Comment: This is a must in any library, whether you like mazes or not. Beautifully done.
Customer Rating:      Summary: One of the best puzzles ever, but also one of the toughest Comment: A puzzle not for the faint-of-heart -- there is NO solution available to brute force and you are not expected to solve it in an evening. It's an exciting, detailed trip through a fiendish den of riddles and allusions with an untrustworthy guide, and I've used it as a great conversation piece with smart people. (Somewhere I have whole notebooks filled with sketched maps and riddle notes, the combined efforts of my theatre group ...) Highly recommended for those who love difficult, DIFFICULT puzzles.
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