The mazes on this site have unusual rules that differentiate them from the traditional mazes that you are probably more familiar with, like maize mazes or garden hedge mazes. Such mazes with rules are commonly known as logic mazes and come in a wide variety of forms. The main feature of a logic maze that distinguishes it from an orthodox maze is the use of history: the routes available to you don't just depend on your current position in the maze but also on how you got there. This permits a lot of complexity to be built into a seemingly simple-looking layout; to solve the maze successfully, you may even find yourself revisiting the same part of the maze multiple times. Just like tackling a good crossword, solving a logic maze becomes a battle between the puzzle solver and the puzzle setter, and it is often fun to put yourself in the mind of the maze designer, to work out how they might try to trick you onto the wrong path. For the best mazes, some lateral thinking might even be required!
Logic mazes were originally devised by the great American game inventor, Robert Abbott. If you haven't read them already, then I'd highly recommend purchasing his books Mad Mazes and SuperMazes, which contain some of the most inventive puzzles ever devised. Robert Abbott passed away in 2018, but his logic mazes website still contains a veritable treasure trove of wonderful puzzles. Other great logic maze resources include David Johnson-Davies' Mazelog and Andrea Gilbert's clickmazes, each of which provides a vast compendium of interesting and challenging mazes.
I caught the logic maze bug during the first COVID-19 lockdown of 2020 (there was very little else to do!) and have since been designing my own puzzles and sharing them with friends. I decided to create this website to make some of these available to a wider audience. The intricacies of website design are pretty new to me, so I apologise if this site is a bit rough around the edges; I'm hoping that it will mature with age – like a fine wine – as my knowledge of web design grows.
As far as possible, I've tried to base the mazes on this site on original concepts (to the best of my knowledge), rather than simply being variations on existing types of logic maze. In particular, a lot of the puzzles make use of word and number grids, each with different criteria for how to navigate around. The word mazes, in particular, are especially satisfying to solve because they combine the aspects of a maze with those of a wordsearch: two puzzles for the price of one! I also tend to throw a few obscure words into these mazes (although I went a bit over the top on one particular puzzle) to really keep you on your toes and provide yet another dimension to the challenge.
Whilst most of the mazes on this site can be solved with a pencil and paper, my intention has been to make them interactive (wherever possible), so that they can be solved on a computer or mobile device. However, you'll need to enable Javascript and notifications in your browser if you want to solve the mazes interactively. If I were a truly first class webdesigner, then I'd cater for those of you who don't have Javascript enabled; but I'm not... so I haven't. Also, some of the larger word and number mazes will be easier to solve on a bigger screen. You can still solve them easily enough on a mobile phone, but you may find that you need to zoom in on different areas of the maze to get a better view. On a touchscreen device, the word and number grids in the puzzles react to touching the screen as part of the process of traversing the maze. To make this possible, I've had to disable normal touchscreen events within the grids themselves. To zoom or scroll on a mobile device, be sure to touch the screen outside of the actual grid. Of course, you can equally well solve them on a desktop computer using an ordinary mouse.
A lot of the mazes will grant you a clue or two, if you get stuck, but I'd strongly advise against asking for these unless you're really not getting anywhere. I know, from attempting to solve some of Robert Abbott's more challenging mazes, that it's so much more rewarding to get to the goal without any help.
Anyway, I really hope you enjoy Webmazes and keep coming back for more as I add new puzzles. Please do get in touch via the email address at the bottom of the page if you have any comments or feedback. It's always nice to hear that people are enjoying my mazes – or not – because it gives me the encouragement to keep making them. I also maintain a Facebook page and a mailing list to keep people informed as new mazes are added.
Finally, I'd like to offer my thanks to Chris Scaife and Andrew Wade for their help playtesting the paper versions of a lot of these mazes before they appeared on this website. I'd also like to thank Andrea Gilbert and David Johnson-Davies for helpful suggestions and encouragement.