Added May 2021
This is another goulash maze, combining the rules of an escalator maze with those of a yo-yo maze. I like these rules because they leave a lot of room to lay sneaky false paths and loops to confuse you.
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Maze rules:
- Get from the D at the top-left to the D at the bottom-right, forming a chain of valid words along the way.
- Valid words must lie along straight lines, either orthogonally or diagonally, just like in a wordsearch.
- The first word must be exactly four letters long; thereafter, words should either be one letter greater or one letter fewer than the previous word (e.g. the second word can be either three or five letters long).
- You start off the maze spelling words forwards, in the usual fashion; but, as soon as you move along a word whose first letter is the same as its last letter (e.g. dad), then you must henceforth spell your words backwards, from the last letter to the first!
- The next time you reach a word with the same first and last letter, then you switch back to moving forwards, and so on and so forth.
- An extra subtlety is that you cannot change direction by moving along a one letter word (i.e. a or I). That loophole is not permitted.
- The large purple circle to the right of the puzzle helps you keep track of which direction (→, ←) is appropriate for the current move.
- Words will be accepted if they abide by the criteria common to all my word mazes.
- Here's a reminder of the permitted two letter words: am, an, as, at, be, by, do, go, ha, he, hi, ho, if, in, is, it, me, mu, my, no, nu, of, oh, ok, on, or, ox, pi, so, to, up, us, we, xi, ye.
Having trouble? Here's a .
Still having trouble? You can view the if you are really struggling. This will ruin the puzzle for you, so I would strongly advise against giving up too early!