Added April 2021
In this word maze, the enemy knight is deadly and must be avoided at all costs. However, with some shrewd manoeuvring, you might be able to turn the tables and force your unwitting opponent to help you reach the goal.
The use of chess pieces is quite a common trope in logic maze design. Robert Abbott published a Chess Maze in SuperMazes and there are several chess-based mazes over on Mazelog.
Maze rules:
- Get from the H at the top-left to the E at the bottom-right (initially covered by the knight), forming a chain of valid words along the way.
- Words must lie along straight lines, either orthogonally or diagonally, just like in a wordsearch.
- Any length of word is permitted.
- Beware the enemy knight, which will try to capture you if it can! It moves just like a chess knight.
- It's not very bright, though, and is easily outwitted – it moves after you do and attacks according to a rigid set of rules.
- If it can capture you, or get nearer to you in exactly one, unique way, then it always will.
- If it has two moves available to it that are equally good, then it will hedge its bets, remaining where it is until you move again.
- If it can't get any closer to you, then it will stay where it is.
- The knight can also be used to your advantage: you are permitted to move through the knight when forming words!
- If you do this, then you miss out the letter currently under the knight. This allows you to spell out words that would not have been available if it weren't for the knight.
- Unlike in regular chess, this knight cannot be captured. If you make a move that lands on top of the knight, then it's game over!
- For your convenience, the letter currently obscured by the knight is shown to the top-right of the puzzle.
- 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!