A few words from the maze designer, Bob Abbott

I thought the presentation of the Alice mazes worked well. I
hope you're getting a lot of solvers.

In case you plan to give the solution to Maze 7, I thought I
would give you my explication of the maze. This uses the diagram
that Andrea did, which I've attached here again.

Here's my explication, which you can use on your site if you'd
like:

What I planned for the maze was loops that go around the edge, or
near the edge, of the board. I discovered I could create more
loops than at first I thought possible. The loops overlay each
other; most go counter-clockwise but some go clockwise; the true
path uses four of the loops but more are used by false paths.

The first loop I built used moves in which d = 4 or d =3. In the
diagram you can start that loop at move 17 with d = 4. It makes
one circuit of the board then repeats. Creating this loop
allowed for a second, slower loop in which d = 2 or d = 1. You
can start this loop at move 17 with d = 2. A lot of my false
paths dump you into this slow loop.

But the most amazing thing was a loop I discovered pretty much by
accident. It uses d = 3 and d = 2. It doesn't just make one
circuit around the board and then repeat, but it makes THREE
circuits around the board before it repeats. Of course, I used
it as part of the true path. The true path enters this loop at
move 20 and it exits at move 46. Instead of exiting at move 46,
you could continue in the loop and in two moves you would be back
at the point you started the loop.

I wonder if it's possible to make loops that go further before
they repeat. If they are possible, they might get boring after a
while, and they would eat up all the maze space.

And some words from the solvers.

Reuben Fries
Clinton Newcombe
Matt L Jones
Yoah Bar-David
Tom Winchester
cobra
Chris Skowera
Michael L. Marfil
Joe Dorando
Ken Bateman
Al Stanger
Adam Dewbery
Tim Yen-Ting Lee
ckauyeun
sajay
Rob Moser, Sydney Australia
Stephen Fischer, Sydney Australia
Liu
Hareesh Krishna
Julien Sicart
dan mazor
Robert F Hoare

Matthew de Caussin
Great maze! I had fun. I am maze designer too.

Jeffrey Gosselin
Thanks for pointing out that site Ed! I love mazes and the ones featured
on that site are alot of fun.

Daniel C Hennessy
I found this one less difficult than the sliding door mazes.

Nick Baxter
A typical Bob Abbott brain-melter!

Fraser, Simon
And boy did it take me an awful long time! London, England

Bert Kassies
Nice puzzle.

Srinivasan Sethurama...
Whoo hoo! I solved it!

Derek Bosch
very cool puzzles!

George Tolley
Crofton, Maryland

Roger Kanning
FINALLY! This one took a while to solve.

Shawn Adair
After several attempts on-line, I finally broke down and solved it
exhaustively using pencil and paper. It took about 90 minutes.

JP Ikäheimonen
I am very amazed about the structure of these mazes.
How does he create these? If you check the annals of puzzlism, you'll find that
the people who stay in history are more often those who create
ingenious puzzles than those who are merely good at solving them.
Solving is *so* much easier.

Ronald Stewart
*phew*! That was fun, thanks...

Ilan Shacham
And had fun doing it!

Aidan Hollinshead
Good puzzle

Aron Fay
Once again, I'm writing to you. It seems like the key is to hit
that bottom yellow arrow twice in a row, taking your d from 4 to 2.

Jonathan Welton
Your site's getting better and better all the time. Liked the NDSN domino puzzles, and circles through dots, and the 3 armies of queens puzzles and a whole host of others. Must make myself a set of Kites and bricks and try those out.

Miguel Ángel González Fernández
Hello!! It was a little difficult, but not so much....
I did the puzzle "from the finish to the start" about 30 moves, and then
completed
doing the first 20 or 30 moves to attach the two pieces.
Divide and win!!
Thanx for the puzzle...
(Sorry for mi poor english, i'm spanish!! (19 year old) )

Joseph DeVincentis
The Alice mazes are interesting.
The strategy seems to focus on splitting each maze into lots of little mazes
which are interconnected by the red and yellow arrows.

Bob Kraus
Amusing, but a little tedious.
I much prefer the Minotaur type!

Andy Brown
I enjoyed this maze. Using a combination of pencil and paper and guesswork,
it took me about half an hour to solve.

Luke Flanagan
hey hey, that was hard as hell, took me just under an hour. Good puzzle
though.

Rod Bogart
I had to print it out, and sort of solve it backwards.
Weird. And fun.

Koshi Arai
I solved the Alice Maze 7. very nice maze!

Coyote
I've been a big fan of your site for over a year now...
definately one of the best puzzle sites on the net.

Richard Fitzgerald
A bit dizzy from the loops....

Colin Bown
I had to cheat and write code to solve them generally though.

Jesus Bravo Alvarez
I think it was quite easy doing a reverse search tree. ;)

Ton Tillemans
Hi there I did it took me about 30 minutes of puzzling ,

Erwin Eichner, from Bamberg, Germany (Bamberg is said to be Bill Clinton´s
favorite town in Germany)
It was a nice maze indeed, like the Minotaurus or the Sliding-Door-Maze, too.
Your site has become one of my favorites. Thank you for the great time with your
site.

Dave Erickson
I just thought I would write to let you know
that I enjoyed these Alice Mazes. Keep up the good work with all of
these puzzles. Hopefully I can figure out some of the others on your
site.

Cool maze, addictive I must say...
-Ben Robinson