Cheating Hedge Mazes – There’s An App For That, and It’s Google Earth
This will be the dumbest thing you’ll read all day: Seems that Brits are using their iPhones to cheat hedge mazes. No, really. Consider the maze at Longleat Safari Park, which is apparently the world’s biggest, boasting two miles of paths and constructed of 16000 seven-foot-high yew trees. On average, a visitor takes about 90 minutes to wander their way out, mumbling frustrated, NSFW epithets under their breath all the while. But apparently, that’s no longer the case. Upon taking a stroll through the maze (I wonder if he does that a lot… I wonder if he gets bored), manager Tim Bentley has noticed an increasing trend of people whipping out their iPhones to consult Google Earth for insight out of the maze.
“Although the hedges are 7ft tall, you quite often see people holding their phones aloft while looking for a signal or them standing on one of the six bridges with them,” said Bentley to the Daily Mail. “I’m not sure what we can do. It might not be in the spirit of the maze but we can’t very well tell our customers to turn their phones off when they go in.”
Well, you could strongly suggest it, couldn’t you, Tim? Like, isn’t that the point of a hedge maze? To get totally lost and triumphantly find your way to the exit on your own willpower? Technology sure has caught up with us. Tim should consider some sort of underground dungeon maze, away from Google’s unblinking eye.
Another technique is to apply the Wall Follower maze solving algorithm, in which you keep your hand in contact with the left (or right) wall of the maze at all times. Keep moving forwards, and you are guaranteed to (eventually) find your way out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maze_solving_algorithm