9 ms·
I made the mistake of walking into a maze at Burning Man, and as I was walking in there were people begging us if we had seen the entrance recently. I didn't th
by leptons 2y ago
I made the mistake of walking into a maze at Burning Man, and as I was walking in there were people begging us if we had seen the entrance recently. I didn't think much of it, until I understood just how "fiendishly" designed the maze was. It wasn't very large, maybe 150 foot square, 8 foot tall plywood sheets, so you couldn't just climb out. At the center of the maze was a ladder you would climb up to a platform where you could see the whole maze except the part under the 20 foot square platform you were standing on. And that was the tricky part. It seemed that when you went through the center part of the maze you would end up in an unexpected part of the maze, and even though we could see the maze from above, none of it made any sense to how we might get out. It took us about 30 minutes to get to the platform and another hour to get out. I will never go into another maze again.
- bee_rider 2y agoSpeaking of burning men, how do maze organizers typically handle fire safety?
- leptons 2y agoFire extinguishers?
- anyfoo 2y agoI don't know anything about mazers (or fire safety), but, assuming flammable materials like wood, how do they extinguish the fire before it takes over the whole structure? I guess "professional" mazes may have sprinkler systems. Still, it seems that even in buildings that do, a lot of value is put into maintaining escape routes.
- klyrs 2y agoPanic
- bell-cot 2y agoUnless someone is splashing gasoline around, fire will spread very slowly in an open-topped plywood maze. And heat/fumes/smoke will head skyward, not accumulate as they would for an indoor fire. As an organizer, I'd be much more concerned about medical emergencies and inter-personal crime in the maze.
- gwbas1c 2y agoMaybe try a corn maze if you have a chance?
- xivzgrev 2y agothat's the way to go. one time got "lost" in a corn maze about 2/3rd way thru, going in circles, so just finally hopped a row, and followed the path out 30 seconds later. it's supposed to be fun, not stressful.
- temporarely 2y agoPlywood walls that can be trivially written on. > I will never go into another [plywood] maze again [...] ... without a marker.
- marssaxman 2y agoDo you remember which year that was? I'm fairly sure I encountered that project, and I think I found some way to cheat my way out of it without actually solving the maze, though I can't recall the details.
- bell-cot 2y agoAny reason why "follow the right-hand wall" (and perhaps a few little scratches on the plywood) wouldn't work?
- cortesoft 2y ago"Follow the right-hand wall" only works if all the walls are connected. It does not work if there are free standing walls.
- masfuerte 2y agoVery true! I was here [1] a few weeks ago. I'd never done a real-life maze before and assumed it would be easy but with free-standing walls it was quite challenging. I think I explored every branch before reaching the centre. [1]: https://mazes.co.uk/ https://mazes.co.uk/
- bell-cot 2y agoWith some discreet scratches on the plywood, a "mostly just follow the right-hand wall" rule works.* Think of each free-standing section of wall as a node in a graph. The graph's edges connect free-standing wall sections which are adjacent. The task is to find (and circumnavigate) all the graph's nodes. Yes, it could be very tedious to search this alternative representation of the maze for the exit node. Far more likely not - the description was "maybe 150 foot square", not "multi-acre corn maze". *Assuming a two-dimensional maze, a finite number of free-standing wall sections, flat spacetime, and non-zero lower bound on the width of the maze's paths.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- 2y ago
- yencabulator 2y agoOutdoors, I guess you could use direction of sun as a guiding beacon, to decrease the confusion of which way you're pointed. 8ft tall walls in a desert will hide other landmarks I assume.