.Available from Amazon
From the Introduction:
Several months ago I designed and published Tantalizing Tessellating Mazes, a book of 70 mazes using tessellation patterns as the building blocks for creating mazes. This book has an identical format, but introduces a new set of tessellation patterns.
A tessellation is a shape that can be arranged to fill the plane; a very simple example is a honeycomb of hexagons. The artist M.C. Escher owes much of his fame and following to his wonderful tessellation patterns.
The tessellation patterns used in this book fall into several categories. As in Tantalizing Tessellating Mazes, there are tessellation patterns that resemble objects from the real world: people, animals, tools and machines. A few tessellation patterns resemble symbols, such as arrows. Finally, there are some non-representational tessellation patterns that are decorative or eye-catching.
There are two related reasons for using tessellations as the organizing theme. First, tessellation patterns are interesting and have visual appeal. Second, tessellation shapes make wonderful building blocks for intriguing and challenging mazes.
The solutions, which begin on page 74, are created by blocking up all the dead-end paths, leaving only the correct path through the maze. The advantage of this way of showing solutions--in a larger-than-usual size--is that it emphasizes the tessellation pattern or patterns of each maze, and some people may find the tessellation patterns more interesting than the mazes.
The mazes in this book are fairly easy. It was my intention to have mazes that would appeal to children when they are old enough to appreciate the beauty of tessellation patterns, which my guess is often when they are about nine to twelve years old. The mazes are probably too difficult for most (but not all) children younger than seven or eight and too easy for most adults.
For information about how I design tessellations and mazes, see the introduction to my other books, which can be found on-line at ingrimayne.com/mazes.
I hope you enjoy solving these mazes almost as much as I enjoyed creating them. I apologize in advance for any mistakes that are in the book.
Robert Schenk
June 2012