The puzzling begins - a blue Revomaze

After breakfast it was time to start on the blue.

The first difficulty is really working out what is required, especially when you hit the first trap - it takes a little while to realise that you are in a trap and have to reset to the beginning! Once understood it then took me about 20 or 30 minutes to get past that trap (it requires a certain very delicate touch). The blue is a great starter because progression is nice and steady with a number of little challenges. Some people who have solved it managed to do so without recourse to drawing a map but my mind doesn't work that way - I started drawing a map fairly early on when I kept reaching traps unexpectedly. I started with a simple squiggly line diagram and then later redrew it with more accuracy and then later still with pinpoint accuracy which was required when I got stuck (more about that later). I had also registered with the Revomaze forums and gotten access to the forums for all 4 mazes. After a little reading it became obvious that for the harder mazes it would be vital to draw an accurate map - so practice early on was vital. So I considered my blue map to be practise for later!

At about the 5 hour mark - not all in one go!! I seemed to have reached a dead stop. Everywhere seemed to lead to a trap. I could get no further! I am ashamed to say that I even looked online for "revomaze solution" or map. Luckily the community run a very tight ship and there are no maps out there in the public domain at all. They do exist online but only in the forum to which you get access once you have opened the damn thing! You need to send photos of the opened maze (front & back!) to the moderators to prove it was legitimately opened before access is granted. I even looked closely at the YouTube videos of people solving it to try and get a clue - also not helpful. So after some rest I persevered and discovered the means to continue (no clues for you here I'm afraid!!!) - even now I struggle to beat this section as it requires a very delicate sense of touch and I get trapped very easily.

The next section of the maze was relatively straightforward and only took a short while. I managed to line up the 2 dots and then it opened it to marvel at the amazing engineering within. I saw that my own map was pretty close to the reality that lay within. It needed a bit of a clean to remove soot and dust. Photos were taken of the opened maze and a request was made for access to the open forum. Once in you get access to discussions about the map etc and get to see others that have been posted. Most importantly there are instructions on how to safely reassemble it (getting it wrong can lead to a rather expensive paper-weight!!)

Once inside 2 pins come out. One is the maze pin and the other holds a central core in place inside the shaft. Wrapped around the central core is your certificate along with an acetate map which is part of a larger map of another puzzle.






After all this I couldn't wait to start another one! The next is the green - I had to have a day or two off because my hand got pretty sore! I had begun to get a callous on my right middle finger!