This is Signal vs. Noise, a weblog by 37signals about design, business, experience, simplicity, the web, culture, and more. Established 1999 in Chicago. Visit the Product Blog for more information on our products.

I think there’s a jQuery plugin for that.

How about the Photoshop fill tool? ;)

A valid maze will have all corridors accessible (dead ends are allowed). A fill tool will show every path. You’ll just end up with a different colored maze.

So… are we allowed to traverse those big black areas? Or not?

http://flickr.com/photos/90percentgravity/2848155063/

Chris: “black” is the color of walls in this maze, so, no.

Here’s a photoshop maze solving tequnique someone might want to try. http://taint.org/2007/06/19/121541a.html I don’t have photoshop.

there goes my work productivity of the day… thanks guy.

http://flickr.com/photos/90percentgravity/2848155063/

There we go, actual link

solved (with a mouse, no less)

http://senduit.com/6bf34c

http://mboffin.com/stuff/37s-maze-big.gif

And look, I only had to post one comment to figure out how to make a link!

The photoshop cheat method does work (select right wall, expand selection, fill, contract selection, delete) but it also causes inability to ever have fun with anything, ever, again.

I think I’ve got it covered.

Solved! But beaten to the punch… good work!

Nice work William…quick on the draw. I wrote a java program to solve these things back in undergrad, but the photoshop method is def faster here ;)

A great reminder that there is almost always a simpler more elegant solution to the problem at hand. Brian

Damn, I wasted probably 15 min on this. ;-)

Funny thing about human motivation—I had to complete the maze, even though I knew I wouldn’t get anything out of it.

You guys should do more of these!

Can someone port this to Chip’s Challenge? :-)

This reminds me of the WKRP episode “The Contest Nobody Could Win.”

iTunes link to the episode

Another solution using image analysis software here.

http://flickr.com/photos/whyisjake/2848477495/sizes/o/

Solved it with a Ruby script. If you’re interested, I made a post about it.

Blog Post
Solution

That Ruby solution deserves $50 off! Bloody brilliant!

Wow, nice work with the Ruby script. I agree, props to him!

Photoshop puzzle solver.

http://www.revver.com/video/307707/how-to-solve-a-maze-puzzle-using-photoshop/

the photoshop thing works, all u need to do is erase the line connecting the end and the start, so the wand dont select the whole thing

why??!

Solved with C++.

http://flickr.com/photos/bayasaa/2849811195/sizes/o/

How did you create the maze?

There’s absolutely no way I can prove it, but I feel pretty smart now. I got about halfway through in about a minute with just my eyes. Then I got bored, saw that William had won it, and thought I’d post congratulations. :)

Some nifty tricks you guys thought up, though.