Education Zone
Sidewalk Chalk Mazes
With this gorgeous summer weather, it’s nice to find excuses to get outside and move around! If you’ve got some sidewalk chalk, you can make something fun and mathematical outside for the whole family to enjoy: logic mazes. A logic maze is a maze with some extra rules that make navigating it a bit more challenging. While they’re fun to solve with pencil and paper, getting to walk or jump through a logic maze adds another dimension to the experience!
Mazes by Julia Robinson Mathematics Festival
Here is a Jumping Julia maze that SUMM’s Executive Director Jenny Quinn made a few years ago for #TacomaMath as a part of Summer Learning Week:
Starting on the 2 in the upper left corner, you can jump exactly two spaces horizontally or vertically — i.e., to the 1 two spaces below it or the 4 two spaces to its right. Once you’ve landed on a new number, that is the number of spaces you must jump. Can you navigate your way to the starred square?
I’ll let you ponder that — but notice that it can be just as engaging to plan a solution from the sideline as it is to hop your way through by trial and error. Even though only one person will typically be jumping through the maze at a time, others can be thinking through what they’ll do when it’s their turn!
Our friends at JRMF have many of these mazes available at a variety of difficulty levels in a free online app. Their other logic maze formats include:
Mazes by Robert Abbott
Robert Abbott (1933-2018) was a prolific game designer who invented and popularized many different kinds of mazes, eventually coining the term “logic maze” to describe them! Many of his creations were multi-state mazes — mazes where how you are able to leave any given position depends on how you enter it. Robert’s work has served as an inspiration to a generation of puzzle makers, including the folks at JRMF.
While Robert’s site logicmazes.com has fallen into disrepair since his passing, you can still access it through the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Below are a few of Robert’s mazes that would be fun to recreate on pavement. Even though they’re from his “Five Easy Mazes” section, they can be quite challenging. You can click the link under each image to read Robert’s description and discussion, some of which contain a bit of history behind these specific mazes and logic mazes, more broadly.
No-Left-Turn Maze
Enter and exit the maze where indicated, but never make a left turn while doing so. While you are allowed to revisit locations, you are not allowed to make U-turns (turn around and head back the way you came).
Red-Blue Maze #1 (“Wacky Noodle Maze”)
Enter and exit the maze where indicated, but you must pass over the colored circles alternating red and blue, starting with red.
Red-Blue Maze #2
Enter and exit the maze where indicated, but you must pass over the colored circles alternating red and blue, starting with red.
Intersection Maze
Enter and exit the maze where indicated, but you may only pass through intersections by following an arrowed arc, straight or curved. While you are allowed to revisit locations, you are not allowed to make U-turns (turn around and head back the way you came).
Number Maze
Starting from the red square in the upper left corner, jump your way to the square marked “Goal” in the lower right corner. When standing on a number, you may only jump exactly that distance within your current row or column.
If you make any sidewalk chalk mazes this summer, we’d love for you to send us a photo!