PM: After the success of Eleusis in 1959 and Ultima in 1962, you became, as you put it, "entranced" with mazes, and have been designing and redefining them for forty years. Why do logic mazes hold your interest so much more than games?

RA: I think I just lost interest in games, and I'm not sure why. I probably just ran out of ideas. I also ran out of game players (moving from New York to Jupiter, Florida, was part of that problem). Also, creating great things and not getting them published is a big turn-off.

PM: You've said that "some mazes work best as walk-throughs, some work best in a computer program, and some even work best on the printed page." Can you elaborate?

RA: Each medium has advantages and disadvantages. Computer programs probably work the best, and a lot of mazes-with-rules only work as a program. One advantage of programs is they make sure you follow the rules. A disadvantage of programs is you can avoid any thinking by just fiddling with the controls until you chance upon the solution. Another disadvantage occurs when you have a large team of programmers, graphic designers, music composers, and a couple of million dollars to spend on the program. This produces programs with excessive graphics that make it impossible for the player to use any logical thinking, and this is why none of the current video games are as good as the video games produced in the 1970s and 1980s.

Conventional mazes are exciting, but the only way to experience them is in a full-size walk-through. On paper, they are only interesting for small children. And have you seen computer programs that try to present a first-person view of traveling through a maze? It just doesn't work; though it's hard to explain why.

Walk-through mazes-with-rules are also exciting. As far as I know there are only two people working with them: me and Adrian Fisher. I did, however, get Andrea Gilbert to create one, which was based on her Tilt Mazes. It was built next to some of the cornfield mazes.

The least exciting medium for mazes-with-rules is the printed page. But it's still pretty good. In addition to just the printed page, there can be dice that roll through the maze, there can be coins that are pushed through the maze, and there can be a page that slides over another page, causing changing configurations of the maze.

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