RA: After working on The Dungeon Maze, I thought of another way to use the same underlying principle. I created The Bureaucratic Maze, something that doesn't look like a maze at all. In it, you carry forms from desk to desk. The forms have information about what desk you came from and what choice you have of desks you can go to. When you arrive at a desk, the "bureaucrat" at that desk gives you another form, and what form he gives you depends on what desk you just came from. Therefore, at any desk you are in different states, depending on which desk you came from. This is the same as the Colossal Cave: in any room you are in different states, depending on what room you came from.

I never thought The Bureaucratic Maze could be very popular, but a lot of people are interested in it, and you turned it into the hilarious Bureaucratic Nightmare. Again, there's the same underlying principle, but instead of different forms there are different pop-up windows (and also, you don't need several volunteers to act as bureaucrats plus many copies of the forms).

This will confuse this history, but I can't resist adding that I used something like this underlying principle in a maze that predated the Colossal Cave. My maze was in the October 1962 Scientific American (and there's an improved version here). Instead of rooms, I had intersections, and how you entered an intersection determined how you could leave it. I have no idea whether William Crowther saw this maze before he created the Colossal Cave.

PM: What kind of puzzles do you like to solve when you're not creating your own?

RA: I used to do a lot of logic puzzles (my wife and I used to go through every issue of Dell Logic Puzzles). But now I mostly do just maze-type puzzles. My favorites are those by Andrea Gilbert and James Stephens.

PM: The last book you published was SuperMazes in 1997. Can we look forward to anything coming out in the near future?

RA: I'm currently trying to get a publisher for my game Confusion. I’m also starting work on a computer program that will involve a series of mazes. This program could be revolutionary (well, maybe). I hope I can find a publisher for the program, but that may not happen.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4