Puzzles and Games

PM: What do you consider to be your best maze so far?

JM: My best maze ideas haven’t been built yet. As far as ones that have been built, I like "All Jammed Up". It will appear in my next book Scavenger Hunt. I hand picked about 15 pounds of blueberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries and laid them out on a 3 foot by 4 foot board. The raspberries were turning to mush so I couldn't move them around much and didn’t achieve as challenging a puzzle as I wanted but the picture looks good enough to eat. Your mouth waters when you work your way through the maze. My grandmother made pies from the berries afterwards. I called it maze pie. It was one of my best maze experiences.

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

JM: I've always been a visual person instead of words and writing. I enjoy mazes and picture puzzles. I especially like the work of Walter Wick and his Can You See What I See series. Although the puzzles are for children his work with creating the images is quite impressive. I like his photography work in Optical Tricks as well and I am very impressed with the sets he has built for I Spy.

PM: So your next book in the series, Scavenger Hunt is already in the works. Anything else we can look forward to?

JM: I have so many mazes that I want to create I need to write several books to fit them all in. I am hoping that Junk Drawer Jewels will be able to finance the next book and so on. Scavenger Hunt will be ready for publishing by June of this year. I have a couple more mazes to build. Third Dimension is mazes in 3-D. The book will come with a pair of 3-D glasses. I have photographed a few samples and they are awesome. I will be posting some 3-D mazes on mazezing.com this summer.

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