Types of Maze

The words labyrinth and maze have exactly the same meaning: a contrived path arrangement. There are three types, different in their design, history and function:

PUZZLE MAZES

Like the Jubilee Maze, puzzle mazes are built as landscape features and are used for amusement. These networks of paths have hedges, and the puzzle is solved by finding a path to the centre of a maze which is already built. They were invented 600 years ago by the Venetian architect Giovanni Fontana in illustration of defences inspired by the arcane description in the Theseus myth.

MAGICAL MAZES

These mazes may date back to the last Ice-Age. They were used in magical rites and as moral symbols of a chosen path that would lead to renewal of life. Such mazes had only one route to the centre, with no forks or dead-ends, yet you could choose the path although you could not know which way it would take you to the end: they were patterns made by geometric algorithms which could make thousands of patterns; each pattern had a path; so by making one, you chose its path; and the route of your path was characterised by chaos... random-looking behaviour which is not random.

MAZE ANALOGUES

These were never known as mazes or labyrinths historically, but they are symbols which are very similar in function to magical mazes. They also resemble magical mazes because they are based on intractable permutation puzzles in which a solution is constructed by rules.