A puzzle not for the faint-of-heart -- there is NO solution available to brute force and you are not expected to solve it in an evening. It's an exciting, detailed trip through a fiendish den of riddles and allusions with an untrustworthy guide, and I've used it as a great conversation piece with smart people. (Somewhere I have whole notebooks filled with sketched maps and riddle notes, the combined efforts of my theatre group ...) Highly recommended for those who love difficult, DIFFICULT puzzles.

The format of this book is interesting: each numbered page is a room. The reader's goal is interesting: find the path from the first room to the 45th room and back. The text follows a person (the narrator) guiding a small group of visitors around the maze-building. The drawings are all pen & ink (no color). The task & setup are fun, but ...

Here are my issues: (1) The narrator is a bit nasty -- nothing unsuitable for young children, but certainly not pleasant. (2) You absolutely MUST solve at least one riddle to find a path from room 1 to room 45. (3) There is no way to know whether you have found the correct answer to a riddle -- or for that matter, the shortest path.

My daughter & I have enjoyed reading this book together. It was intersting & fun. You'll enjoy it more if you aren't expecting a 5-star book.

This book is truly one of the most amazing creations I've ever held in my two hands. The dialogues, the pictures, the clues, riddles, symbolism, historical references...it's all fantastic. I've been working on this for over three years now with my best friend and several others, and although we solved it over a year ago, we still keep going back to this book. Everytime you open it up, there's something new to discover. And the more research we do, the more incredible it becomes. It truly lives up to its' title as the World's Most Challenging Puzzle. We're still trying to dicipher clues in some of the rooms, although we have theories about nearly all of them, and some hard facts on quite a few.

If you want to discuss anything about the Maze, please feel free to e-mail me...we're always interested in new opinions

I first found this online 7 years ago, and it has tormented me ever since. I thought I was alone, but the reviews here tell me how many others there are. My ray of sunshine came when I searched the net for the answer, and found it. You don't have to cheat! (I cxan't beleive it either.)

Amazing riddle . . . the best "choose your own adventure" book EVER.

As an elementary school teacher, I have read thousands of childern's books. This is one of the best.

There are layers upon layers of meaning to peel away. My second graders were stimulated by the pictures and the physical structure of the maze. The fifth graders I shared it with began to discover the subtlety of the textual clues. In middle school, the students noticed non-linear connections between rooms in the maze, complexities in the placement of the chambers, and the double entendres of the mysterious host.

As an adult, I found myself thrilled by the challenge of The Maze, the creepy ambiguity of meaning, and a pervading sinister feeling that made my stomach uneasy and gave me goosebumps up and down my arms.

I envy those who are stepping into the entrance hall for the first time . . . Good Luck!