Revomaze Bronze Extreme

Bronze Changes Everything!

As I alluded in my Revomaze mapping notes, I got to know the first part of my Bronze very, very well. I perfected my mapping techniques and gave myself very sore hands for several months while I worked out what the heck was going on in there.

Bronze has a couple of nifty little tricks to slow you down, like an area dubbed the ‘swimming pool’ that takes a little thought to work out how to get out of out of it and back to the main area of the puzzle. [This is the first time that you find yourself evidently trapped in the puzzle with no obvious means of resetting … and it can be a bit unsettling at first.] It also throws a few non-orthogonal paths and curves at you … and if you’ve perfected a technique for mapping that relies on straight lines, and ninety degree corners, that can be a bit disappointing!

OK, so following the usual strategy of exploring and mapping everything, leaves you locked in the first quarter of the maze … getting out requires new thought and I found that staring at an accurate map of what you do know, to be about the only strategy … that and occasionally trying crackpot theories that come to you in the middle of the night. During the course of those experiments, I managed to break the maze … yip break it … in fact I moved an entire wall a mill or two right, effectively blocking the corridor on the other side of it … having established that I’d gubbed it (good Glasgow word that!) courtesy of a mate on the Revomaze forum, I confessed to the manufacturer and sent it off to him for repairs – he promptly sent me a replacement, for free, even though I’d unquestionably broken his creation … that made me feel really bad.

About half an hour after receiving the new puzzle, I’d opened it – I’d worked it all out, but my enthusiasm (and yes, it must have been rather extreme to have wrought damage like that in there – I’ve seen the pictures! – It’s a bronze shaft, milled and then nickel-plated, and I moved a wall!!) had stopped me from getting out … a really good puzzle – the progression on this one will really open your mind.

Lesson from the Bronze: sometimes things change … (!)