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Old Algorithms
My wife, my three young boys and I recently joined some friends of ours to venture into a corn maze... I have been deprived of this pleasure, and this is the first time I have ever enjoyed this unique adventure... I saw an aerial shot before we entered, and I also bought a map in a sealed envelope - which they stipulated: "If you come back with your map unopened, you get your dollar back." Depending on where you start, your either traverse the edge or the interior of the maze, but you always "solve" the maze - unless the center is the solution (or a couple of other non-corn maze issues)... We began the trek with our neighbors and I told everyone of this methodology, whereby I got a couple of chuckles, but everyone followed nonetheless... I first encountered this algorithm in an independent study class I arranged for my senior year in High School... 1985... I had a TRS-80 (they got Tandy1000's the next year...) with a version of Pascal onboard (I think it was Turbo Pascal). First, I ported a random maze creation program I had encountered in Commodore Magazine from Commodore 64 assembly to Pascal, then I worked out a "mouse" to run the random mazes.
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