then if we always keep in touch with the hedge with the right hand (or
always touch it with the left), going down to the stop in every blind
alley and coming back on the other side, we shall pass through every
part of the maze and make our exit where we went in. Therefore we must
at one time or another enter the centre, and every alley will be
traversed twice.

[Illustration: FIG. 20.--M. Tremaux's Method of Solution.]

[Illustration: FIG. 21.--How to thread the Hatfield Maze.]

Now look at the Hampton Court plan. Follow, say to the right, the path
indicated by the dotted line, and what I have said is clearly correct if
we obliterate the two detached parts, or "islands," situated on each
side of the star. But as these islands are there, you cannot by this
method traverse every part of the maze; and if it had been so planned
that the "centre" was, like the star, between the two islands, you would
never pass through the "centre" at all. A glance at the Hatfield maze
will show that there are three of these detached hedges or islands at
the centre, so this method will never take you to the "centre" of that
one. But the rule will at least always bring you safely out again unless
you blunder in the following way. Suppose, when you were going in the
direction of the arrow in the Hampton Court Maze, that you could not
distinctly see the turning at the bottom, that you imagined you were in
a blind alley and, to save time, crossed at once to the opposite hedge,
then you would go round and round that U-shaped island with your right
hand still always on the hedge--for ever after!

[Illustration: FIG. 22. The Philadelphia Maze, and its Solution.]