Imagine a horizontal maze turned on its side.
You enter at the bottom and begin your journey of advancing along the corridors, periodically encountering junctions where ascents and descents must be negotiated using ladders attached to the walls. Most lead to dead ends, just as they do in a conventional maze.

Vertical Maze requires those entering it to be fit, not afraid of heights, and not subject to panic attacks.

Extra fiendish version is also turned at a 45 degree angle so that there are always sloping journeys and nothing is on a horizontal plane.

Super plus fiendish version has half of the structure extending below ground level.
-- xenzag, Jan 02 2019

Human-scale snakes and ladders Human-scale_20snakes_20and_20ladders_2e
Prior art [8th of 7, Jan 02 2019]

The Zap Gun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Zap_Gun
Worth reading [8th of 7, Jan 02 2019]

Will there be snakes ?
-- 8th of 7, Jan 02 2019


You can wear your snake costume when you try it.
-- xenzag, Jan 02 2019


Well, at least can some of the ladders be inadequately secured, or have missing or greased rungs, or rungs that suddenly fold down under load ?
-- 8th of 7, Jan 02 2019


It’s not the same as snakes and ladders as unlike a maze, snakes and ladders is a single direction ascent game with no puzzle to solve. Meanwhile, if it makes you happy there can be ladders with randomly electrified rungs in the one you try.
-- xenzag, Jan 02 2019


No thankyou, we just want something that delivers random, pointless and unexpected suffering to others, while we watch.

A bit like The Apprentice, but rather less cruel and demeaning.
-- 8th of 7, Jan 02 2019


Isn't Maize usually vertical?
-- not_morrison_rm, Jan 02 2019


I was wondering whether the hedges should be yew or privet, but then I realised it wouldn't be hedges. But then it wouldn't be enclosed tunnels either, because then there wouldn't be so much scope for fear of heights. So I thought of slightly translucent plastic walls. And the reason I thought of those was those little puzzle toys with a plastic maze and a ball bearing or several.

Thereupon I understood that this maze should not be in a fixed orientation at all, but should lurch about alarmingly at the whim of a child, who, by remote control, is trying to solve the puzzle by rolling some grotesquely hypertrophied ball bearings around the maze, quite heedless of the humans struggling through it.

This might be a metaphor for something and, in any case, would satisfy [8th]'s requirement.
-- pertinax, Jan 02 2019


// lurch about alarmingly at the whim of a child, ... quite heedless of the humans struggling through it. //

Very like the "game" described in "The Zap Gun" by Philip K. Dick. <link>
-- 8th of 7, Jan 02 2019


The maze could be mounted on a balanced verticle wheel, so that as you climb upwards it gradually overbalances.
-- pocmloc, Jan 02 2019


Could that result in injuries to the users ?
-- 8th of 7, Jan 02 2019


If you were to have it overbalance, then the exit would end up near the bottom, surely, which sounds easier.
-- RayfordSteele, Jan 03 2019


Make it a cube. You could fit a lot of maze in a 25 by 25 by 25 metre cube.
-- Xenophile, Jan 03 2019


Get away from our shuttlecraft, you can't have it.
-- 8th of 7, Jan 03 2019


I spent a week working between a few different locations in New York that ended up with me feeling like this. The elevators in some of the buildings serviced only part of the floorage, so you had to remember which floors acted as transition points. Similar in some ways, just without the vertigo - which itself makes me think of those most scary scenes in The Poseidon Adventure where ostentatious ball-roms and corridors, through simple rotation, turn into vertiginous halls of death.

And on a different occasion I once went down a coal-mine in Belgium that featured the 45° thing quite spectacularly.
-- zen_tom, Jan 03 2019


Nice, a clear intelligent extrapolation of the gym rope.
-- wjt, Jan 04 2019


Would there be an "I give up, get me the hell out of this damn thing" escape device? Perhaps a safety ladder opening out the back.

Or a trebuchet.
-- whatrock, Jan 04 2019


^ [+]
-- 8th of 7, Jan 04 2019


There is no easy escape, and remember, the exit point could be at ground level with the solution journey requiring a trip up and down repeatedly to the highest corridors. Did I mention the one-way turnstile at the entry point?
-- xenzag, Jan 04 2019


To be fair to [whatrock], a trebuchet is probably unlikely to qualify as an "easy escape", even if there's a suitably located landing net (which doesn't have to be the case - after all, the ground is perfectly adequate for breaking your fall).
-- 8th of 7, Jan 04 2019


Ah, but to the grievously suffering maze-goer, having passed the brightly-colored escape ladder positioned just inside the entrance 3 days ago, an evil-looking medieval trebuchet with a sign pointing to the sling might be just the ticket out, landing be damned.
-- whatrock, Jan 04 2019


... which they almost certainly will be. <Snigger/>

// evil-looking medieval trebuchet //

For maximum effectiveness, the trebuchet should be painted in bright, cheerful primary colours, and be adorned with images of happy clowns, cushions, parachutes, trampolines and pillows.
-- 8th of 7, Jan 04 2019



random, halfbakery