I was discussing this at work and the general consensus is that Maze type puzzles are easier backwards rather than forwards.
Do you find that this is true?
Why would a maze be easier backwards?
I have found that mazes appear easier to do backward if they are circular mazes where the goal is to get to the center. If you start at the middle of the circle and work outward it seems to be easier for me. I don’t know why this might be. When the maze is such that the goal is to get from one side to the other, I find that there is really no difference when I initially start at the beginning versus the end.
I think that one reasone people supposedly find it easier to do a maze backward is because they have already tried to do it forward (i.e., from a certain perspective). When the same person then tries to do the same maze from the other direction, they get a different persepctive–making them able to see additional options which they previously did not realize were available. Going backward thus appears easier.
Please note: above references to the difficulty of mazes does not apply to any maze which appears on a fast-food restaurant tray. Such mazes are entirely too easy, even for the 3-year-olds for whom they’re intended.
I would WAG that a circular maze is easier to work from the inside out because towards the hub there are fewer possible pathways to negotiate, so at least it seems easier at the beginning. Once you approach the outer edge the complexity of possible pathways increases.
Also, even for one-side-to-the-other mazes, the maze designer may have focused on making the maze difficult from start to finish, while doing less to make it difficult from finish to start.
Of course, some multistate mazes (see here or here for examples) are easier backwards than forwards, because there’s fewer backward paths than forward ones. Though this is technically a consequence of the design.
knock knock appears to be on target here. In mazes which consist of spaghetti-like paths, and mazes where there are arrangements of walls structured like "T"s and "L"s, the designers are generally concentrating on making false paths leading out from the start so that people working the challenge will become distracted. Unless they assume a person will work the maze in backwards fashion, they tend to end up with only one correct path, or a limited selection of paths, at the destination. This means it is easy to get started on the right path by starting at the end.
There’s lots of hedge mazes in historic towns in the East like Williamsburg, and in quirky towns like New Harmony.
If you enter the maze backwards, while someone is exiting and that gate is open, you will tend to go straight to the center.
Why? Because once people have found the center, why delay their exit?