Maze Mania.

I wonder if it is possible to beat the time on your first try using the maze algorithm. For those of you who are not familiar with it, you essentially take a right hand turn at any intersection, you will eventually traverse the entire maze, or at least make it to the finish.

Since it sounds like there is a goal to the maze, there's a potential that using the right-hand rule to traverse the maze could lead you to the exit before finding "the cheese." It would actually be very devious of them if they explicitly designed the maze to foil the right hand rule in this way.

There's another trick where you place your hand on the side of the maze and follow the path (without removing your hand) to the end.

That's actually the same trick, it just means you're touching the wall. Coincidentally the trick works on consistency, it doesn't matter if you take right or left as long as you're consistent. However, this doesn't ensure that you'll find the cheese.

For anyone interested, here's the satellite image of the maze: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=+33%C2%B034%2758.56%22N,++79%C2%B0+0%2755.45%22W&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=18&ll=33.583194,-79.015158&spn=0.002771,0.004844&t=k&om=1

The trick would fail if for some reason you start in an "island" inside of the maze.

Just follow a wall. One way or the other, doesn't matter. You follow a wall, and it'll eventually lead out.

"The trick would fail if for some reason you start in an “island” inside of the maze."

No, because there would still presumably be a right hand turn to get out of it. If the outside wall was just one big square it might fail, but I would wager that you would notice that you could see all the way from one corner to the next.

"No, because there would still presumably be a right hand turn to get out of it."

Actually, the right-hand turn "rule" will fail if the person starts inside a disjointed island. In this case, you need something called a Pledge algorithm to solve this problem.

The right turn technique will always get you out, but the maze is designed with a check point that moves each day, which may defeat this rule. The layout of the maze itself also changes through the use of different gates that are set each morning.