Dead-end Filling
Dead-end filling is an algorithm for solving mazes that fills all dead ends, leaving only the correct way unfilled. It can be used for solving mazes on paper or with a computer program, but it is not useful to a person inside an unknown maze since this method looks at the entire maze at once. The method is to 1) find all of the dead-ends in the maze, and then 2) "fill in" the path from each dead-end until the first junction met. A video of dead-end filling in action can be seen here: .
Dead-end filling cannot accidentally "cut off" the start from the finish since each step of the process preserves the topology of the maze. Furthermore, the process won't stop "too soon" since the end result cannot contain any dead-ends. Thus if dead-end filling is done on a perfect maze (maze with no loops), then only the solution will remain. If it is done on a partially braid maze (maze with some loops), then every possible solution will remain but nothing more.
Read more about this topic: Maze Solving Algorithm
Famous quotes containing the words dead-end and/or filling:
“Corner a dog in a dead-end street and it will turn and bite.”
—Chinese proverb.
“To play is nothing but the imitative substitution of a pleasurable, superfluous and voluntary action for a serious, necessary, imperative and difficult one. At the cradle of play as well as of artistic activity there stood leisure, tedium entailed by increased spiritual mobility, a horror vacui, the need of letting forms no longer imprisoned move freely, of filling empty time with sequences of notes, empty space with sequences of form.”
—Max J. Friedländer (1867–1958)