A long time ago, I got a maze tattooed on my back. Very soon thereafter, people started telling me this exact thing. Apparently, I in fact got a labyrinth tattooed on my back.
The article links to a Wikipedia page for mazes. The first line of that page says this
A maze is a path or collection of paths, typically from an entrance to a goal. The word is used to refer both to branching tour puzzles through which the solver must find a route, and to simpler non-branching (“unicursal”) patterns that lead unambiguously through a convoluted layout to a goal
Obligatory
Comic is Oglaf. It’s brilliant, but quite NSFW. That is one of the relatively few SFW strips.
Why is everyone fully clothed in that Oglaf strip?
Every now and then, he makes a funny one.
So a labyrinth is just a long tedious hallway you can’t get lost in?
No.
Labyrinths have sexy Bowie goblins and mazes don’t duh
Wait, is Bowie sexy or are the goblins sexy?
Yes
Tell that to all the mazes on the back of cereal boxes!
Hell, some of them didn’t even have one path!
Did anyone else always start at the end and head toward the start? (For mazes on paper)
It’s almost always easier to complete when you go backwards.
I always stick to a side of the walls of the, mmm, “maze” to get to the end
I love mazes that intentionally defeat this method.
yeah, me too. It’s cool when that happens
The method can’t be “defeated”. It ALWAYS works. But some do slow it down enough that it’s probably quicker to just guess and backtrack.
Sorry I lack the time to make something more complex or even enjoyable at the moment, but this should be enough for you to understand how easy defeating that strategy can be.
I stand corrected.
Although, that’s not exactly an exit, but I’ll give you the point.
Why isn’t it an exit? There could be a ladder or a tunnel or a portal.
Good example
Not true at all. (I see someone else already mentioned it but…)
I’ve heard this before, but I never understood how people find this easier. It’s still the exact same maze, you just swap the “start” and “goal” labels.
Paths tend to branch out into dead ends when going in one direction, which would feel more like doubling back when coming from the other direction.
It does depend on the size and overall layout of the maze though.
That’s because the design tends to split into choices when going in one direction, but less so the other direction.
Kind of like how it is essier to make the way from a leaf to the trunk of a tree than to start at a trunk and reach a specific leaf.
This isn’t true. Go look up the definition for either word, and it doesn’t comport with the usage rules claimed.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/labyrinth
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maze
If you do want to draw a sharp distinction in modern usage, you could posit that a labyrinth is a type of maze that was made intentionally and can be walked through.
This could just be due to usage change over time, similar to how “literally” can mean the same thing as “figuratively” now a days. But I’m not an etymologist.
I would guess that it’s actually a jargonification of extant words.
Merriam Webster includes a neat etymology section on the definitions I linked, that traces both words to the Renaissance (ish). The entry for “maze” does note an alternate definition as a neurological test with at least one dead end, but (1) that doesn’t match the claim OP’s article headline makes and (2) scientific jargon is not common English.
(If jargon WERE common English, we’d have an entirely different argument about tomatoes being fruits or vegetables.)
The real TIL is always in the comments
That’s like an internet rule
Yeah I don’t think this is true, certainly nothing else I’ve seen indicates that this is a defined difference. Hell the page itself seems to disprove the theory in multiple places. As does the origin of the word Labyrinth. After all if Theseus was in a labyrinth with one single path why did he need a string to find his way back?
So there was only one path, and it was always gonna lead to the Minotaur…
Talk about getting screwed.
Enough with the fucking labyrinths now. I’m doing the latest Tarkov event and that fucking final labyrinth task will be the death of me.
Dance, magic dance.
