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Left at the Scarecrow

Corn maze season: English Wikipedia's Corn maze article averaged 44 views a day in the first week of September and 97 a day over 11-20 October, with 253 on 1 October (Wikimedia pageviews).

Every right answer is the right turn.

Grow a corn maze with checkpoint posts at its forks. Paste a few facts - from a farm sign, a school topic, or the birthday person's life - and get a passport: one question per post, with the right answer on the turn that leads on and the wrong answers on dead ends.

Try a sample:

1 The maze

The same seed word, size and post count always grow the same maze. A new maze keeps your questions - the page re-pins each answer to the new turns.

2 The facts

0 lines

3 Write the passport

One run reads every line, sets aside opinions, instructions and questions, and writes one question per post from the facts that are left - the right answer taken from the line, two wrong answers that the line rules out - plus a maze name and the entrance and exit signs.

The verdict follows a fixed order: no usable facts if none of the lines is a fact with one clear answer; otherwise short of facts if there are fewer usable facts than posts (the rest print as blank signs); otherwise ready to print.

Pricing as soon as the session is ready...

4 The passport

Answer key - for the grown-ups

    5 Walk it

    Try the maze before you print it. Use the arrow buttons or the arrow keys; the walker runs along a row until it reaches a fork, a post or a dead end. At a post, pick an answer and the walker takes that turn.

    6 Saved passports

    How it works

    The page grows the maze from the seed word: a grid of corn rows with exactly one way from the gate to the exit and no loops. It walks that way and lists every fork - a spot where the walker can choose between two or three turns. The posts are spread evenly over those forks. At each post, the turn that stays on the way is the right turn; every other turn leads into a dead end and back. All of this runs in your browser and costs nothing.

    A written passport adds the questions. The page pins each right answer to its post's right turn and each wrong answer to a dead-end turn, then checks the reply: the verdict against the reply's own count, every fact line used, kept spare or left out with a reason, two different wrong answers per post, and a right answer that shares a word with its fact line. Without a run, the passport prints blank signs with the turns, so you can write your own questions by hand.

    For a real field, mow or cut the rows to the printed plan and put a numbered sign at each post. Questions use only the facts you typed - check them before you print.