Penrose's Railway Mazes
Penrose's Railway Mazes
This Demonstration presents four railway mazes designed by Roger Penrose and his father, Lionel Penrose. In a railway maze one must go from the start (marked by S or A) to the finish (F or B) in the same way that a train with no reverse gear would travel. At each junction the train must follow the natural curve of the track; that is, the wheels of the train can turn only in the forward direction and sharp turns are forbidden. The solutions to the four examples shown here were obtained by combining the image processing capabilities of Mathematica with a breadth-first search.