The Financial Maze

This has been an amazing, and scary, weekend for financial news!

The big news, of course, is the formerly long-respected brokerage Lehman Brothers filing for bankruptcy.

Their financial troubles are based in the subprime mortgage-lending crisis, which is affecting many other financial firms, as well. Merrill Lynch is facing a takeover by Bank of America.

Wall Street, and other financial markets around the globe, are expected to react sharply today.

However, not all the financial news is bad. As I write this, crude oil is trading below $100 per barrel for the first time in many months.

Now that we've seen how the professionals handle the financial maze, it's your turn. You're the blue dot at the top and your challenge is to work your way through the dollar sign-shaped maze, to reach the other blue dot at the bottom.



Click here to see the rules for this puzzle.

The object of the game is to find a path through the maze and reach the goal as quickly as you can, and with as little backtracking and as few hints as possible.

To begin, click anywhere in the maze area. Anytime you click outside of the maze, you must click in it again to resume playing or use any of the functions described here, although the timer will continue running.

You can then move through the maze by using the I key to move up, K to move down, J to move left, and L to move right. As you move, you'll leave a blue trail through the maze.

The timer starts when you make your first move through the maze. You may pause the timer by pressing the P key, and the timer will automatically resume when you make your next move.

You may backtrack, but the computer will keep track of how many steps you backtracked, and those steps will be marked with a trail that's a lighter blue that your regular trail.

You can get a hint concerning which way to go by pressing the H key (marked in red), and get the full solution by pressing the S key (also marked in red). You can get a completely new maze, in the same shape, by reloading it with the R key.

When you reach the goal, you'll be notified of your time, how many steps you took, how many steps you backtracked, and how many hints you required. If you like, reload the maze, and try and beat your own best time!

Let everyone know how you did in the comments!