> > Sam's right. I'd love to see the maps of people who HAVE tried to map it.
> >

Oh, it can be mapped. It just doesn't help.

> > As for getting to your destination, you just have to make up your mind which way you want to go. You're never really very far away.
>
> I do these mazes by mapping, but not by making a physical map. I draw up a grid with all the locations down the left-hand side, and the possible directions along the top. Then I fill in the result of going from the specified location in the specified direction into the table. That way I can be sure that I've tried every possibility, also that I can find my way out again (not needed in this case).
>

This is a technique I have suggested a couple of times to people as an alternative if they find making conventional maps of an area too confusing. But I'd only recommend it for areas which have odd directional shifts, lots of one-way connections, or some other factor like that.

> I find that treating fight sequences as mazes and 'mapping' them the same way usually so;ves them easily enough.

Also true. But the more complicated ones have hidden states, making the information of the action text, area text, and options available at any time not necessarily sufficient to solve the puzzle just by mapping. You might have to go through a loop in the fight several times, which might open up new options elsewhere in the sequence, for example. Or you might have to do a loop twice in a row, to make it a bit tougher. Hopefully in such cases the right thing to do is well clued, keeping the puzzle fair.