In essence you have a six-room diagram. The entire outside of the puzzle is considered one room. Can you start inside any room and draw one continuous line that goes through every opening opening exactly once without going through any walls. You may, of course, end anywhere of your choice, not necessarily where you started.

If it would help your thinking, think of this as a house with every door open. Can you start in any room (or outside) and walk through every door, closing each door after you pass through it (without backtracking), and close every door?

We all know that this puzzle is impossible. (But read the rest of this page anyway. I have a challenge for you down below.)

For this kind of puzzle to work, you either have to:

• Start in a room with an even number of doors, and end in that very same room, or
• Start in a room with an odd number of doors, then end in a different room that also has an odd number of doors.

But, no matter which way you start, every other room has to have an even number of doors, because when you walk into the room, you close one door, and when you walk out of the room, you close a second door. If you started with an odd number of doors in that "not-a-terminus" room, then eventually, you would have only one open door in that room, and you would trap yourself in that room the last time you entered it, or you would never be able to enter it at all because you'd be trapped inside another odd room.

So, if you have a house with rooms that all have even numbers of doors, and the outside also has an even number of doors, then you can start anywhere you want, and end back in the room you start with.

If you have a house with two rooms that have an odd number of doors (remember, the outside counts as a room in this puzzle), and all the other rooms have even numbers of doors, then you must start in one of the odd-number rooms, and end in the other odd-number room.

BUT WAIT A MINUTE ... there is a solution to this puzzle after all.

Can you solve this puzzle? Draw this diagram (after all, you don't want to mess up your screen), then draw one continuous line that passes through every opening without crossing any of the lines. It can be done. I've done it. But you have got to be creative. That's double-underlined creative.

You can e-mail me, or you can visit the much newer page I wrote about the Five Room puzzle which will repeat a lot of the stuff you read on this page, but adds a LOT MORE.

If you enjoy puzzles, please visit <www.MAZES.com>.

If you'd like to find a maze that contains your name, look at < http://www.godloveseveryone.org/> (and please click as many different ads as you can. I get 6 cents per each DIFFERENT COMPANY ad you click on. Read the very bottom of your name maze page to see how you can add this to your page.)