Walking a maze does not need to mean replicating a scene from The Shining. If you’re in a rectangular maze, be it a smaller hedgerow version or a larger cornstalk one, a good way to find your way out is to treat the left wall as if it were a continuous rope — no matter how long or kinked it is, you’re bound to find the end of it. (Also, allot yourself sufficient time: “Maize mazes” are often 6 to 10 acres and can take up to 90 minutes to solve.) Follow the left wall in and out of dead ends and you’ll get to the exit eventually, says British maze designer Adrian Fisher. But this trick won’t always work if the goal of the maze is on a freestanding island, if there are bridges, or if there is more than one solution. In which case, “bring a pencil and paper and mark distinctive things you pass that can guide you later,” says Don Frantz, founder of the American Maze Company, in New York City.

As you walk forward, glance behind you to see — and potentially recognize — the path from the opposite direction. Don’t rely on the sun (it moves), don’t mark your territory with bread crumbs or break cornstalks (do you think you’re the only one trying?), and don’t bother cutting through a wall to reach another path — “you’ll be just as lost as you were before,” says Frantz. Don’t underestimate curving paths: “You think you’ve done a tiny turn,” Frantz says, “but in reality, you’ve turned 100 degrees from your starting point.” For the most frustrated, the easiest way out is “following the worn pathways,” says Frantz. “In some cases, so many people rewalk the solution path that we have to turn up the earth inside the maze so people don’t figure it out.”