Picture maze

His designs included ships, dolphins, crabs, dogs, snails, horsemen and human figures.

His earliest works, built as hedge mazes in the landscape, included "Imprint" (a gigantic footprint) in a private garden in Oxfordhsire, England in 1975; "Creation" (egg-shaped, containing a Minotaur, and - alternatively but superimposed - the Garden of Eden story) at Varmlands Saby, Varmlands, Sweden, in 1977; and "Pyramid" at the Château de Belœil, Belgium, in 1979.

Randoll Coate went on to create many dozens of further symbolic mazes, 15 in conjunction with fellow Englishman Adrian Fisher.

The shape of this shortest path - particularly if emphasized by coloring in the grid squares visited - then reveals a hidden picture.

Using computer algorithms, picture mazes can be created at different difficulty levels by controlling the length and density of the false paths.