There are three sections to Puzzling World - the free access areas, the Illusion Rooms and the Great Maze. Possibly a little overpriced at NZ$50 for entry to both for the lot of us, but compared to skiing, that's dirt cheap for three hours of entertainment.
FREE ACCESS AREAS
Visible from the road is the Leaning Tower of Wanaka, sitting at 53 degrees off vertical (compared with a measly six degrees for the Campanile at Pisa).
There are vantage points where one can get a different perspective.
The clock on the tower started going backwards from the stroke of midnight 31 December 2000, so is now back into the 1990s.
Inside the entry hall are a large number of tables, each set up with several puzzles. There are the Tangram types ones, and the Tower of Hanoi/Brahma (seven disks, move one at a time, never a bigger ring on a smaller one, aim is to move all seven rings from one spine to one of the other two). There were the logic puzzles made from bits of metal (nails, horseshoes, chains, rings etc), and a bunch of others, all free to play with. The hall also has part of the ceiling lined with mirrors which gives the effect of being a giant kaleidoscope.
There is also an extensive gift shop, with an array of Mensa-branded books of logic puzzles, as well as books and posters and postcards of various optical illusions, including Escher and the French ones
(I sent the first one to work, explaining that images of what's on MT's mind are not fit for public display.)
There are highball glasses that have a sloping base, shot glasses which read "Drink" one way up, and "Drunk" when upside down, and a variety of other gift shop type things.
Across a courtyard (which would be delightful in summer, but rather chilly in winter), there are also the loos. Whether you enter via the Mens or Womens door, you first end up in a common area with a trompe l'oeil of a Roman communal loo.
The dunny seats in the cubicles of both the mens and the womens loos are those clear perspex ones with weird things encased in them, but otherwise perfectly normal.
ILLUSION ROOMS
The illusions rooms are a series of rooms with various optical illusions in each.
Firstly, you encounter a very large face of Einstein which really does seem to follow you around the room. As you walk in you see several people walking from left to right and back again, bobbing up and down. Almost immediately inside the entry, you go into a large octagonal room. The entry makes up one of the walls, the other seven are each filling with an array of faces of Einstein, Beethoven, Mandela, Churchill, Mother Theresa, Lincoln and Van Gogh.
(You can watch someone else's youtube video of the room here)
The holograms don't photograph well, but are better than your standard fare. One quite clever one is of a woman ("Kelly") who smiles broadly if you look at her from one angle, and is tight-lipped from another.
As we moved from there towards the Ames room, there were various other optical illusions. For example, how many animals are there?
There's a slight height difference between Jos and Ky, but not this much...
By the way, there's an Ames Room at the Museum of Victoria, too, if you want to have a go.
Next up was the Tilted House, which is set at 15degrees off horizontal. Note that in both these images, we are standing vertically - it's the floor (and the camera) that are tilted.
Man, that stuff screws with your brain. I had quite bad motion sickness when I came out of that room - signals from the balance system completely as odds with the signals the visual system.
After re-equilibrating, and having some scroggin (dried fruit and nuts with chocolate raisins and yoghurt cranberries, this time), we then braved the maze.
THE GREAT MAZE
The great maze was one of the first timber (rather than hedge) mazes, and operates over two levels. From the entry, you have to make your way to the four towers at each of the four corners, and then back out again. Ky and me against Jos and JD. We got to the last two towers at practically the same time, but they beat us out managing to find the path they needed before we did. (In fact Ky and I eventually gave up, and ducked under one wall to get to where we needed. The others had already won, and we were getting cold, um and frustrated.)
The large rocky outcrop to the north of the Puzzling World site means the sun didn't start hitting the Maze until midday, which meant the timber stairs and raised walkways were icy, and therefore very slippery. Ky took a tumble fairly early, and the rest of us had a few scares over the next hour or so.
All up, it was a very pleasant way to spend a few hours, and we warmly recommend it to other geeks and nerds.
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