Oh, lucky you. You are in one of Colossal Cave's two mazes.

If you see "You are in a twisty maze of passageways, all alike," you are in the Pirate's Maze. If you are just worried about getting out, you can type u immediately to go back to the Hall of Mists.

If you entered the maze from the top of the stalagtite, you are also in the Pirate's Maze, but a little further in. To get out, immediately type w and then u to exit at the Hall of Mists.

If you see "You are in a twisty maze of passageways, all different," you are in the Vending Machine Maze. Type d immediately to get back to the Very Long Hall.

(None of this advice will be very helpful if you've been blindly typing directions for the last half hour, of course.)

To get a perfect score on the game, however, you really need to master these two mazes. The Pirate's Maze has 24 rooms and can be mapped out fairly easily by dropping items in each of the rooms to make the rooms more identifiable. Bear in mind the maze is non-Euclidean, that is, going north and then immediately south won't necessarily get you to the room you just left. Also, you'll find rooms where going certain directions will silently plunk you right back in the room you started from, making it seem like the maze goes on forever.

That leaves the Vending Machine maze. That maze is a mess. It's got only 12 rooms, but each room has 10 exits, each leading to a different room. I'm not sure you could map the thing. A state transition diagram is about the best you can do.

For more information about the mazes, see:

• My lamp is going dim. What do I do? (Information on the Vending Machine maze.)
• A pirate just stole all my treasure! What now? (Information on the Pirate's maze.)