This is an aerial view of the Maze Craze corn maze in New Springfield. (Submitted photo)

NEW SPRINGFIELD — When it comes to collecting the available checkpoints in a series of challenging and interconnected mazes, Candis Hankey and Bill Alexander of Youngstown did something no Major League Baseball player has ever done: They batted 1.000.

“We had the feeling early on that we could get lost, and we were keeping track of where we were. We pick the path before we walk,” Alexander said Sunday in explaining the strategy he and Hankey adopted to get through a difficult corn maze and find all 18 checkpoints along the way.

Beforehand, both of them opted to first challenge themselves by trying their luck with the red maze, the most difficult of four winding and meandering centerpieces that cut through more than 21 acres of cornfields at Maze Craze, 14070 Woodworth Road.

In 2018, the site, which opened in 2009 and has about 9.2 miles of twisting trails, was featured as one of the top 10 corn mazes in the country, according to a USA Today poll.

The color-coded interactive mazes are, in order of difficulty, blue, black, green and red. The easiest is geared mainly for children, Cindy Bacon, who co-runs Maze Craze, said.

Those who locate all 18 checkpoints are entered into a drawing to win a $100 gift card, she noted.

This year’s design, most notably in the red one, is Snow White, and many of the trails bear a resemblance to the cheerful and popular Disney character, as well as one of the dwarfs. Each maze also features an interactive game.

One such challenge is to find six of the seven dwarfs in the green maze and figure out which one was left at home with Snow White, Bacon explained.

Also during their journey in one of the mazes in which they were enclosed by tall corn stalks, Hankey and Alexander tried to solve a “crime” via searching for markings of suspects, weapons and locations, a process that resembles the popular board game “Clue.”

“I felt like if he loses me, I’ll sit down and cry,” Hankey said with a chuckle.

For the most part, while searching for the 18 checkpoints, Hankey and Alexander went in numerical order, until toward the end when it became more challenging, they added.

For those a bit skittish about navigating their way through narrow paths surrounded by corn, plenty of other activities awaited them. Those included hayrides, a gem mine to identify gemstones in mixtures in sieves, barrel train rides and a zip line ride with seats and ropes operated by a pulley system.

Other attendees, such as Paul Ipock of Washington, Pa., opted for the “corn zooka” activity in which participants use an air-pressurized potato gun to shoot corn cobs cut in half at several targets.

Ipock was in town visiting friends and decided to stop at the Maze Craze farm, he said.

Bacon’s next set of plans promises to be far more straightforward than what’s in the cornfield: She hopes to add an event center to the property for weddings and other special occasions, she said.

If you go…

WHAT: Maze Craze corn maze

WHERE: 14070 Woodworth Road, New Springfield

WHEN: 5 p.m. to midnight Fridays, 11 a.m. to midnight Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Sundays through Nov. 7.

COST: $10 for all four mazes. Children 4 and under are admitted free.