Maze maker

How to play

1. Find the opening marked Start in the top wall and the opening marked Finish in the bottom wall.
2. Trace a route between them with a pencil, following the passages.
3. Do not cross any wall. When you reach a dead end, go back to the last junction and try another way.
4. Each maze has only one route, so once you find it, the job is done.
5. Check your answer on the answer key, where the route is drawn in pink.

Tips

• Start with a small winding maze. Long corridors are easy to follow with a finger before the pencil comes out.
• If a maze feels stuck, try working backwards from Finish. The route is the same in both directions.
• Branching mazes suit people who enjoy checking each dead end carefully.
• Print the answer key on a separate sheet so people can check their work without seeing the route first.
• Large print gives one maze per page, with plenty of room to draw.

Where it comes from

Mazes appear in puzzle books, magazines and activity sheets in many countries, and people draw them on paper, card and chalkboards alike. Paperoom makes perfect mazes, in which every cell connects to every other cell by exactly one route, so there are no loops and no closed-off areas. The winding style is carved with a depth-first search that makes long corridors, and the branching style uses Prim's method, which leaves many short dead ends.

Questions