Maze Maker (Rectangle, Hexagon, Round and Shapes)

What it is for

The Maze Maker prints mazes for children, party bags, puzzle books or rainy afternoons. Choose square cells, hexagons or a round "theta" maze, cut square and hexagon grids to a heart, star, circle, diamond, triangle or a shape you draw with # signs, and put one to six mazes on a page. Answer-key pages draw the solution path in red.

Every maze is a spanning tree of its cells: each cell can be reached, there are no loops and exactly one path joins the entrance and the exit. The entrance is at the top; the exit is at the bottom, or in the centre of a round maze. On the page a green dot marks the start and a red square the finish.

Worked example

The default 16 × 20 square maze with the recursive backtracker (seed maze-1) has 320 cells, 37 dead ends, and the solution passes 51 cells. The PDF has two pages: the maze and the answer.

Four heart-shaped mazes on a 24 × 22 grid (seed hearts) keep 332 cells inside the heart; their solutions pass 91 to 117 cells. A round maze with 14 rings made with Wilson's algorithm has 463 cells and 136 dead ends, with a 68-cell solution from the rim to the centre.

With hexagon cells, a star outline and Kruskal (26 × 22 grid, six per page, seed stars) each maze has 170 cells and 54 to 61 dead ends.

How to read the result

• cells is the number of rooms in the maze after cutting the outline; only the largest connected part of a shape is kept.
• deadEnds counts cells with a single opening — a rough feel for difficulty.
• solutionCells is the length of the path from start to finish.
• The table lists these numbers for every maze; the files are the PDF (mazes, then answers), the first page as SVG and a PNG preview.

Tips and common mistakes

• The algorithm changes the character of the maze. The recursive backtracker makes long winding corridors with about 10 % dead ends. Kruskal and Wilson make many short side branches (about 30 %) — more choices, more backtracking. Wilson picks every possible maze with the same probability.
• For young children use few rows and columns (8 × 10) and one maze per page.
• In a round maze the rows field sets the number of rings (2–40); the cell count per ring doubles as the rings grow, so cells keep a similar size.
• My own shape: write one line per row, # for a cell and . or a space for outside. The drawing sets the size, so the columns and rows fields are ignored.
• Very large mazes on A4 get thin walls — check the PNG preview before printing many copies.

FAQ

Is there always exactly one way through?

Yes. The maze is a spanning tree, so the path between entrance and exit is unique.

Can I play the maze on screen?

In Printshop press Play on screen… and move the dot with the arrow keys or buttons; going back erases the trail.

Why does a star look jagged?

The outline is tested at each cell centre, so small grids follow the shape roughly. Use more columns and rows for a smoother edge.

How do I make a maze book?

Set up to 24 mazes with one or two per page and print the PDF; the answer pages come last, so you can keep them separate before stapling the sheets.