Maze maker: mazes to walk here or print

How a maze here works

• In and out: the way in is the gap at the top left, under an arrow. The way out is the gap at the bottom right, above an arrow.
• One way through: there is exactly one way from the first square to the last that does not turn back on itself. Every other path ends at a wall.
• No closed rooms and no rings: every square of the maze can be reached, and no path comes back around to join itself.
• On paper: a pencil is kinder than a pen. A way to start is to follow one wall with a finger, or to work back from the way out.
• On the screen: one press of an arrow takes you along the path until it turns, branches or ends. The line behind you shows where you have walked, and it gets shorter when you walk back.
• Without seeing it: after each press the page says the row and column you are in and which ways are open, so a screen reader can walk the maze too.

The four sizes

• Small: 8 squares across and 10 down. One on a Letter sheet has paths 18 mm wide, wide enough for a crayon.
• Medium: 12 squares across and 15 down.
• Large: 16 squares across and 20 down.
• Very large: 24 squares across and 30 down. One on a Letter sheet has paths about 8 mm wide.
• Six on a sheet gets small: the more mazes on a sheet, the narrower the paths. Six very large mazes on a Letter sheet have paths about 2.3 mm wide, which is hard to draw in. One or two on a sheet is better for that size.
• The maze number: any whole number from 1 to 999999. The same number and size make the same maze on any device, so two people can work the same one. If we change how the page makes mazes, a number will make a different one.

Every time the page is built, a program makes 2,000 mazes (500 of each size) and checks each one a second way, with code written apart from the page’s own. It counts the openings, checks that every square can be reached, finds the way through by its own search and checks that it is the one the page draws as the answer, and walks that way with the arrows. It also measures the 32 ways the page can lay mazes out on a sheet.

What this page does not do

• It does not keep your place. If you close or reload the page, your walk is gone. The maze number brings back the maze, not where you were.
• It has no timer and no score. Show the way draws the answer; Start again puts you back at the way in.
• It does not let you draw on the screen with a finger. On the screen you move with the four arrows.
• It does not make round mazes, picture mazes or mazes with your own words. Every maze is a block of squares with the way in at the top left and the way out at the bottom right.
• It does not grade how hard a maze is. A bigger maze has more squares and more wrong turns; that is all the sizes mean.
• It makes no promise about your mind or your health. It is a puzzle to pass the time.
• It cannot see your printer. It has been tried in one browser’s print preview (Chromium, saved as PDF), where each sheet came out on one page; it has not been tried on paper from a real printer.