Mazes

How to play

A maze has one way through. You start at the top left, where the page says Start, and you need to find your way to the opening at the bottom right, where it says Finish. The thick lines are walls, and the gaps between them are the passages you can walk along.

1. Find yourself. A dark dot shows where you are, a ring marks the start and a flag marks the finish. As you move, a blue line is drawn behind you, so you can always see the way you came.
2. Move in any way that suits you. Tap a square next to the dot and it steps there. Tap a square further along a straight, open passage and it walks all the way in one go. Or use the Left, Up, Down and Right buttons under the maze. With a keyboard, press Tab until the maze is outlined, then use the arrow keys.
3. Walls stop you. If you try to go through one, nothing moves and the page tells you there is a wall that way.
4. Back out of dead ends. Press Back one step to undo your last step, or tap any square on your blue line to go straight back to it. Start again returns you to the start.
5. Reach the finish. When the dot gets to the flag, the page says so and tells you how many steps the route has.

There is no timer and no score. You are never marked down for a wrong turn, and the page never moves on to another maze by itself.

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Worked example

Here is a small maze with its route drawn as a heavy line. Follow the six steps, and notice how each side passage turns out to be a dead end.

1. Start at the top left. There is a wall below the first square, so the only way is right. Move right one square.
2. At the second square you can go right or down. Down leads to one square, then one square to the left, and stops. That is a dead end, so go right.
3. At the third square, a passage leads right to one square, then down to another, and stops. That is a dead end too. Go down two squares.
4. You are now at a junction. Right is a dead end after one square, so turn left.
5. At the next square, left leads to one square and then one more below it, and stops. Go down.
6. You are on the bottom row. Move right two squares and you are at the finish, after eight steps in all.

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Sizes and the daily maze

Each size has its own daily maze, which changes at midnight where you are. When you have finished, press Next puzzle for another, as many as you like. A maze you have started is remembered in this browser, so you can come back to it later.

• Small, 8 × 8: a short walk with a few side turns, a good place to begin.
• Medium, 12 × 12: a longer route with more places to go wrong. It fits on a phone screen.
• Large, 16 × 16: the longest route. On a phone it is wider than the screen, so it scrolls sideways inside its own box. It is most comfortable on a tablet or computer, or printed on paper.

Every maze has exactly one route from start to finish, so there is never a question of finding the best way.

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Tips

• Try the wall-follower method. Keep one hand on the wall on one side, say the left, and turn whenever that wall turns. In these mazes it always leads to the finish, though it may be a long way round.
• Work backwards. Look at the finish and trace a few squares back from it with your eye or a pencil. The last part of the route is often easy to see.
• Short side passages are often dead ends, but not always. Look ahead along a passage before you walk it.
• Your blue line is a trail of crumbs. When you reach a dead end, it shows exactly where to turn back to.
• If the lines feel thin, choose Text size and colours at the top of the page for a different look.
• Prefer paper? Print, then Print puzzle, gives the maze on one page. Print with answers adds the route on a second page.

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How these mazes are made

Every maze is drawn by a program from the date or puzzle number, so the same day always gives the same maze. The program starts in one square and carves passages one at a time, always into a square it has not reached yet. That means there are no loops and no sealed-off rooms, so there is exactly one route between any two squares. It keeps a maze only if the route is long enough and has enough side turns to be worth the walk. Before a maze appears, the program checks that every passage is open from both sides, that there is one passage fewer than there are squares, and that every square can be reached. Whether you have finished is decided by where you are standing, not by comparing with a stored answer. Automated tests repeat these checks on thousands of mazes whenever the maze code changes, using a second checker written separately from the one that makes the mazes.

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