Printable maze · Seasons
Autumn maze
A maze carved into the shape of a leaf, at three sizes. Exactly one route runs from start to finish, so there is always an answer and never a shortcut.
Print the page above, or take the easy grid as a PDF. Both carry the answer key, and large print is a setting rather than a separate file.
Show the answer key
Print the page above, or take the medium grid as a PDF. Both carry the answer key, and large print is a setting rather than a separate file.
Show the answer key
Print the page above, or take the hard grid as a PDF. Both carry the answer key, and large print is a setting rather than a separate file.
Show the answer key
About Autumn
Autumn begins at the September equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, when shortening days signal deciduous trees to stop making chlorophyll. The green drains away and pigments already present in the leaf, the yellow and orange carotenoids, become visible. Reds are different: anthocyanins are manufactured fresh in the fall, which is why some maples blaze while other trees only go brown. A corky layer called the abscission zone then forms at the base of each stalk, and the leaf falls. The word "fall" is an older English usage that stayed common in America.
Why a leaf
The silhouette is a single broad leaf, lobed at the edges with a stem at the base, and the corridors branch inside it the way veins branch from a midrib. Since everything outside the outline is solid wall, the leaf's notched margin shapes the dead ends, so this autumn maze is bounded by the exact thing the season is known for shedding.
Teachers and parents pull this out in late September and October, alongside leaf-collecting walks and equinox lessons.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a leaf, with a single route of 36 steps and 24 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 36 steps | 24 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 70 steps | 43 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 154 steps | 94 |
How to solve a Autumn maze
Every maze here is perfect, which is a precise thing rather than a compliment: there are no loops and no islands, so exactly one route joins any two points. That has a useful consequence. Keep one hand on the wall and never take it off, and you will walk the whole maze and arrive at the exit. It always works on a perfect maze. It is also slow, because it walks you into every dead end on the way.
Filling dead ends is faster. Find any square with walls on three sides, shade it in, and treat it as solid. That usually creates a new dead end next to it, so keep going. When you run out, what is left unshaded is the route. On the easy grid that is a few minutes of work; on the hard one it is the whole puzzle, and it is how most people who solve mazes quickly actually do it.
Working backwards is the third trick, and it exploits how a maze is built. Passages branch far more often near the start than near the finish, so tracing from the exit means fewer wrong turns to reject. On a shaped maze the outline helps too: the leaf silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.