Printable maze · Holidays
Christmas maze
A maze carved into the shape of a tree, 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 Christmas
The decorated evergreen came to Christmas from German-speaking Europe, where firs and spruces were brought indoors and hung with apples, wafers, and candles. The custom spread to Britain and America in the nineteenth century, helped along by published images of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert standing beside a lit tree. Firs suit the job because they hold their needles for weeks in a warm room, and because their branches grow in tiers that taper toward a single leading shoot, leaving room for ornaments to hang free.
Why a tree
The silhouette is a fir in profile: a broad skirted base, stepped tiers narrowing upward, and a short trunk below. Those tiers give the puzzle its structure, since each layer of branches becomes a wide corridor and the notches between them pinch the route down to a single gap.
Teachers and parents hand out this christmas maze in the last classroom week of December, when lessons wind down and the room needs something quiet.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a tree, with a single route of 36 steps and 19 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 36 steps | 19 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 59 steps | 36 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 136 steps | 91 |
How to solve a Christmas 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 tree silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.