Printable maze · Holidays
Easter maze
A maze carved into the shape of a egg, 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 Easter
Easter moves around the calendar because it follows the moon: most Western churches keep it on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after March 21, so it can land anywhere from late March to late April. Eggs attached themselves to the feast early, partly because they were forbidden during Lenten fasting and piled up by Holy Week. Decorating them became a craft in its own right, from the wax-resist pysanky of Ukraine to the dyed red eggs of Greek Orthodox tables.
Why a egg
The silhouette is a single egg, wider at the base and tapering toward the top, with every path folded inside that curve and solid wall beyond it. The shape carries the holiday's oldest emblem, and its narrowing crown forces the corridors to bunch and turn where a square grid would simply run straight.
Teachers and parents pull out an easter maze in the last restless week before the holiday, when baskets are hidden and the eggs are still drying.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a egg, with a single route of 47 steps and 32 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 47 steps | 32 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 130 steps | 85 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 269 steps | 171 |
How to solve a Easter 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 egg silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.