Printable maze · Seasons
Fall 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 Fall
The word "fall" comes from the older English phrase "fall of the leaf," which stayed in common use in America while Britain settled on "autumn." The color change behind the name is mostly subtraction: as days shorten, deciduous trees stop making chlorophyll, and the yellow and orange carotenoids already present in the leaf become visible. Reds come from anthocyanins the tree makes late in the season. A corky abscission layer then forms at the stem base and the leaf drops.
Why a leaf
The silhouette is a single broad leaf with a notched margin, a stem at the base, and paths that run along the veins branching out from a central midrib. That layout suits the subject because a leaf's real vein network is itself a branching system of dead ends and through routes, which is exactly what a maze needs.
Teachers and parents print this fall maze in September and October, when leaf identification and the seasons come up in class.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a leaf, with a single route of 28 steps and 17 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 28 steps | 17 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 72 steps | 44 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 143 steps | 90 |
How to solve a Fall 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.