Printable maze · Themes
Space maze
A maze carved into the shape of a star, 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 Space
Stars are enormous spheres of hot plasma held together by their own gravity, fusing hydrogen into helium in their cores and releasing the light that crosses space to reach you. The Sun is one of them, an ordinary star that happens to sit close by. Starlight appears to twinkle because Earth's moving atmosphere bends it on the way down, which is why telescopes work better on mountaintops and why observatories in orbit see steadier images than any ground-based instrument can.
Why a star
The silhouette is a five-pointed star, the shape people have drawn for stars since long before anyone knew they were spheres, with corridors filling the body and running out toward each tip. The points create narrow dead ends that a square border would never produce, so this space maze puts its hardest turns exactly where the outline pinches.
Teachers running an astronomy unit and parents filling an afternoon after a planetarium visit print this one.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a star, with a single route of 41 steps and 21 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 41 steps | 21 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 65 steps | 41 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 171 steps | 102 |
How to solve a Space 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 star silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.