Printable maze · Seasons
Spring maze
A maze carved into the shape of a flower, 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 Spring
Spring begins astronomically at the vernal equinox, around March 20 in the Northern Hemisphere, when the sun crosses the celestial equator and day and night run close to equal length. The season's changes are driven less by warmth alone than by lengthening daylight: many plants measure the hours of light and use that signal to break dormancy. Bulbs like crocuses and daffodils bloom early because they stored food underground the previous year, so they can flower before trees leaf out and shade the ground.
Why a flower
The silhouette is a flower in full bloom, petals spread around a rounded center, with the corridors winding through the petals and the space outside the outline left solid. A single blossom is the season's plainest marker, since flowering is what most people actually notice when winter ends.
Teachers and parents pull out a spring maze in March and April, when classroom themes turn to seeds, weather, and the return of green.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a flower, with a single route of 34 steps and 20 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 34 steps | 20 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 75 steps | 47 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 177 steps | 108 |
How to solve a Spring 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 flower silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.