Printable maze · Holidays
Valentines Day maze
A maze carved into the shape of a heart, 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 Valentines Day
Valentine's Day falls on February 14, the feast day of a Christian martyr named Valentine about whom almost nothing certain is known. Its link to romance appears in Geoffrey Chaucer's poem "The Parliament of Fowls," which tied the date to the season when birds choose their mates. Handwritten verses gave way to printed cards in the 1800s, when cheaper postage and machine-made lace paper turned the exchange into a mass custom, and Esther Howland built an early American business assembling them in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Why a heart
The outline is a heart: two rounded lobes meeting at a dip on top and tapering to a point below, a symmetrical stylized form rather than a drawing of the organ. Every corridor of this valentines day maze bends to stay inside that curve, so the two lobes hold looping dead ends while the narrow point at the base forces traffic into a single tight channel.
Teachers and parents hand this out in the first two weeks of February, alongside card-making and classroom exchanges.
What is in this maze
A 10 by 10 maze cut into the shape of a heart, with a single route of 38 steps and 25 turns from start to finish.
| Size | Grid | Shortest route | Turns |
|---|---|---|---|
| easy | 10 x 10 | 38 steps | 25 |
| medium | 16 x 16 | 87 steps | 61 |
| hard | 24 x 24 | 217 steps | 126 |
How to solve a Valentines Day 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 heart silhouette is solid wall, so a corridor running along the edge of the shape has nowhere to branch and can be followed at speed.