Overview
An Archimedean Maze is a maze drawn over a semiregular tiling — octagons and squares, triangles and hexagons, pinwheels and medallions. This tutorial covers making one in Puzzle Maker Pro, from choosing a tiling to exporting the puzzle and solution. The module uses the standard Settings / Style / Titles tabs (plus a Mask tab for shaping), so if you have used another module the flow will feel familiar. New to the puzzle itself? Read How Archimedean Mazes Work first.
Required Modules
- Puzzle Maker Pro – Archimedean Mazes
- Lite makes all seven tilings — Octagonal, Kagome, Dodecagonal, Prismatic, Rosette, Medallion and Whirl — as static PNG/JPG/SVG/PDF, plus Instant Puzzle Books (a PDF/PPT book, all puzzles the same settings). Creative adds silhouette masking and Puzzle Book Studio (full control of fonts, titles, page numbers, layout, trim). Productivity adds JSON web output + online gameplay (all seven tilings), Time Saver, and Puzzle Book Studio with multiple puzzle sets. See Puzzle Maker Pro Editions Explained.
A free demo of the module is available, so you can try Archimedean Mazes before buying.
Preparation
Nothing is needed to make a plain maze — no images or lists. For your first maze, the Octagonal tiling at the default 12 × 12 tiles is a comfortable start. Each maze is generated with exactly one continuous path from Start to Finish.
Choose the Tiling
On the Settings tab, pick the Shape — this is the tiling the maze is drawn on:
- Octagonal — octagons with small squares. The default and the most open, forgiving pattern.
- Kagome — triangles woven through hexagons, a lattice look.
- Dodecagonal — big twelve-sided tiles ringed by triangles.
- Prismatic — striped bands of squares and triangles.
- Rosette — hexagons, squares and triangles in little flower clusters.
- Medallion — twelve-sided tiles, hexagons and squares, the ornamental pattern.
- Whirl — squares and triangles in a pinwheel spin.
All seven ship at every edition — there is no shape gating.
Set the Tile Count
The tilings are periodic — a pattern that repeats — so instead of a “cells” count you set how many tiles fill the page:
- Tiles across and Tiles down: 2–200, default 12 each. More tiles → more, smaller cells and a harder maze; fewer tiles → big, roomy tiles for a children’s book. Match the two numbers to your page shape (equal for square, more down than across for a portrait page); the tiling is fit to the page undistorted, never stretched.
That is the whole shape surface for the periodic tilings — there is no separate detail or tile-size control, because the count already sets the density.
Shape It (optional, Creative)
The Mask tab confines the tiling to a silhouette — a heart, an animal — so the whole maze takes that form: tiles that fall outside the shape are dropped, leaving a shaped block of tiling. It works the same as every geometric maze; see How to Make Shaped Mazes with Masking.
Generate and Preview
Set the Quantity to 1 while you dial in the look, then generate a preview. Each maze is unique, and Puzzle Maker Pro builds the matching solution at the same time, with S and E markers at the ends. When the look is right, raise the Quantity and the same settings produce a whole batch of unique mazes — single and batch are the same workflow, just a different number.
Set the Title
On the Titles tab, choose how each maze is named. Smart Titles is the same control on every module — see How to Create Smart Puzzle Titles for the how-to — so what is Archimedean-specific is just the list of options (examples shown for the Octagonal tiling; the same feeds the Description field, which defaults to “Find the path from the start to the finish.”):
- Maze Shape — e.g. “Maze (Octagonal)”
- Maze Shape Size — e.g. “Maze (Octagonal 144)”
- Maze Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Maze (Octagonal 144 cells)”
- Shape — e.g. “Octagonal”
- Shape Size — e.g. “Octagonal 144”
- Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Octagonal 144 cells”
- Custom — your own text (default title “Maze”)
(On a Kagome maze the same options read “Maze (Kagome)”, “Kagome”, and so on — the tiling name follows the shape you picked. “Size” appends the area size; “Grid Size” appends the cell count.)
Style It
Walls, the solution line, the floor, the Start/Finish markers, doorway size, and the tile-outline (“ghost edge”) are all on the Style tab and shared across every maze. The ghost edge — the faint lines that show the tiling under the walls — is on by default for Archimedean Mazes so the pattern always reads; you can recolour it or turn it off there. See How to Customize Maze Appearance.
Export
- Print / PDF — PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF of the puzzle and solution, on every edition.
- JSON web output & online gameplay — with the Productivity edition you can publish the set to play in the browser (all seven tilings), with the email-gate lead-capture option; see How to Play Puzzles Online.
- Time Saver — Productivity includes Time Saver for batch rows; see How to Batch Create Puzzles with Time Saver.
Outcome
You can now make Archimedean Mazes end to end — any of the seven tilings, plain or shaped, one or a whole book — titled, styled, and exported for print or the web.