Summary: Exotic Pattern Mazes are created in Puzzle Maker Pro by picking one of the seven unusual tilings — tumbling blocks, pentagons, or a never-repeating Penrose pattern — setting how many tiles fill the page, and generating the maze with its matching solution. This guide walks through making one, titling it, styling it, and exporting print-ready pages.
Overview
An Exotic Pattern Maze is a maze drawn over an unusual tiling — 3D tumbling blocks, Cairo pentagons, or a never-repeating Penrose pattern. 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 Exotic Pattern Mazes Work first.
Required Modules
- Puzzle Maker Pro – Exotic Pattern Mazes
- Lite makes all seven tilings — Rhombille, Cairo, Tetrakis, Kite, Penrose, Pinwheel and Ammann — 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 Exotic Pattern Mazes before buying.
Preparation
Nothing is needed to make a plain maze — no images or lists. For your first maze, the Rhombille tiling at the default 12 × 12 tiles is a comfortable start (its tumbling-blocks look is the most recognisable). 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:
- Rhombille — diamonds that read as 3D tumbling blocks. The default and most recognisable.
- Cairo — the five-sided Cairo pentagon paving.
- Tetrakis — squares quartered into triangles.
- Kite — kite-shaped tiles in six-fold rosettes.
- Penrose — the never-repeating Penrose rhombi (the showpiece).
- Pinwheel — right triangles spinning at every scale, never-repeating.
- Ammann — squares and rhombi with eight-fold symmetry, never-repeating.
All seven ship at every edition — there is no shape gating.
Set the Tile Count (and Detail)
- 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; the tiling is fit to the page undistorted, never stretched.
- Detail: 2–7, default 5. This row appears only for Penrose and Pinwheel — the two never-repeating patterns that are built by repeatedly subdividing. Detail is how many times they subdivide, so higher Detail packs finer tiles into the same page. The other five tilings set their density from the tile count alone, so they have no Detail row.
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 — a fresh Penrose maze truly never repeats — 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 Exotic-specific is just the list of options (examples shown for the Rhombille tiling; the same feeds the Description field, which defaults to “Find the path from the start to the finish.”):
- Maze Shape — e.g. “Maze (Rhombille)”
- Maze Shape Size — e.g. “Maze (Rhombille 144)”
- Maze Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Maze (Rhombille 144 cells)”
- Shape — e.g. “Rhombille”
- Shape Size — e.g. “Rhombille 144”
- Shape Grid Size — e.g. “Rhombille 144 cells”
- Custom — your own text (default title “Maze”)
(On a Penrose maze the same options read “Maze (Penrose)”, “Penrose”, 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 Exotic Pattern 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 Exotic Pattern 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.
FAQ
Which tilings can I choose, and are any of them locked?
All seven — Rhombille, Cairo, Tetrakis, Kite, Penrose, Pinwheel, and Ammann — ship at every edition. There is no shape gating.
How do I set the size and difficulty?
Tiles across and Tiles down each range 2–200 with a default of 12. More tiles make more, smaller cells and a harder maze; fewer tiles make big, roomy tiles for a children’s book. The tiling is fit to the page undistorted, never stretched.
What is the Detail setting for?
Detail ranges 2–7, default 5, and appears only for Penrose and Pinwheel — the two never-repeating patterns built by repeated subdivision. Higher Detail packs finer tiles into the same page. The other five tilings set their density from the tile count alone, so they have no Detail row.
Can I shape the maze into a silhouette?
Yes, with the Creative edition. The Mask tab confines the tiling to a shape such as a heart or an animal, dropping the tiles that fall outside the shape.
Which edition do I need for online play and batch generation?
JSON web output and online gameplay for all seven tilings require the Productivity edition, which also includes Time Saver for batch rows.
What export formats do I get?
Print/PDF output is PNG, JPG, SVG, and PDF of the puzzle and solution, on every edition.