Overview
Most grid mazes are drawn on a neat lattice of even squares. An Oblique Maze looks like someone drew that same maze freehand — the grid lines wander, the cells lean, and the whole page reads like a spread of uneven, hand-drawn squares. It is eye-catching precisely because it looks a little imperfect.
Here is the trick, and it is worth knowing up front: the slant is only skin deep. Underneath, an Oblique Maze is a plain square maze — the very same connections between cells, the very same single route from Start (S) to Finish (E). Nothing about the way you solve it changes. The wobble just makes it harder to eyeball, which is exactly what makes it a fresh, distinctive page in a maze book.
The Goal
Find the one continuous route that connects S to E, moving between neighbouring cells wherever the wall between them is open. Every Oblique Maze ships with its solution already drawn.
The Rules
- One path, always. Like every Puzzle Maker Pro maze, an Oblique Maze is a perfect maze — there is exactly one route between Start and Finish, with no loops. Every other branch is a dead end.
- It solves exactly like a square maze. The slant is purely visual. Each cell connects to its up / down / left / right neighbours only — there are no diagonal moves, no shortcuts across a corner just because two cells happen to lean toward each other. If you can solve a square maze, you can solve this one.
- Dead ends are real. A corridor that stops going anywhere is a dead end — back up to the last junction and try another opening.
How to Start Solving
- Find S and E and trace from both ends. Working inward from the Finish as well as the Start meets in the middle faster.
- At each cell, try its open neighbours one at a time. Follow a corridor until it reaches the other marker or dead-ends, then back up. Because there are no loops, backing up never loses progress.
- Ignore the lean. The tilt of a cell tells you nothing about where the openings are — read the walls, not the angle. Pencil lightly and shade the corridors you have ruled out; the unbroken run from S to E is your answer.
What Makes It Oblique
The word “oblique” here describes the geometry, not the connectivity — and that distinction is the whole idea.
- Connectivity (unchanged): the maze is built on the same square grid as any square maze, with each cell linked to its four orthogonal neighbours. That is what makes it solve identically.
- Geometry (the twist): before the maze is drawn, the interior corners of the grid are nudged out of line — the vertices are displaced and the lines bowed — so every cell becomes a slightly skewed four-sided shape instead of a clean square. The outer edge stays put, so the maze remains watertight; only the inside slants.
How much it slants is adjustable. Four settings control it: two bow whole grid lines (horizontal and vertical) and two jitter individual cell corners (horizontal and vertical). Turn them all to zero and you get an ordinary square grid; raise them and the squares grow progressively more uneven and hand-drawn. That single group of controls is what gives this module its signature look — the same maze, dressed up as if it were sketched by hand.
Play It Online
Oblique Mazes aren’t only for print. With the Productivity edition, a set can be published to your website as an interactive game: because an Oblique Maze is a square-connectivity maze under the skin, it plays in the browser like any square maze — visitors trace the path from S to E with mouse or finger, with a built-in check and a timer. You can even gate later puzzles behind a short email sign-up, turning a free game into a lead magnet. How the player works (drawing, retracing, checking) is covered once in How to Play Puzzles Online.
Outcome
You can now solve an Oblique Maze: trace from both ends, step between cells wherever the wall is open, and treat the slant as decoration — the route obeys the same rules as any square maze. Want a whole book of them, each one unique, plus an online version to hand out? That’s what Puzzle Maker Pro’s Oblique Mazes module does.