Overview
A Square Maze is the maze everyone knows — a rectangular grid of square cells with walls between them, and one route from Start to Finish. It is the most familiar puzzle on the shelf, which is exactly why it works so well in a book: readers of any age pick it up without instructions. You solve it by walking down the open corridors, turning at junctions, and backing out of dead ends until the single path reveals itself.
Under the hood every Puzzle Maker Pro maze is built the same careful way, which is what makes the solving method below reliable.
The Goal
Find the one continuous route that connects the Start (top-left corner by default) to the Finish (bottom-right corner) by moving from cell to cell through the open gaps in the walls. Every Square Maze ships with its solution already drawn.
The Rules
- One path, always. Like every Puzzle Maker Pro maze, a Square Maze is a perfect maze — the grid is carved as a spanning tree, so there is exactly one route between Start and Finish, with no loops. Every other branch is a dead end.
- Move through open walls. Two neighbouring cells (up, down, left, right) are either open to each other or walled off. The maze opens just enough gaps to leave a single path and walls the rest.
- Dead ends are real. A corridor that stops going anywhere is a dead end — back up to the last junction and try another direction.
How to Start Solving
- Find Start and Finish and trace from both ends. Working inward from the Finish as well as the Start meets in the middle faster.
- At each junction, try the open corridors 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 out of a dead end never loses progress.
- Pencil lightly. Shade the dead ends you have ruled out; the unbroken run of corridors from Start to Finish is your answer.
The rule never changes no matter how big the grid gets: one path, cell to cell, Start to Finish.
Play It Online
Square Mazes aren’t only for print. With the Productivity edition, a set can be published to your website as an interactive game: visitors solve it right in the browser by dragging to trace the path from cell to cell — 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 a Square Maze: find the two ends, trace from both, try the open corridors, and pencil out the dead ends until the single path appears. Want a whole book of them — every one unique, plain or shaped, with a matching solution — and an online version to hand out? That’s what Puzzle Maker Pro’s Square Mazes module does.