Your Reader Circles 1, Hunts for 2, and Stops Cold
The arrow beside 1 does not point at the next square. It points three cells away, clear across the row, and the number that belongs there could be anywhere along that line. That double-take, the moment a solver realizes an arrow is a line of sight and not a nudge to the next cell, is the whole reason Arrow Maze belongs in your next book.
Arrow Maze, known in its home country as Pijlendoolhof, is a Dutch logic puzzle that is still uncommon on English-language shelves. Every cell of a square grid carries an arrow. The solver’s job is to place the numbers 1 through N so that each number’s arrow points, somewhere along its full line, at the very next number. Every board Puzzle Maker Pro generates is checked by a sound logic solver before it ships, so every puzzle has exactly one solution and is always solvable without guessing. Try the free demo, generate a board, and watch how fast that “wait, it points where?” moment lands.
A Puzzle Your Competitors Are Not Printing
Most logic sections on a bookshelf cycle through the same three or four types, and the ones with any bite lean on numbers you have seen a hundred times. Arrow Maze reads differently from the first glance: a grid of arrows instead of a grid of blanks, and a rule that rewards a solver for looking further, not for filling faster. Because the mechanic is unusual and the puzzle itself is still rare outside its home market, it gives a mixed logic book real variety instead of one more sudoku-shaped page, and it gives a standalone title a genuine reason to exist.
Want it brutal? Turn on all eight directions, diagonals included, and push the grid to 8×8. Want it gentle? Lock the arrows to up-down-left-right and shrink the board to a friendly 3×3. Same rule, either mood, and an Easy 4-direction 3×3 looks and solves nothing like an Expert 8-direction 8×8. Time Saver never repeats a layout across a run, either, so a graduated book built from one setup reads as dozens of distinct boards, not one template stamped out over and over.
See the Output
Look at the puzzle before you take any of this on faith. Every generated board ships with a matching, fully numbered solution image, so your answer-key page is never an afterthought.
That highlighted line is the whole rule in one picture: the next number can land on any of the marked cells, near or far, which is exactly the moment that makes a new solver sit up.
Prefer to judge it yourself? Every Puzzle Maker Pro module includes a free demo, so you can generate real Arrow Maze puzzles and see the output quality before you spend anything.
Why Create It with Puzzle Maker Pro?
A puzzle this reliant on one precise rule needs a generator that never gets the rule wrong. Every board you get is built around a genuine logic solver, not a random arrow placement checked after the fact, and that is the difference between shipping a book you trust and shipping one you have to hand-check yourself, cell by cell, before you dare put your name on it.
Key Creation Workflows
Dial the Difficulty to Your Audience
A beginner and a puzzle-book regular need two different puzzles, not one puzzle with a label slapped on. Give the beginner a 3×3 board with orthogonal arrows and a gentle first taste of the rule lands in under a minute. Give the regular an 8×8 board with all eight directions and Expert-level clue density, and you have a genuine sit-down challenge. You get there by dialing two independent controls, grid size from 3×3 to 8×8 and Easy through Expert, plus the 8- or 4-direction toggle, not by choosing between “easy” and “hard” in the abstract.
Give the Arrows Your Own Look (Creative)
The built-in arrow glyph works out of the box on every edition, but Creative Edition lets you replace it. Supply a single arrow image and Puzzle Maker Pro rotates it automatically into all eight directions, or supply a separate image for each direction and control every glyph by hand. Recolor the built-in arrow to match your book’s palette in a click. A themed Arrow Maze book, holiday icons, a mascot, your own brand colors, is a styling choice away, not a redesign.
Build a Graduated Book in One Click (Productivity)
Most puzzle books need a difficulty curve: a few gentle boards up front, then a steady climb to something genuinely tough at the back. Building that curve by hand means configuring, generating, and re-checking every single row. Add Progression does it in one step: pick a grid-size range, a difficulty range, and a directions choice (fixed at 4, fixed at 8, or ramping from 4 up to 8 as the book progresses), set how many steps you want, and Time Saver builds the whole graduated set for you. What used to be an afternoon of manual row-by-row setup is now one dialog box.
From One Puzzle to a Whole Book
You already built the one puzzle you love. Now you want fifty of them, at a difficulty curve, without doing the work fifty times. Time Saver batches unique puzzles from that same saved setup, and Puzzle Book Studio assembles them, alongside your other Puzzle Maker Pro puzzle types, into a finished book or a themed mixed collection. Set the look, size, and difficulty once, then let the workflow produce the pages while you focus on the parts only you can do.
Output Formats and Publishing Options
Your reader never thinks about file formats, only a finished book. Every edition, Lite included, hands you print-ready PNG, JPG, SVG, and PDF for puzzle and solution, plus Instant Puzzle Books, a complete book PDF built straight from the settings you already dialed in. Step up to Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive and Arrow Maze gains four more channels: JSON puzzle data, HTML output for web play, Interactive PDF with fillable number fields, and Puzzle Slides for a live, presentable version. Only the Interactive add-on unlocks those four; Creative and Productivity on their own stay print and PDF.
Play It on the Web (Creative Interactive / Productivity Interactive)
An Arrow Maze puzzle does not have to stay on the page. Publish a set with Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive and visitors solve it right on your own site: press a number, its arrow’s full line lights up so the legal cells are obvious, then drag to the cell you want and let go to place it. Change your mind? Tap any placed number and it, along with everything placed after it, clears instantly, no undo button required.
Hit export and Puzzle Maker Pro hands you two ways in: HTML you can host anywhere, or a ready-made ZIP for the free BookPublisherTools WordPress plugin. Once it is live, you choose how visitors meet it: a simple dropdown list of puzzles to pick from, or a leveled game where levels unlock in order, progress and stars save right in the visitor’s browser, and finishing the set shows your own message and your own button. A few free Arrow Maze puzzles on your site is not just a curiosity, it is a taster that turns a casual visitor into a reader who clicks through for the full book.
Play a live Arrow Maze set here
Teach It Live with Puzzle Slides (Creative Interactive / Productivity Interactive)
The same rule that makes Arrow Maze click on paper makes it a strong live-teaching moment. Puzzle Slides turns a set into an interactive PowerPoint: the puzzle grid appears with fillable number boxes over every blank cell, exactly like the Interactive PDF, so you type numbers straight into the deck while a class, a call, or a stream watches. Project it in a classroom and solve the ray rule together, share it on a video call for a remote lesson, or run it as an interactive segment in a stream or activity program, all in a standard PowerPoint viewer with nothing extra to install.
Not sure which edition fits yet? Generate a few boards on the free demo first, no card, no commitment, then use the table below to see exactly where each one lands.
Which Edition Should You Choose?
Every edition creates and exports real Arrow Maze puzzles with guaranteed unique solutions. Lite gets you generating immediately; Creative and Productivity set your scale and your styling control; add Interactive to either one to make the same puzzles playable, not just printable.
| What you want to do | Lite | Creative | Creative Interactive | Productivity | Productivity Interactive |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Create Arrow Maze puzzles with a guaranteed unique solution | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Grid sizes 3×3 to 8×8, four difficulty levels, 4- or 8-direction arrows | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Export PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF + Instant Puzzle Books | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Custom arrow images and arrow color | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Time Saver batch creation and Add Progression | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Puzzle Book Studio, multiple collections in one book | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| JSON, HTML web play, Interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides | No | No | Yes | No | Yes |
Step up to Creative Interactive and a single Arrow Maze set becomes a playable web puzzle and a Puzzle Slides deck, no batch tools required. Step up to Productivity Interactive and the full graduated books you are already building with Time Saver and Add Progression run online and present live too. Either way, the same guaranteed-solvable board turns into a puzzle a visitor solves on your site, or a lesson you teach in front of a room.
At checkout: pick the edition that fits, Lite, Creative, Creative Interactive, Productivity, or Productivity Interactive. Time Saver and Add Progression come from the Productivity tier itself, so Creative Interactive plays a single puzzle online without adding batch creation, and Productivity Interactive adds online play on top of the Productivity tier you already have.
Who This Is For
Puzzle book publishers and POD sellers. Add a puzzle type your competitors are not printing, then use Add Progression to turn one setup into a fully graduated book in a single dialog instead of an afternoon of row-by-row configuration.
Existing Puzzle Maker Pro customers. Add a new logic type to the workflow you already know, style it with your usual settings, and batch it with Time Saver. One thing works a little differently here: Arrow Maze’s four interactive lanes come from Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive, not automatically from Productivity the way some other modules bundle them. See the edition table above if online play matters to you.
Educators and tutors. Start with a 3×3, 4-direction board as a five-minute intro to the ray rule, then raise size and direction count as students get faster. An answer key ships with every board, so self-checking or peer-grading takes no extra work, and the puzzle is numbers-only, no words or reading level to navigate around, which makes it a natural fit for ESL classrooms and younger solvers alike. On lesson day, open the same set in Puzzle Slides (Creative Interactive or Productivity Interactive): project it, type numbers into the grid live as the class calls out the next move, and watch the ray rule click for the whole room, no printing, no separate app.
Try It Before You Buy
You do not have to take any of this on faith. Every Puzzle Maker Pro module includes a free demo, so you can generate real Arrow Maze puzzles yourself, at any size and difficulty, and judge the output before you choose an edition.
Licensing and Commercial Use
Every edition, Lite included, comes with a commercial license covering personal use and selling to the people who solve them: books, worksheets, and printables on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own storefront. Productivity adds a business license on top: supply or sell your generated Arrow Maze puzzles to other publishers and sellers, not only to end readers.
The puzzles you make are yours to keep and sell from day one, on Lite or any paid edition above it. Delivery is immediate: your download and license appear in your member area the moment your order completes.
Product Details
| Product | Puzzle Maker Pro – Arrow Maze |
| Editions | Lite, Creative, Creative Interactive, Productivity, Productivity Interactive |
| Platform | Windows desktop |
| Internet required | No (creation is offline; web publishing optional) |
| Grid sizes | 3×3 to 8×8, square |
| Difficulty | Easy, Medium, Hard, Expert |
| Arrow directions | 8-direction (classic) or 4-direction (orthogonal, easier) |
| Custom arrow art | Single rotated image or per-direction images, plus arrow color (Creative+) |
| Outputs | PNG, JPG, SVG, PDF (puzzle + solution); JSON, HTML web play, Interactive PDF, Puzzle Slides (Creative Interactive / Productivity Interactive) |
| Solution pages | Yes, generated with every puzzle |
| Solvability | Every puzzle is solved by a logic-only deduction solver before it ships; exactly one solution, no guessing required |
| Time Saver / Add Progression | Productivity tier (batch creation plus a one-click grid/direction/difficulty ramp) |
| Commercial license | Personal use plus selling to readers and end customers, KDP/Etsy/Teachers Pay Teachers/your own site (Lite and Creative); adds selling to other publishers and sellers (Productivity) |
| Free demo | Yes |
| Delivery | Immediate, in your member area |
Questions Before You Buy
Is there a free demo?
Yes. Every Puzzle Maker Pro module includes a free demo, so you can generate Arrow Maze puzzles and see the output before buying.
What is an Arrow Maze puzzle?
A grid where every cell carries an arrow. You place the numbers 1 through N so that each number’s arrow points, somewhere along its full line of sight, at the next number. The next number is not always the adjacent cell, it can be several cells away along that line, which is the rule that makes the puzzle click.
Are the puzzles really solvable without guessing?
Yes. Every puzzle is checked by a logic-only deduction solver before it is kept, so every board has exactly one solution and is provably solvable by chaining deductions, never by trial and error.
What sizes and difficulties are available?
Grids from 3×3 up to 8×8, across four difficulty levels, Easy through Expert, with a toggle between 8-direction (classic) and 4-direction (easier) arrows. Combine size, difficulty, and direction count for a wide spread from a gentle warm-up to an expert challenge.
Can I use my own arrow art?
Yes, with the Creative edition or above. Supply one image and Puzzle Maker Pro rotates it into all 8 directions automatically, or supply a separate image for each direction, and recolor the built-in glyph in one click.
Which edition do I need to batch-create a whole book?
The Productivity edition. Time Saver generates large sets from one saved setup, and Add Progression builds a graduated grid-size, direction, and difficulty ramp across the whole set in a single step.
Do I need Productivity to get online play, JSON, or Puzzle Slides?
No. Creative Interactive and Productivity Interactive are separate named editions available on either the Creative or Productivity ladder rung, so you can get web play, Interactive PDF, and Puzzle Slides on a single puzzle without moving up to the batch tier (Creative Interactive), or add it once you are already producing full books (Productivity Interactive). Time Saver itself still requires the Productivity tier either way.
Can I use the puzzles in books I sell?
Yes, from Lite Edition up. Lite and Creative both cover personal use and selling finished puzzles to readers and end customers, books, worksheets, and printables on KDP, Etsy, Teachers Pay Teachers, or your own site. Productivity adds the right to sell to other publishers and sellers.
How do I get the software after I buy?
Immediately. Your download and license appear in your member area the moment your order completes.
Add the Puzzle Your Catalog Is Missing
Arrow Maze gives you a genuinely uncommon logic puzzle, a guaranteed unique solution on every board, and a one-click path from a single setup to a fully graduated book. Try the free demo, generate a few boards, and watch how fast that “wait, it points where?” moment lands with your own readers.
