Hidden picture mazes
This is the opposite of a shaped maze. The grid is a plain rectangle and nothing gives the secret away, but the one route from start to finish traces a picture, so the answer page is the reveal. Pick a figure, pick a size, and print both pages.
Solve it and the line you drew is the figure.
Ages 5–7
This one reads hard rather than easy.
A true maze: one way through, and wrong turns stop dead.
The route has to pass through every one.
How the passages wind. Each one has its own texture to solve.
Customise colours
Bold and chunky are the large-print settings.
A faint grid behind the walls, for the youngest solvers.
Clean drops the title band and footer, leaving the maze.
Two pages: the maze and its answer. The answer is worked out from the maze itself rather than drawn alongside it, so it can never be wrong. Same engine as our KDP studio.
Want the whole book?
This makes one maze. Sign up to turn these settings into a full maze book for Amazon KDP: hundreds of graded mazes at any trim, as print-ready PDFs. We carry your shape, size and every other setting into the studio.
Build the full bookFree to build · pay once to export
Preview
The maze and its answer, as they print.
Why the answer can only be the picture
A perfect maze is a spanning tree, which is a formal way of saying there is exactly one route between any two squares in it. So the generator lays the figure down first as a single unbroken corridor, then grows the rest of the maze around it without ever joining two corridors that already connect. Nothing closes a loop, which means nothing creates a second route.
The answer is then recomputed from the carved walls rather than copied from the figure, so the printed solution cannot disagree with the printed maze. If the drawing appears, the maze was carved correctly.
What to use it for
It is the most giftable maze format there is. A heart for a card, a Christmas tree for an advent page, a cat for a child who likes cats. The reveal only works once per figure, so a book wants a run of them rather than the same drawing forty times.
Bigger is better here. The figure scales with the size setting, and a small grid leaves the drawing cramped against the walls, so pick at least the medium setting if you are printing it at full page size.
four ways out of every junction
Rectangular
A grid of squares with walls between them, an arrow going in at one corner and an arrow coming out at another.
- How it solves
- Each junction offers at most three ways on from the one you arrived by, so the choices stay countable and a wrong turn is quick to spot. It is the shape everyone pictures, and the one to start a child on.
- Good for
- Everyone. The default, and the easiest to read at any size.
The other shapes
- six ways out of every cellHexagonalA honeycomb of six-sided cells. The corridors run in six directions rather than four, so the paths slant as well as turn.
- three ways out of every cellTriangularTriangles pointing up and down in alternating rows, so the corridors run diagonally across the page.
- four ways out, but two of them curveCircularConcentric rings cut into wedges, with a gap in the outer rim to enter by and a small circle at the middle to reach.
- four ways out, inside an outlinePicture shapeA square-grid maze carved to fill a silhouette: a heart, a star, a crescent moon, a cat, a tree.
Making a whole maze book?
This page makes one maze. To publish a book on Amazon KDP, the KDP maze maker generates hundreds of graded mazes in one shape, at any trim, as a print-ready 300 DPI interior and a matching solutions PDF. Generate once, export unlimited sizes.
More printable mazes
Questions
- Can the solver see the picture before they solve it?
- No. The figure is carved as ordinary corridors and the rest of the maze is grown around it, so on the puzzle page it looks like any other maze. The drawing only appears when the route is traced.
- Does every hidden picture maze have one answer?
- Yes, and that is what makes the drawing possible. The maze is built as a spanning tree so there is exactly one route between the entrance and the exit, and that route is the figure.
- Are these hidden picture mazes free to print?
- Yes. Generate the maze above and print it with its answer, at no cost and with no sign-up. It is free for classroom, home and personal use.
- Is there exactly one way through?
- Yes. The maze is carved as a spanning tree, which means every square is reachable and exactly one route joins any two of them. The answer page draws that route, found by searching the maze itself rather than drawn alongside it.
- Can I make a maze book to sell on KDP?
- Yes. The free tool makes one maze. Publisher Studio generates hundreds of graded mazes in one shape, with an optional how-to-solve page, at any KDP trim, as a print-ready 300 DPI interior and a matching solutions PDF.