A maze is a puzzle of paths with forks and dead ends, and the job is to find the way from the start to the goal.

Why make your own maze?

Most maze games hand you a maze. This one hands you the hedges. You draw on a grid from 6×6 up to 20×20, and the game tells you as you go if there is a way through and how many steps the shortest way takes.

Then tap Share for a link with the whole maze packed inside it. Your friend opens it and earns stars for getting close to your shortest way. There are no accounts, and nothing is kept on a server.

To play first, try the 8 garden mazes. The first is a 6×6 patch a small child can finish in seconds. The last is the 20×20 Great Hedge, with a shortest way of 154 steps.

Mazes and labyrinths: a short history

The most famous maze story is a Greek myth. The craftsman Daedalus built a labyrinth for King Minos of Crete to hold the Minotaur, a creature that was part bull. A hero beat the monster and found his way out by following a thread.

Nobody knows if a real labyrinth ever stood on Crete, and nothing like it has turned up in the digs at Knossos. The archaeologist Arthur Evans thought the palace there, with its many rooms, gave rise to the story, but not everyone agrees. Knossos was certainly proud of the story: coins made there more than 2,000 years ago show a labyrinth.

That coin labyrinth has one winding path to the middle, with no choices on the way. In everyday English, maze and labyrinth mean much the same thing, but many people who study them use labyrinth for a single path like that, and maze for a puzzle with forks and dead ends. This game makes the second kind.

Hedge mazes came much later. The oldest one still growing in Britain is at Hampton Court Palace in England. The royal gardeners George London and Henry Wise planted it for King William III around 1690 (sources give dates between 1689 and 1695). It was first planted with hornbeam, later with yew, and has about half a mile of paths.

How to play

1. Pick a size with − and +. Tap 🎲 Random for a ready-made maze, or 🧹 Clear for an empty garden.
2. Tap or drag on the grass to plant hedges. Start on a hedge to clear them instead.
3. Drag the critter and the treat into place, and pick which ones to use.
4. Watch the Shortest box. If it says None, open a gap somewhere.
5. Tap ▶ Try it to play your own maze, then 📤 Share to send the link.
6. To play, drag the critter along the paths, swipe to run to the next turning, or use the arrow keys.

Tips for a harder maze

• Make dead ends long. A dead end you can see the bottom of fools nobody.
• Put forks near the start. Early choices are where players go wrong.
• Tap Show the shortest way. If it runs straight across, plant a hedge in its way.
• When you solve a maze, look at it from the treat end first. Working backwards often shows the right fork.

Questions

Is it safe for kids to share maze links?

A link holds only the maze: its size, the hedges, the start, the treat, and which critter and treat you picked. There is nowhere to type names or messages, and nothing is saved on our server. If a link gets cut short or changed, the game spots it and says so instead of showing a broken maze.

How are the stars worked out?

The game searches outwards from the start one step at a time until it reaches the treat, which finds the shortest way. Match it for 3 stars. Up to half as many steps again, or 1 hint, gets 2 stars. Any finish gets 1. Steps into a dead end and back out count too.

How does a whole maze fit in a link?

Each square is hedge or grass, so it needs just one bit. A 20×20 maze has 400 squares, which fit in 50 bytes. Add the size, the start, the treat and a check number, and the code at the end of the link is under 80 characters.