Happy Holidays ! A Collection of Holiday Mazes

January 17, 2021

Let’s take a look at a collection of the favorite Holiday Mazes I have ever made. You can find these spread out around the site, mostly in the monthly reviews of the daily mazes, but I thought it would be nice to pull a variety of them together. The nice part about this collection is the large mix of maze types beyond the standard maze like arrow mazes, and weaving mazes. There is also a large range of difficulty levels from easy kids to difficult. You probably won’t be surprised that a lot of them are Christmas Mazes. If you want to skip all this and just go straight to the Christmas Mazes, and Halloween Mazes I’ve got you covered.

My 36 Favorite Holiday Mazes

February is about President’s Day and Valentine’s Day and I have both covered here. I can only take credit for the maze part of the Abraham Lincoln Maze since the artwork came from here. The Coin mazes of Lincoln and George Washington were also used to celebrate their birthdays.

Abraham Lincoln face maze — Abraham Lincoln Maze

download lincoln maze

US PENNY MAZE — US Penny Maze

download us penny maze

US Quarter maze — US Quarter Maze

download us quarter maze

And what better way to celebrate Valentine’s Day than with this Heart Maze. I also made an easier heart maze that is also a coloring page if you prefer black and white.

Heart Maze and coloring page — heart maze and coloring page

download heart maze

March is all about St Patrick’s Day and sometimes an Early Easter. I went with a 4 Leaf Clover Maze to celebrate it and a Leprechaun Maze that is part of my comic book style maze collection. Hopefully these can bring you some luck and maybe even a pot of gold !

Leprechaun Maze

download Leprechaun Maze

April starts with April Fool’s Day which means some bad mazes from me. You can find them on the site but none are worthy for inclusion here (they are unsolvable). But April also has Earth Day and typically has Easter also. I included 2 versions of a Rabbit Maze from my comic book style maze collection and my Animal maze section.

Easter Bunny maze — rabbit Maze

download rabbit Maze

Rabbit Maze for kids — Rabbit Maze

download Rabbit Maze

May brings Mother’s Day and Memorial Day in the US. I made a printable Mothers Day Card Maze to tell mother’s how amazing they are. And a US Flag Maze for Memorial Day.

Mother's Day card maze 5.12.19.png — Mothers Day Card Maze

download Mothers Day Card Maze

June brings Summer and Father’s Day. I liked the format of my Mothers Day card that I repeated for this Fathers Day Card Maze.

Father's Day card maze 6.16.19.png — Father’s Day Card Maze

download Father’s Day Card Maze

July in the US brings us Independence Day. I think a visit to the Lincoln Memorial would make a perfect outing before seeing fireworks, and of course you can recycle the Flag Maze above from Memorial Day.

download Lincoln Memorial Maze

October brings us cold weather and Halloween. Two of my favorite mazes for the holiday are my Jack O Lantern Maze and my collection of comic book style mazes featuring characters (I picked a Vampire to display here). Of course I have an extensive Halloween Maze section if you want more !

Vampire Maze — vampire Maze

download vampire Maze

November brings us Election Day, Veteran’s Day and the best food holiday in the world, Thanksgiving. But we start with a maze/coloring page of La Catrina for Dia de los Muertos. For Election Day I went with a Vote Pin Maze. I went with a few military vehicle mazes for Veteran’s Day (My vehicle maze section includes all types of vehicle mazes). For Thanksgiving I have a Turkey Maze, of course.

La Catrina Maze DDLM — la catrina maze

download la catrina

Election Day Pin Maze 11.5.19.png — Vote Pin Maze

download Vote Pin Maze

download tank maze

download F16 Maze

download Submarine Maze

December gives us Christmas, New Year’s, Chanukah and Festivus. I have each of them covered. Let’s start with a Menorah Maze for Chanukah. As for the airing of grievances, the traditional Festivus Pole Maze, which is thin and hard to solve unless printed so George can complain about it.

Festivus pole maze 12.23.18.png — Festivus Maze

download Festivus Maze

And now we get into a small selection of Christmas Mazes. Lots of variety in types. You can find multiple free downloadable Christmas books or an expanded section of individual mazes in the Christmas Maze Section, or in the Spanish language section si prefieres. Here is small sampling:

Christmas stocking maze — Christmas Stocking Maze

download Christmas Stocking Maze

Kids Candy Cane maze — Candy Cane Maze

download Candy Cane Maze

How about a cartoon like version of Santa Claus in the Santa Claus Maze where you need to make your way through Santa’s beard to solve it !

Easy Kids Santa Maze — Santa Maze

download Santa Maze

And the flower of the season is definitely the poinsettia. Always nice to see these decorating storefronts and homes during the holidays. This Poinsettia Maze is a bit harder than it looks !

Poinsettia maze — Poinsettia Maze

download Poinsettia Maze

How about a Santa Klaus Maze in comic book style ?

Now let’s look at some Holiday Arrow Mazes. I made a few, but here are my 3 favorite, a Christmas Tree Arrow Maze, a Christmas Stocking Arrow Maze and Santa’s Hat Arrow Maze.

Christmas Arrow Maze Tree — Christmas Tree Arrow Maze

download Christmas Tree Arrow Maze

Christmas Arrow Maze Santa's Hat — Santa’s Hat Arrow Maze

download Santa’s Hat Arrow Maze

I also experimented with Holiday Weaving Mazes. Here are my 3 favorite, the Ornament Maze, Stocking Maze and Christmas Tree Maze.

Christmas Weaving Maze Ornament — Ornament Weaving Maze

download Ornament Weaving Maze

Christmas Weaving Maze Stocking — Stocking Weaving Maze

download Stocking Weaving Maze

Christmas Tree Weaving Maze

download Christmas Tree Weaving Maze

I am always making new mazes and am sure to add to this list in the future.

Happy maze-ing !

How to Make a Racing Maze

January 7, 2021

In a series of posts I will show you how to make a maze in a wide variety of design constructions. The 41st type of maze construction is the Racing Maze. While most constructions are about the making of the specific maze, this one is more about the structure of the maze(s). Let’s define what I mean, then get into the example. At the end of the post I have added a free downloadable maze race book featuring 30 printable maze races !

Racing Maze - A Maze made specifically for racing between two people. The winner is the person that reaches the common goal first.

How to Make a Racing Maze

Before getting into the steps let’s talk about some guidelines for a good racing maze.

It is contained on one piece of paper (and preferably a large one) .
It consists of identical mazes, one on each side of the page which both end at the goal in the center of the paper. An Escape maze is not the best type for a race (though possible) since the multi-goal option is taken away by the common ending.
The maze type should be able to be solved with a writing utensil (to prove the solve has been done). So a maze like an arrow maze would not work easily. Block Move and Warp mazes can also be problematic. If you take a wrong warp an eraser will be needed.
Consider the difficulty you want for the maze. Something too difficult will lower the tension that a more speedy maze will create.

Step 1 - Draw Half of the Maze

I have crammed multiple steps into this because you can use multiple different types of maze constructions, each with its own steps. The key is the maze is drawn to fit on slightly less than half the page. It should start at the bottom of the page and end it the center of the page. You may notice the large gap in the example below….that’s it !

Step 2 - Copy and Invert the Maze

Copy the maze you have made and paste it on the top of the page inverted so it faces the opposite direction. This will create 2 identical mazes on one sheet of paper, with each one facing a person sitting across from the other. You will most likely need to adjust the original placement as everything gets centered !

Step 3 - Add final touches

In my example I tag the sides with my website and the name of the maze (or type). I do this because Racing always reminds me of race cars and how they are filled with brand logos. I think this would actually look even better with MORE logos.

Step 4 - Create the Solution (optional)

My guess is that based on the small size and multiple solvers, nobody will be needing a solution, but feel free to create one if you believe it will be needed.

So, you made a racing maze, but do you know the rules and options for the race ? I have it covered and you can find all the information in this blog post !

Free Downloadable Maze Race Book

THE MAZE RACING BOOK

30 pages, 30 Racing mazes

File Size: 365 KB

Features daily mazes from January 2021. Each racing maze is meant to be solved competitively by 2 people starting at the same time. These are mostly easy mazes with a few weaving mazes at the end a bit harder. To learn about race rules To learn about maze racing rules check out this post.

download the book

Step by step instructions on How to Draw over 40 different Digital Mazes.

Step by step instructions on How to Draw over a dozen different Digital Labyrinths.

My 2020 Year in Review

December 31, 2020

I wanted to write a year end review for the website to reflect on what I accomplished for the year. Yes, I made a lot of mazes, but I did more than that, expanding what I did and how I did it. This post might just be for me, but I am happy (smiley face maze upcoming below) to take you along on the journey. Enjoy.

Daily Mazes posted:

366 in 2020 vs. 365 in 2019

Well the number is somewhere near this. Some days I did post more than one to commemorate something happening in the news or to celebrate a holiday. Either way for the last 2 years I have posted a new maze each and every day. And this year, thanks to the leap year we got an extra one ! Yea us !

My Favorite Mazes from the year:

#6 Smiley Face Weaving Maze - From my Weaving Maze book available on Amazon. Free weaving mazes.

#5 “Kitchen Sink” Arrow Maze - From my Arrow Maze book available on Amazon. Free Arrow Mazes.

#4 Jet Fighter Maze - Find the vehicle mazes on the site

#3 US Penny Maze

#2 Snowman Weaving Maze - Part of the Holiday Maze collection.

#1 Playhouse Square Sign, Cleveland, Ohio

Blog Posts:

102 vs. 26

I took a break in the Summer from posting blog content to work on my How To Make a Maze content. When I completed them I was able to post 40 different maze construction step by step instructions and an overview post. They were posted starting daily October 1. That really added significantly to my content. I followed those up with how to draw a labyrinth instructions. Overall, a great year for my blogging !

Name Mazes Made

247 vs. 1,499

Well, they can’t all be winners ! I spent a huge amount of time in 2019 researching the most popular names in the US, then the world and making mazes from them. You can read about how I chose the names HERE. I had a lot of fun, but felt I needed to branch out into other projects. I figured out I had over 70% of all Americans covered, and most likely similar high percentages of Western names. So 2020 meant only doing requests when they were submitted, until I wrote the draft of this and started back up !

Books posted online:

8 vs. 19

In 2020 my monthly daily maze themes allowed me to create monthly themed books from their content. It allowed me to practice making book covers, collating mazes, pagination, creating solution pages, converting images to different file types, and even more. Now in 2019 I made many books to create some interesting content for the site. But, making a book each month is great practice for…..

Books Published on Amazon:

3 (13 versions) vs. 0

I published my first 3 books on Amazon. And with a bit of help I translated 2 of them into 3 additional languages. Then I realized that Arrow Maze Books do not need to be printed (no pencil needed!) , but then I had to figure out how to correctly make what is essentially a picture book for Kindle. Well it took awhile, but I now understand how to do it, giving me 4 more Kindle versions of my Arrow Maze Book. So 3 books, 13 versions ! I have to say, all the practice throughout the year definitely help make these books better !!!

Website Traffic growth:

+1000%+

The website traffic grew year over year by more than 1000% and it has the potential to grow by the same in the future as I learn more about image SEO. There is plenty of content on how to improve your written SEO with key words, and great content etc. But not much at all on how to improve your Image SEO. This is basically an image website - that is how people stumble upon it. Then if I do find it, how does it relate to my website builder template (the answer is not well). So I am running blind a bit here, but optimistic for the future.

Different countries visiting the site:

99 vs. 20

Without getting in the weeds on the analytics of the site, I believe the maze images are multilingual friendly. I also published books into 4 languages on worldwide Amazon sites. I have multiple sections of the site and blog posts that are focused on other languages than English. Well, depending on where you look the number of countries in the world is around 195, so I hit half of them in 2020 ! Definitely have a goal to raise this number in 2021 ! (as I keep hoping for a new country to hit 100 these last days of December…nope…….again…nope)

Requests for Maze use:

YouTube Videos Created and watched:

YouTube Subscribers:

RSS Subscribers to the blog:

Books Sold on Amazon:

Up higher by infinity

I had multiple requests this year to use my mazes in classrooms, in a newspaper, and for use in creating some new digital mazes. I like to collaborate and was excited for each of these opportunities ! I also did a few basic videos for some of the blog posts to better explain how to make mazes/labyrinths. They are private on YouTube, but I still managed to get my first subscriber ! And finally I have a group of people who subscribe to this blog and might be reading this right now ! Hi ! All these are small numbers, but they were 0 last year, so each has grown.

So that is my year in review. I learned a lot. I hope to continue growing the site, making more books, and of course posting at least one new maze each and every day !

And because this is the internet, we can travel into the future and see what happens:

MY 2021 YEAR IN REVIEW

MY 2022 YEAR IN REVIEW

How to Race Mazes - Rules, and ideas for Maze competitions

December 29, 2020

Mazes are usually a solitary pursuit. But if you are a competitive person I have some ideas for you that will make your maze solving competitive - Maze Races ! Simply put, a maze race is a race between multiple people to see who can solve the maze the fastest. Let’s look at how a maze race works.

HOW TO HAVE A MAZE RACE

Select a maze - Ideally this will be an easy to medium difficulty maze. A difficult maze will take too long to complete and tension and speed will wane as the time passes. You want the maze used to be able to be solved quickly to add some drama to the competition. I also suggest a black and white maze (or grey). I have found that a maze printed in color being solved with a pencil can be problematic. Really it depends on your printer, but if the color has a glossy finish it’s a problem.
Print the maze - Although it is possible to race mazes digitally in theory, the best way to race is with printed mazes. Many online mazes are not able to be solved ‘on screen’ so paper solves this issue. Print as many mazes as there are racers.
Follow these 6 maze race rules - Ideally you want steps 1 and 2 above to be done by a neutral party. This prevents a solver from giving the maze a glance and pre solving a portion of it beforehand.
1. Place the printed maze face down
2. Solvers flip the mazes over when start is called
3. Solve the mazes with a writing utensil
4. Mazes must be solved from start to finish (no backwards solving is permitted) This is an optional rule and with large groups may need to be suspended since each solve may not be able to be monitored.
5. Once the maze is completed sit down your writing instrument and say “solved”
6. A neutral party checks the answer to confirm the winner.

How to Have a Maze Team Waterfall Race

A maze waterfall race is simply a race between two teams with an equal number of people. You use the same 6 rules as above except for rule #2. Instead of solvers flip the mazes over when start is called this becomes - the first solver flips over their maze when start is called. When they are done and say solved, only then can the next person on the team flip over and start their maze. This means only 1 person at a time is solving a maze on a team. If you want to make sure this is adhered to, give each team ONE writing utensil which must be passed from player to player as a maze is completed. Additional optional rule - no helping. You should use a different maze per slot on each team, because if you use the same maze for all competitors, once one solver on a team solves the maze, the temptation to see their work for clues is strong.

Some additional ideas to make the races even more competitive:

Solve 3 different mazes - For a bigger challenge place 3 different mazes in front of the solvers (they may solve them in any order they choose). The winner is the first to complete all 3 mazes correctly. This is better for large groups that are maze racing. A large group racing only 1 maze will most likely have a very close finish.
Solve 3 different maze types - Same as above but using 3 different types of maze constructions. I suggest one standard maze, a puzzle maze and an arrow maze. Each construction is solved in slightly different ways and presents a different challenge for the solvers.

Introducing : My Newly Designed 2 person Maze race competition mazes

I think all of the options work well above, but if that is still not quite what you are looking for I have designed mazes specifically for 2 person Maze Races ! So far we have the prototype example below, but I hope to add new versions and a dedicated section of the website once I have made enough ! How does the 2 person race work ? Well I have designed a maze on half the page ending in the center. I then copy that exact same maze on the top of the page inverted also ending in the center. This makes a page where 2 people sitting across from one another can race the same maze on the same piece of paper at one time ! Both are trying to reach the same center goal from different directions. I have made these to be printed on letter size paper, but the larger the paper they are printed on the better.

Some tips: 1. Consider taping this down to a table. In the rush and excitement of solving the maze can easily be moved…people get upset. 2. If this IS done, cover the maze by putting another piece of paper over the maze before the start so neither person can “pre-solve”. 3. Decide beforehand if the non writing hand can be on the table. Some players tend to want to block what they are doing from the other player. I suggest NO blocking the other persons site.

2 person Racing Maze - rectangle — 2 person Racing Maze

Single person Maze races

My attempt to make a maze race game for 1 person was the golf game mazes. How do these mazes work ? Well, like the game of golf your goal is to get the lowest score possible. The faster you solve a maze, the lower your score is. Each maze has a time and score printed on the page. In the example below, solving the maze in 30 seconds or under gets you a score of 3, etc.

timed golf hole themed maze — golf game maze hole#2

This particular golf game as you can see sets scores with a range of times. So someone solving in 33 seconds and another in 42 seconds would tie. However, this can of course be adjusted so the raw time determines the winner. The scorecard was set-up specifically for one person challenges. Scoring well on the example above is often a case of luck in some of your early path choices. This is because the wrong pathways purposely do not dead end for a longer time than normal. Try for yourself and you should notice that wrong turns are not as apparent in the maze quickly.

Additional Maze Competition Ideas

Challenge yourself with any maze just by timing yourself to see how quickly you can solve it. Unfortunately, once you try to solve a maze, you’ll need to set it aside before trying to beat your score as the correct solution will come too easily.
Add some puzzles, math or word games into the race. I have a word puzzle book with 151 different word puzzles. While I mention missing maze types together for a competition, there is no reason you can’t mix in some real schoolwork. This gives a competition the added difficulty of using both speed, knowledge and accuracy to determine a winner.

Here is an example of what a 1 page sheet might look like for kids. Although any time you are making one for children it takes skill to line up the different subjects age appropriateness correctly. But if you are a teacher this should be much easier for you !