Picture Maze Generator
A picture maze is a maze whose outer edge is a drawing rather than a rectangle. The shape is what a child sees first — a fish, a star, a train — and the maze inside it has to work exactly as any maze does: one way in, one way out, one route between them, and no corner of the shape walled off from the rest. That combination is easy to get almost right and easy to get wrong, so every sheet here is checked as a maze after it is cut to shape, not before.
What this generator does
Lays a drawing's silhouette over a grid, keeps the squares inside it, digs passages between them until every square is reached, and cuts a way in and a way out on the rim.
How to use this tool
- Choose how many squares across the grid should be, and a picture, or let it choose one.
- Pick how detailed the drawing should be; a plainer shape gives a broader, easier maze.
- Print or copy the sheet. The way in is marked S and the way out E, both on the edge of the shape.
- Trace a route from S to E without crossing a wall.
- Show the way through to check it.
Understanding the controls
- Grid
- Fifteen to forty-one squares across. A small grid gives a bold shape and a short maze; a large one gives a longer route and a finer picture.
- Picture
- Which drawing the maze is cut to. The list changes with the grid, because a shape whose parts a coarse grid pulls apart is not offered at that size at all.
- Drawing detail
- How elaborate the drawing is before it is cut into squares. This changes the shape itself, not the thickness of the line.
- Seed (optional)
- Type anything to rebuild the same maze later, which is how you reprint a sheet you have lost. A seed repeats a maze; it is not a password and gives no cryptographic strength.
Common use cases
- A maze that looks like something, for a younger solver who wants a picture
- A printable activity page for a party, a classroom or a wet afternoon
- A puzzle that is also a colouring outline once it has been solved
- A change from square mazes for anyone who has done a lot of those
- Reprinting the identical maze later from its seed
How this generator works
A maze is not just a grid with walls in it. What makes one a maze is that its passages join every square into a single tree: everywhere reachable from everywhere, and exactly one passage fewer than there are squares. Both halves matter, because a sheet with too few passages can still be connected if it has a loop somewhere else, and a sheet with the right number can be a ring with an island beside it. Cutting a grid to the shape of a drawing is exactly what tends to break one half or the other, by leaving a whisker joined to nothing or a hole with a passage running round it. So the silhouette is settled first — the squares are split into connected groups and only the largest is kept, and a drawing that loses too much of itself that way is not offered at that size. Then the passages are dug by walking at random and backing up when stuck, which enters every square exactly once. The way in and the way out are the two squares on the rim of the shape that are furthest apart through the passages, so the route is as long as the shape allows and both ends open onto the outside. Every finished sheet is then checked against the tree property from scratch.
Randomness and fairness
The picture, the small variations in how it is drawn and the passages themselves come from your browser's cryptographic random source. Giving a seed replaces it with a repeatable one so the same maze can be printed again; the seed is there for reproducibility, not cryptographic strength.
For how randomness is produced across the whole site, see how Generate Random works.
Limitations and good to know
- Four of the drawings are not offered as mazes at all, because a grid separates their parts — a sail from its hull, ears from a head — and a maze in two pieces is not a maze.
- A shape's thinnest parts are lost at a coarse grid, so a smaller sheet gives a plainer picture as well as a shorter maze.
- Difficulty is not graded beyond the size of the grid: a longer route is not always a harder one.
- The route is the longest one the shape allows, which is not the same as the most confusing.
Privacy and your data
The drawing, the maze and its solution are all made in your browser. Nothing you type as a seed, and no maze made from it, leaves the device.
Related generators
- Maze GeneratorPrint a maze with exactly one route from start to finish — three textures from long corridors to short dead ends, any size up to 40 by 40.
- Connect the Dots GeneratorPrintable join-the-dots pictures with the dots numbered in order, from ten dots to ninety, with the finished picture on a second page.
- Colour by Number GeneratorPrintable colour-by-number pictures where every area has a number, the key lists exactly the colours used, and two areas that touch never ask for the same one.
- Shape Tracing Worksheet GeneratorRows of lines, curves, loops and shapes to trace, then to copy, then to draw from an empty row — with the shape itself getting busier as the level goes up.
- Pearl Loop Puzzle GeneratorPrints a pearl loop puzzle — one closed circuit obeying every white and black pearl it passes through — with exactly one answer.