Pumpkin Maze
Created for free at puzzleandprint.com
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Pumpkin Maze, Solution
Created for free at puzzleandprint.com
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Four mazes, each a different size. Every one is a two-page PDF, the maze, then the solution on its own page.
Pumpkin maze, large print16 × 16 grid · EasyDownload PDF ↓
Pumpkin maze, everyday20 × 20 grid · MediumDownload PDF ↓
Pumpkin maze, longer24 × 24 grid · MediumDownload PDF ↓
Pumpkin maze, challenge28 × 28 grid · HardDownload PDF ↓Every sheet here is free to print as often as you like. If one saved you time, the tip jar is on Ko-fi.
On the four sheets here a pumpkin keeps 78 to 79 percent of its grid, more than the heart, egg, star, diamond, Christmas tree or shamrock keep of theirs, and about level with the circle. Most of that room goes into side branches rather than the route: the Longer sheet has 454 squares inside the outline, and its route uses 112 of them. Treat the sizes here as real rather than generous.
It is the Halloween sheet for a room that is not all doing Halloween. Nothing here is a ghost, a skeleton or a spider, so it goes out to a whole class without anyone having to decide whose family marks the day, and it stays welcome from the end of September through to the end of November rather than for one week in October.
The stem is deliberately fat, which is a puzzle decision rather than a drawing one. A slender stem looks better and samples down to a single column of squares, and a single-column corridor is a dead end a child cannot turn around in. A stem at least two squares wide leaves room for a corridor to turn back on itself, and that is the version that prints.
Each PDF is two pages, the maze and then its answer, and every maze has exactly one route with no loops. The maker on this page carves a pumpkin from sixteen squares, the Large print size, up to thirty; any smaller and the stem shrinks to a bump.
Why the challenge pumpkin maze has the shortest route of the four
The Challenge pumpkin's route is only 74 squares long, the shortest of the four pumpkin sheets, because it runs down the left side and along the lower part of the pumpkin from the way in to the way out. The pumpkin holds 614 squares, so the route uses about one in eight, and it passes only four forks. Three of those lead into small pockets of two to six squares. The fourth, seven squares before the way out, opens onto a branch of 121 squares in the lower part of the pumpkin, with a path of 75 squares into it.
Everything above the route, the whole upper body of the pumpkin and its stem, 408 squares in all, connects to the rest of the maze only through the last square of the route, the one with the way out in its wall. A child solving from the way in can only get up there by walking past the exit. To make the Challenge pumpkin live up to its name, have a confident solver start at the way out and work back to the way in: on the very first square they meet a choice between the route and a branch of 408 squares, with paths in it more than 200 squares long.
Which pumpkin maze packs the most route into wide corridors
The Large print pumpkin packs in the most: its route runs 105 squares through corridors about 11 mm wide, the longest route on any Large print sheet across the maze pages. It passes 12 forks, and no wrong turn on it runs more than 22 squares. The Everyday and Longer pumpkins are barely longer, at 109 and 112 squares, but their corridors narrow to about 9 mm and 7.6 mm. So for a Halloween class set covering a range of ages, the Large print sheet gives younger children nearly as long a journey as the older ones get, with more room for the pencil.
The two middle sheets each keep one long wrong turn. On the Everyday pumpkin it opens on the square before the last, right beside the way out, where a turn leads 98 squares into the pumpkin before it dead-ends; a child who has already spotted the gap in the wall may walk straight past it. On the Longer pumpkin it comes just past halfway, 60 squares into a 112-square route and on the pumpkin’s bottom row, where a branch of 99 squares climbs back up through the lower left of the pumpkin. Those are the two places to look first when a child says they are stuck and the route has stopped making sense.
Common questions
Is this a Halloween sheet or a fall one?
It works as both, because nothing printed on the sheets mentions Halloween: each page is headed with a plain title such as Pumpkin Maze: Everyday, and the outline is a body and stem with no face cut into it, so the same PDF suits a fall display or a harvest week as well as the last day of October.
Why does this take longer than the star maze?
Mostly because the pumpkin keeps far more of its grid: 78 to 79 percent on these sheets, against 30 to 32 percent for the star. Size for size the pumpkin route is longer on three sheets out of four, 105, 109 and 112 squares against the star’s 50, 44 and 50. The Challenge is the exception: the pumpkin’s 74-square route falls short of the star’s 78, though its longest wrong turn runs 75 squares against the star’s 48.
Does the route go through the pumpkin's stem?
No, the route stays out of the stem on all four sheets, so a child who climbs into it has gone the wrong way. The Large print sheet comes closest: its route passes through the row just below the stem, and the turn there leads into a 35-square branch that takes in the stem. On the Challenge, whose stem is four squares wide and three rows tall, the route never rises above the tenth of its 28 rows.
Want to know when new printables go up?
New printables when they go up, mostly seasonal, a few times a year.