Snowman Maze
Created for free at puzzleandprint.com
Snowman mazes
Three snowballs, a top hat and two stick arms, with the solution on its own page.
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Snowman 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.
Snowman maze, large print16 × 16 grid · EasyDownload PDF ↓
Snowman maze, everyday20 × 20 grid · MediumDownload PDF ↓
Snowman maze, longer24 × 24 grid · MediumDownload PDF ↓
Snowman 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.
A snowman is the winter shape that belongs to no holiday, which is what makes it useful in a classroom: it suits the first snowy morning in December and still suits February, long after the decorations have come down. The outline is three stacked snowballs, a top hat and two stick arms angled upward.
It is a slim shape. The snowman keeps about a third of its grid, from 32.6 to 34 percent on the four sheets here, so the 28 by 28 Challenge has 256 squares inside the outline, exactly as many as a plain 16 by 16 maze. The route runs from the end of one arm to the end of the other, across the middle snowball, which makes these short puzzles for their size.
Short is not the same as easy, though. With so few squares on the way through, most of the snowman is dead ends: the hat, nearly all of the bottom snowball and, on two of the four sheets, the head as well. A child who heads up into the hat has gone wrong on every sheet.
Each sheet is a two-page PDF with the maze first and the solution second, and every snowman has one route and no loops. The maker on this page carves one from sixteen squares up to thirty.
Why the snowman maze route skips the biggest snowball
Because the way in and the way out are both up at the arms, and the arms join the middle snowball, not the bottom one. The route has no reason to go down: it uses 2 of the 32 squares in the bottom snowball on the Large print and 6 of 54 on the Everyday, and none at all on the Longer or the Challenge, where the bottom snowball holds 74 and 102 squares. On every sheet the biggest part of the drawing is a side trip.
That gives a stuck solver a hint without giving the route away: the answer stays almost entirely above the bottom snowball. The head is the part that changes from sheet to sheet. The Everyday route climbs into it and uses 11 of its 12 squares before coming back down, and the Challenge uses 14 of 26, while the Large print and Longer routes pass beneath the head without entering it at all.
Which snowman maze to print for a snow day
For younger children, the Large print: 30 squares from hand to hand through corridors about 11 mm wide, with only two forks on the way. The catch is that both forks lead somewhere big, one into a branch of 32 squares with a path 23 deep, so a wrong turn on this sheet shows itself slowly. The Everyday is longer at 55 squares and has eight forks, and its one long wrong turn comes ten squares from the end, where a branch of 50 squares opens and runs 34 deep.
The Longer snowman has the shortest route of the three bigger sheets, 37 squares on a 24 by 24 grid, and the deepest trap for its length: 29 squares in, a turn leads into a branch of 97 squares with a path 74 deep, exactly twice as long as the route itself. The Challenge is the full workout, a 65-square route on squares about 6.5 mm across, with a branch of 128 squares opening 49 squares in and a path 82 deep inside it. For a snow day at home, one of each in a stack covers a family of different ages.
Common questions
Is the snowman maze a Christmas sheet?
No. Nothing on it is tied to Christmas: there is no holly and no presents, and each page is headed simply with the shape and size, such as Snowman Maze: Everyday. That makes it a safe choice for January and February and for a class where not everyone celebrates Christmas. The maker on this page offers the winter border, which has snowflakes, mittens and icicles rather than anything festive.
Why is the route through the snowman so short?
Because the way in and the way out sit at the ends of the two arms, at nearly the same height, and the route only has to cross the middle snowball between them. It runs 30, 55, 37 and 65 squares on the four sheets, while the snowman itself holds 86 to 256 squares, so most of what you see is there to lead a solver astray.
Does the route ever go into the snowman’s hat?
No, not on any of the four sheets. The hat is a dead end every time, a crown and a brim that hold 14 squares on the Large print and more than 30 on the Challenge, so a child who climbs up into it has to come back down to the arms.
Want to know when new printables go up?
New printables when they go up, mostly seasonal, a few times a year.