Circular Maze: rules, strategy, and free play

THE RULES

1. Start at the marked start; finish at the marked end. Both endpoints are marked. Your route must begin at the start cell and finish at the end cell.
2. Move through open gaps only. From a cell you can step inward to the next ring in, outward to the next ring out, or sideways around the same ring — but only where there's an open gap. A wall between two cells blocks that move.
3. Rings wrap all the way around. Travelling around a ring eventually returns to where you started — there's no left or right edge to stop you, just walls placed around the loop.
4. Back up at dead ends. If a passage closes off, tap back along your route and try another opening. There's a connected route from start to end — keep exploring until you trace it.

BEGINNER STRATEGY

• Use the centre as a bottleneck. The innermost ring has the fewest cells, so very few routes pass through it. If start or end sits near the centre, the openings there are scarce — and scarce openings are forced moves.
• Work from both ends. Trace inward from the start and backward from the end at once. The two partial routes narrow the search and usually meet on a middle ring.
• Follow forced corridors around the rings. Where a ring segment is walled on both sides, the only way on is along it. Let these forced arcs carry you around until they open inward or outward.
• Decide at the openings. The real choices are the gaps that let you change ring. Between them the route is forced — so scan around to the next inward/outward opening and choose there.
• Never guess blindly. There's one route through. If you stall, return to the last opening you had a choice at and take the gap you haven't tried yet.

COMMON MISTAKES

• Trying to cross a wall between rings. Two cells can be radially aligned across rings and still be separated by a wall. You can only change ring where there's an actual gap — alignment isn't a passage.
• Looking for numbers to follow. Circular Maze has none. It isn't a numbered sequence — only the open gaps between cells matter.
• Forgetting the rings loop. Because a ring wraps around with no edge, the opening you need might be on the 'far side' of the circle. Don't assume a ring dead-ends just because it does so in front of you — keep going around.
• Losing track of inward versus outward. On a circle, 'up' isn't a fixed direction — it means toward the centre or toward the rim depending on where you are. Keep the inward/outward sense straight or you'll misread which gap leads where.

HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

Circular Maze is spatial route-finding with a twist of topology: the same open-passage logic as a square wall maze, bent into rings. The orientation shift — 'inward and outward' instead of 'up and down', a ring that loops with no edge — is the whole challenge. Treat the cramped inner ring as a bottleneck that forces moves, let the walled ring-arcs carry you for free, and save your attention for the gaps that change ring. Working from both ends shrinks the puzzle to where the two routes meet.

WHY THIS PUZZLE REWARDS YOU

Circular Maze is GridJoy's most visually distinctive puzzle — nothing else in the app looks like its hub-and-rings layout. It takes the universally familiar 'find your way through a maze' idea and bends it into a circle, so the spatial reasoning that feels automatic on a square grid suddenly needs a fresh mental model. Players who enjoy Square Maze find it a natural next step — identical route-finding logic, a brand-new shape — and those drawn to Hex Mazes appreciate the same appetite for unusual topology.

MOVE TYPE REFERENCE

Every move in a Circular Maze is one of four types. The innermost ring loses the radial-inward option; the outermost ring loses radial-outward. Tangential moves wrap all the way around a ring with no boundary to stop them — an opening you need might be on the far side of the circle. Real decisions happen where multiple move types are simultaneously open.

VARIANTS

• Square Maze. The same wall-maze route-finding on a familiar rectangular grid — move up, down, left, and right through open passages instead of around rings.
• Hex Mazes. Wall-maze route-finding on a hexagonal grid, where each cell has up to six possible exits. More branching at every junction — see the Hex Mazes page.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

• How to play Circular Maze (visual guide) →

  New to it? A real round maze traced from the hub out to the rim — follow the corridor, stop at the junctions, drop the dead ends, in pictures.

• Number Maze →

  GridJoy's other 'maze' — a jump puzzle where each cell's number is a leap distance. No walls.

• Square Maze →

  The same wall-maze route-finding on a rectangular grid.

• Hex Mazes →

  Wall maze on a hex grid — up to six exits per cell, more branching.

• Starlink →

  Number puzzle — fill the grid with one chain 1..N², each step 8-directionally adjacent.