THE IDEA: A ROUTE THROUGH THE OPEN GAPS
A Square Maze is a grid of cells with walls between some of them. You move from one cell to a neighbour only where there's an open gap — up, down, left, or right, never diagonally, and never through a wall. Your job is to link a single unbroken route from S (top-left) to F (bottom-right).
Three rules, that's the whole game:
- Start top-left (S), finish bottom-right (F). Both corners are fixed; your route has to connect them.
- Step through open gaps only. Two cells side by side can still be blocked by a wall — adjacency isn't the same as a passage.
- One continuous route. If a corridor dead-ends, back up and try another branch. There's always exactly one way through.
No numbers to read, nothing to count — just "follow the open passage." The skill is spotting where the maze actually asks you to choose.
LET'S ACTUALLY SOLVE ONE — STEP BY STEP
Here's a real 8×5 Square Maze. S is the start corner (top-left), F is the finish (bottom-right). We'll trace a route from S to F, one stretch at a time.
The starting maze — S top-left, F bottom-right, walls in dark.
Step 1 — from S, follow the only way out.
Look at S — there's only one open gap leading out of it, so there's nothing to decide. The next cell's the same, and the next. When a corridor is single-file — walls on both sides — you just follow it. That opening run carries us 5 cells for free, right up to the first real fork.
Step 2 — at a junction, you finally get a choice.
Here's a junction (ringed): more than one open gap, so now we actually choose. Two ways open up (highlighted). These forks are the only places the maze asks anything of you — so this is where you slow down and look.
Step 3 — peek down each branch; drop the dead ends.
Glance down each branch before committing. One of them (the crossed cell) hits a wall almost immediately — a dead end, so it can't be on the route. The other (still highlighted) keeps going toward F. Easy choice once you've looked.
Step 4 — follow the open corridor onward.
Take the branch that keeps going and you're back to following single-file corridors again — winding down and across — until the next junction, where you do the exact same thing: peek, drop the dead end, carry on.
Step 5 — arrive at F.
One unbroken route, corner to corner — solved. 👻
That's the whole puzzle: long stretches with no choice, broken up by a handful of junctions where you actually decide. Bigger mazes just mean more corridors and more forks — the move never changes.
THE WHOLE METHOD, IN FOUR BEATS
Across the whole maze, you're only ever doing this loop:
- Follow the only way out. Single-file corridors have no choice — just walk them.
- Stop at junctions. A cell with more than one open gap is the only place you decide.
- Peek down each branch. A branch that dead-ends can't be on the route — rule it out.
- Take the one that goes on, and repeat. Carry on to the next fork; back up if you hit a dead end.
Stuck? Back up to the last junction where you had more than one open gap and take the branch you haven't tried. A real Square Maze always has a clean route through — you never have to guess.
A COUPLE OF FRIENDLY HABITS
- Work from both ends. Trace inward from S and backward from F. Dead-end corridors near each corner get ruled out fast, and the two halves tend to meet in the middle.
- Read junctions, not cells. Between forks the path is forced, so don't agonise over every cell — scan ahead to the next junction and decide there.
- Remember the pockets you've ruled out. Once a dead-end corridor is crossed off, don't wander back into it from another angle.
THAT'S IT — GO DO ONE
Follow the corridor, stop at the forks, drop the dead ends, carry on. It's the calmest puzzle in GridJoy — no sums, no rules to memorise, just a clean line traced through walls, with a ghost waiting at the far corner. Lovely for a quiet two minutes.