Square Maze: rules, strategy, and free play

THE RULES

1. Start at the top-left; finish at the bottom-right. Both endpoints are marked. Your route must begin at the start cell and end at the end cell.
2. Move between open neighbours only. From a cell you can step up, down, left, or right into an adjacent cell — but only where there's an open passage. A wall between two cells blocks movement; diagonal moves are never allowed.
3. Build one continuous route. Tap each next cell to extend the route. Each step must be to a cell you can actually reach through an open gap from your current cell.
4. Back up when a corridor dead-ends. If the passage you followed closes off, tap back along your route and try a different branch. The maze has a connected route from start to end — keep exploring until you find it.

BEGINNER STRATEGY

• Work from both ends. Trace inward from the start AND backward from the end. Dead-end corridors near each corner get ruled out fast, and the two partial routes tend to meet in the middle.
• Follow forced corridors. Wherever a passage has walls on both sides, there's only one way through — follow it without thinking until it branches. These single-file corridors carry you across big stretches of the maze for free.
• Prune dead ends early. A branch that closes into a pocket with no other exit can't be on the route — don't waste taps exploring it twice. Glancing a cell or two ahead tells you whether a turn opens up or boxes you in.
• Read junctions, not cells. The decisions that matter are the forks — cells with more than one open neighbour. Between forks the path is forced, so scan ahead to the next junction and decide there.
• Never guess blindly. There's exactly one route through. If you're unsure, back up to the last junction and take the branch you haven't tried — methodical beats lucky.

COMMON MISTAKES

• Trying to move through a wall. Two cells can sit side by side and still be blocked by a wall between them. Always move into a cell through an open gap — adjacency on the grid isn't the same as a passage.
• Looking for numbers to follow. Square Maze has none. It's not a numbered-path puzzle — there's nothing to sequence. The only thing that matters is which passages are open.
• Re-exploring dead ends. After backing out of a dead-end corridor, it's easy to wander back in from another angle. Remember which pockets you've already ruled out.
• Rushing past junctions. Most wrong turns happen at forks taken on autopilot. Slow down where a cell has two or more open exits — that's where the real choice is.

HOW TO THINK ABOUT IT

Square Maze is the purest spatial puzzle in GridJoy — no numbers, no arithmetic, just a route through walls. The productive mindset is corridor-first: let the forced single-file passages carry you, and save your attention for the junctions where the maze actually asks you to choose. Working inward from both the start and the end shrinks the search to the middle, where the two halves of your route connect.

WHY THIS PUZZLE REWARDS YOU

Square Maze is GridJoy's most immediately understandable puzzle — everyone has traced a maze with a fingertip. The rectangular grid is familiar and the rule needs no explanation: get from one corner to the other through the open passages. Its appeal is the clean spatial flow, a calm contrast to the number puzzles elsewhere in the app. It pairs naturally with Circular and Hex Mazes, which take the same route-finding idea onto rings and hexagons; and with Number Maze, which shares the 'reach the far corner' goal but swaps walls for jump-distance numbers.

JUNCTION TYPE REFERENCE

A cell's junction type is determined by how many of its four cardinal neighbours are connected by open passages. Most cells in a well-formed maze are corridors — follow those freely. The real route decisions happen only at T-junctions and crossroads, which are far rarer.

VARIANTS

• Circular Maze. The same wall-maze route-finding, but on concentric rings — you move inward, outward, and around each ring through open gaps instead of across a grid.
• Hex Mazes. Wall-maze route-finding on a hexagonal grid, where each cell has up to six possible exits instead of four. More branching at every junction — see the Hex Mazes page.

YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

• How to play Square Maze (visual guide) →

  New to it? A real maze traced corner to corner — 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.

• Circular Maze →

  Same wall-maze idea on concentric rings — inward, outward, and around.

• 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.