You just made a maze book full of 30/50/100 mazes for kids/adults with an interesting theme. It took a few months to make all the mazes and you are now putting together the book and you need to make the solutions pages. You thought the hard part was over, but now you have more choices to make. I want to take you through the different options you have for making the maze solutions pages. Choosing the right option for your solution page can change the retail price of your book, improving both your sales and your profits. Choosing a poor format for your solution pages will hurt engagement, reviews, and hurt sales and profits.
Here is the maze I will use as an example. A typical standard maze for 8-12 year old kids. The maze is from page 1 of one of my books available on Amazon. So Part 1 is to show many different types of solution pages using 1 standard maze. In the upcoming Part 2 blog post I will use a variety of different maze types and experiment to see what solution page method works best for each.
Standard Maze
Let's start by considering the various size options for maze solutions.
MAZE SOLUTION SIZE
Full Size Solution
This is ideal for a Kindle Maze book if you are want to paginate the book maze, solution, maze, solution, etc. I used a thick black line to show the solution.
Standard Maze with bold solution pathway
Mini Solutions
In a 100 maze book, if we assume 1 maze per page, a full size solution for a printed book would mean an additional 100 pages for solutions. That is not reasonable considering the added printing cost (assuming we are not speaking about a Kindle book). Depending on the size and complication of the mazes you should target 4 solutions/page as a minimum, and can consider 6 solutions/page, and ideally 9 solutions/page.
Remember to consider who your target audience is. Adults can handle 9 solutions per page. While I have never seen a maze book for retirees (is that an opportunity ?) I think larger solutions would be appropriate. Same with a maze book for young children.
The shape of the mazes you are providing the solutions for, and the dimensions of the page will determine what format works best. I used the same maze repeated multiple times for simplicity. Let’s see what all three would look like in this gallery:
MAZE SOLUTION COLORING
In most cases maze books will be printed, so the solutions pages will have mini versions of the mazes. That will make them harder to view, so how can you enhance the mazes to make the solution easier to see ?
Bolded Solution Pathway
As shown in the above examples. Just make the solution being a thick black line.
Color Solution Pathway
Typically this is in red, as it is in my example. Now, most maze books are in black and white because of the much higher cost of color pages. However, the color definitely works if you can afford it. I will use the 9 per page as the example since it would be the hardest to view.
Row 1 is red and a thick line. Row 2 shows red lines in a slightly thicker width. Row 3 has a red line that is the same thickness of the walls while being red. Personally I think all 3 work, although it is easier to see row 1.
I should mention my post, Why Maze Books are (almost) Never made in Color. The TL;DR is a color maze book is significantly more expensive to print, something very important to consider if you use this solution !
9 maze solutions per page with pathway solutions in RED
Decolor the Maze with Black solution
This is my favorite solution page. Take the maze from black and white (or even if it is in color) and convert it to greyscale. I like to keep the border black, but It can also change to grey. Now make your solution pathway in black, easy to see. Again I used 3 different line segments.
Greyscale solution examples
Dashed Line Pathway Solution
If you want to keep your original coloring of the maze, you can use a dashed line to differentiate the solution from the walls of the pathways. I used 3 different dashes, each in 3 thicknesses. I think the third row is somewhat hard to see.
The maze below is structured with pathways a right angles. Dashed lines are very helpful when the pathways are free drawn because your eyes have trouble following winding pathways without significant differentiation between the lines.
So those are the options you have for solution pages. No matter what type of solution page you pick to use, you are in the home stretch of creating your maze book.
My Conclusion : Try a few options from above and see what works for you. Depending on the shape, color and format of your mazes a different solution style may work for you better. And of course, happy maze-making !
You like making mazes, so you might like some of my other posts about maze design:
Maze Design Case Study - Designing a Grid Maze in Different Difficulty levels
Maze Construction - 5 Maze Design Decisions Make All the Difference
A Collection of Maze Design Case Studies to Improve Your Mazes