Flag border maze
Flag Border Maze: Europe
A 5×5 grid of European flags. Start at the top-left flag and reach the bottom-right one, stepping only onto a country that borders the one you are on. One wrong step is a mine. A new maze every round.
- Steps
- 0/–
- Time
- Time left: 3:00
Start on the top-left flag and reach the bottom-right one. Each step goes one flag up, down, left or right, onto a country that shares a land border with the one you are on. From every flag on the way, exactly one of its neighbours (not counting the flag you came from) is a bordering country; any other one is a mine and ends the round. Names appear once you step on a flag. Keyboard: the arrow keys pick a neighbour, Enter steps onto it.
Finding your next challenge…
How it works, data and sources
Every round is generated for you. Start on the top-left flag and reach the bottom-right one, one cell up, down, left or right at a time, always onto a flag whose country shares a land border with the one you are on. Only the flags next to yours can be clicked. From every flag on the way, exactly one of its neighbours (not counting the flag you came from) is a bordering country; any other one is a mine and ends the round. Names stay hidden until you step on a flag, and the end of the round shows the whole path with every name. Keyboard: the arrow keys pick a neighbour, Enter steps onto it. A challenge link replays the same maze, in any language.
Each maze is checked as it is made: the path runs from corner to corner through different cells, every step is a land border, and from every flag on the path exactly one neighbouring cell other than the one you came from borders it. Flags you have already walked count too: none of them borders your flag, except the one you came from. Every place appears once per grid, and flags that are easy to mix up (Chad and Romania, Indonesia and Monaco, Ireland and Côte d’Ivoire, and many more) never sit side by side.
Land borders follow the CIA World Factbook, as in our border quizzes. Anything that could be argued is kept away from the path: borders through an overseas territory or Western Sahara (France–Brazil, Spain–Morocco, the United Kingdom–Spain at Gibraltar…), the tiny Botswana–Zambia and Turkey–Azerbaijan borders, and every border of Kosovo, Palestine and Israel are never a step, and a country on the other side of one never sits next to the path, so it can be neither a mine nor a second way on.
Flags are the ones our flag quizzes use. Europe, Africa and Asia use every country of the continent (as in our continent quizzes, without Kosovo, Palestine or Taiwan); the world maze uses the two thirds of the world’s countries that our quizzes treat as well known.
A “Show names” switch shows every name from the start: the maze becomes a pure border puzzle, handy for learning. It is off by default.