How to solve instruction maze puzzles
Instruction mazes: obey one square at a time
Each square tells you your next move — direction and distance. Start, obey, repeat. Count moves, not squares, and ignore every square you never land on.
Updated
A grid where every square carries an arrow and a number. Stand on the marked start, obey its instruction, land, obey again — until you reach the target. The question is how many moves that takes. There are no choices anywhere: the walk is fully determined. This family measures pure execution discipline, and it is failed almost exclusively through sloppy counting.
Only squares you land on matter
The grid is full of instructions, and the walk touches only a handful of them. Everything else is scenery, however inviting it looks. Never scan ahead for a route — there is no route to find, only a chain to follow.
Move exactly what is written
An arrow with 3 means jump exactly three squares in that direction, in a straight line. Not one square, and never a turn mid-move. Land, then read the NEW square — the previous instruction is spent.
Count the hops, not the stops
The answer is the number of MOVES between squares. Counting the squares you visited — start included — gives exactly one too many, and that number is always among the options. Tick your count at the moment you jump, not when you land and look around.
Straight-line intuition lies
The walk winds. The direct distance from start to target usually sits among the options, and it is a guess that ignores the instructions entirely. If your answer equals the number of squares between the two corners, you have probably measured instead of walked.
The strategy
- Anchor your eye (or finger) on the start square.
- Read, jump, land, read — one instruction at a time.
- Count at each jump: 'one … two … three …'.
- Stop the instant you land on the target; the target square gives no instruction.
Common traps
- Counting squares visited instead of moves made — the off-by-one that fills the option list.
- Drifting a square short or long on a 2- or 3-square jump.
- Reading a neighbouring square's instruction after a sloppy landing.
- Losing the count mid-walk and reconstructing it optimistically.
Speed · ~60s/item: Roughly 30–95 seconds by grid size. The walk itself is fast — the discipline is refusing to hurry the landings.
Try it yourself: 4 practice questions
Pick an answer, then reveal it. Nothing is recorded, there is no clock, and none of these questions is ever used in a test.
Start on the marked square and obey each square's instruction, moving that many squares in that direction. How many moves does it take to land on the target?
Tinted square = start · ◎ = target. Each square's arrow and number is one move.
Reveal the answer
The answer is B — 3.
Show why — the worked reasoning
Start on the marked square and obey each square's instruction, moving that many squares in that direction. How many moves does it take to land on the target?
Tinted square = start · ◎ = target. Each square's arrow and number is one move.
Reveal the answer
The answer is D — 3.
Show why — the worked reasoning
Start on the marked square and obey each square's instruction, moving that many squares in that direction. How many moves does it take to land on the target?
Tinted square = start · ◎ = target. Each square's arrow and number is one move.
Reveal the answer
The answer is B — 3.
Show why — the worked reasoning
Start on the marked square and obey each square's instruction, moving that many squares in that direction. How many moves does it take to land on the target?
Tinted square = start · ◎ = target. Each square's arrow and number is one move.
Reveal the answer
The answer is C — 3.
Show why — the worked reasoning
Try questions like this
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Questions people ask
Will instruction mazes questions be on the free test?
Usually. The free test gives abstract reasoning 6 of its 20 questions and spreads them across the 6 abstract reasoning question types, so each type normally appears once.