Tips & Tricks

United Mazes of America · Field Reference

Tips & Tricks: United Mazes of America

A guide to the mechanics, scoring, and hidden depth of the app. Most of the game is self-explanatory in play. This page is for the players, parents, and teachers who want to know exactly how it works under the hood: how stamps earn their glow, how Diamond tier really works, how hints stack, and how to squeeze every point out of every state.

Single long page, anchored. Cmd-F any section directly. Spoiler-pills mark the sections that some players may want to discover on their own.

Last meaningful update: 2026-06.

Contents

The Basics

Open a state. Draw with your finger or Apple Pencil from the green dot to the red dot, staying inside the corridors. Along the way, your pen passes through small medallions and pins. Each one you cross becomes part of your collection for that state. When you reach the red dot and the path looks clean, hit Check and your stamp lands in your Travel Log.

That's the whole game. Everything else on this page is depth that rewards curiosity.

Medal Tiers

When you complete a state, the stamp you earn carries a tier badge. Tiers are ordered:

Certified · Bronze · Silver · Gold · Diamond

Each tier represents how cleanly and how completely you finished the maze.

Your tier is a simple point score. Each completion earns points for what you accomplished:

1 point = Certified · 2 = Bronze · 3–4 = Silver · 5–6 = Gold

The important consequence: hints never lock you out of Gold. A thorough explorer who finds every landmark, completes the Identity, and aces the trivia reaches Gold on merit. The low-hint point is a bonus on top, not a gate. Use the hints; that's what they're for.

A few things to know about tiers:

Your line also has to stay reasonably clean. The validator allows roughly 12% of your stroke samples to drift onto walls before the Check fails (a few states are more forgiving, and finger drawing gets a small bonus over pencil). A scribbled line won't pass. Erasing a stray stroke clears its wall touches, so you can tidy up as you go.

How to Earn a Diamond

Spoilers for the headline reward.

A Diamond tier means you nailed everything the app can ask of a single state. To earn one, you need all of these on the same state:

  1. Complete the maze in Challenge Mode. Diamond is locked to Challenge; Normal Mode caps you at Gold. Toggle Challenge in the info panel before you start drawing.
  2. Discover every landmark on the maze. Your pen must pass through every landmark medallion. Tapping them in Explore mode doesn't count.
  3. Answer every trivia question correctly, standard and bonus round. The Trivia Debrief after completion only re-offers questions you haven't answered yet, and a wrong answer sticks, so take your time on each one. (If a missed question is standing between you and a Diamond, the state's Reset button clears its trivia for a fresh attempt, but it clears everything else for that state too. See What Resets What.)

That's the whole list. Hints are allowed. Challenge Mode's small hint pool (3 per state) is a resource, not a trap, so spend it freely. Earlier versions required a zero-hint run; that rule is gone.

When you earn one, the completion celebration blooms with a prism shimmer and your Travel Log stamp gains a cyan diamond emblem. Diamond stamps are deliberately rare and visually distinct. You'll know.

A few notes:

State Identity 7/7

Every state has a seven-piece Identity collection:

The five symbols are discovered the way landmarks are, by drawing your pen through small medallions placed on the maze. Some medallions sit just off the main solution on purpose, so collecting all five takes a little deliberate wandering.

The Flag and Seal are discovered differently: tap them in the state's journal panel. They start blurred with a "?" overlay; tapping flips them to revealed.

Completing 7/7 for a state earns you:

Identity discoveries survive the Normal/Challenge toggle. A state's Reset button clears that state's discoveries for a fresh start, but the hint rewards never pay twice. Each landmark and Identity bonus is paid once, so resetting a maze can't be farmed for hints.

Stamp Glows Decoded

Your Travel Log stamps can layer up to three glow treatments. Each one means something different:

These layer. A single stamp can have a gold aura AND a cyan halo AND a diamond emblem, all at once. If a stamp looks unusually rich, that's why: every layer is earning its place.

Flip a stamp over for its stats. You'll also see a gold ✦ FLAWLESS ✦ tag if the recorded solve used zero hints, and a Best Run time once you've raced the state (see Race the Trail).

Stamps without any glow are still completed mazes; they just haven't hit the secondary collection milestones yet.

The Hint System

Hints are reveals that briefly light up part of the correct corridor. Four modes, each with its own personality:

GLOW · 1 hint · cool cyan line · small reveal. A short, focused hint that lights up a brief stretch of the corridor near your pen. Best for "where do I go next" moments.

FLAME · 3 hints · amber line · wider reveal. Spends three from your stash but shows a bigger arc of the path. Useful when you're several wrong turns deep.

BLAZE · 7 hints · rust line · permanent. A wide reveal like Flame's, but it never fades. It burns in slowly over three seconds, then stays on screen for the rest of your run as a faint ember pulse: a cartographer's mark on your map. Big spend, and you only get one Blaze per maze, so place it where you're most lost.

BEACON · 1 hint · pulses landmarks. The fourth mode, but it lives on the Explore button instead of the hint picker. Pulses all hidden landmarks once. See the Beacon section for details on when it retires.

How to pick a mode: Tap the hint button for the currently primed mode. Long-press the hint button to open the picker and switch. The "+ earn" button next to your hint count tells you how to top up your stash.

Caps:

How to earn hints:

Adventures

Adventures are themed, multi-stage historical journeys that sit alongside the state map. Each one follows a real historical narrative across a series of stages.

Available now:

Coming soon (they appear as locked rows in the Adventures list):

Discoveries along the route. Every Adventure stage hides Waypoints: the historical events that mark your progress. You reach them by drawing through them, and each one opens an illustrated event card with a paragraph of kid-friendly history. Discovering all of a stage's waypoints is what completes it.

The Lewis & Clark Expedition layers in two more kinds of optional discovery:

Future Adventures will each be built around their own history, so what's discoverable can vary from one to the next.

The Journal sheet (tabbed) collects everything you find in an Adventure: the cast of people, any Nations and Specimens, the unfolding Story, and a Field Journal of real period quotes from the expedition's own writings.

Adventures don't use the hint system. There are no Glow, Flame, or Blaze reveals, and no Beacon. You find your way by reading the map and following the route, the way the explorers did. The wall-tolerance and line-connection rules are the same as the state mazes, so a clean, connected line still matters.

Challenge Mode

The harder version of every state, opt-in per state via the info panel toggle. Visual cues:

Toggling Challenge Mode is a soft reset. It clears the state's completion flag and hint count so you can attempt the other mode fresh, but it preserves everything else for that state:

The only way to fully wipe a state's progress is its Reset button (see What Resets What).

The fog is forgiving in one specific way: it carves smoothly as you draw, so you don't have to commit to a route blindly. Take your time. The fog covers what you haven't yet explored, not the maze solution itself.

Surprise Bubbles

Maze corridors hide invisible surprise spots. There's nothing to see on the map, but when your line crosses one, a little bubble pops up beside your pen:

The bubbles are part of the scenery: they fade on their own, never block your pen, and don't affect your score.

The mini-quiz roll. Fun-fact spots have about a 15% chance to fire a quick two-option mini-trivia instead of a static fact. The quiz roll only starts once you've begun discovering that state's Identity (so brand-new states don't pop quiz you immediately), it takes a few seconds, and it doesn't affect your score. It's just a brief pause to play. A quiz you've already seen won't repeat during the same visit to a maze.

Most states have these spots scattered along (and off) the solution path. Some have many; others just a handful. If a bubble surprises you mid-draw, that's the maze talking.

Beacon: the Fourth Hint Mode

Beacon is the secret fourth hint mode. It doesn't appear in the Glow/Flame/Blaze picker; instead, it lives on the Explore button in the toolbar.

While Explore is still locked for the current state, the Explore button shows as Beacon. Tapping it costs one hint from your stash and pulses every undiscovered landmark on the maze briefly. Useful early in a state when you need a sense of where things are.

Explore unlocks once you've discovered every landmark, or solved the maze, whichever comes first. At that point Beacon retires and the button switches to its standard role (tap-to-reveal landmark tour). After you've completed all 52 mazes, Explore stays unlocked everywhere by default (a Settings toggle can restore the original per-state progression).

Beacon is the only hint mode that doesn't reveal a corridor. It reveals where things are.

Race the Trail

Once a state is solved, its Check button becomes a gold RACE button: a personal-best time trial through the maze you've already conquered.

Tap RACE and you get a GET READY! moment to pan and zoom to the green start dot, then a 3-2-1-GO countdown, then the clock runs. A stopwatch ribbon shows your time and the standing best. Hit FINISH when your line is complete; beat your best and you'll get a NEW RECORD celebration.

What racing can't do is just as important as what it can:

Best Run times show on the back of each stamp.

The Outfitter

A trading post in your Travel Log: gear earned by exploring. No coins, no luck, no purchases, just trails. Every item shows exactly how it's earned, and most unlocks are retroactive: if you've already done the thing, the gear is already waiting.

Five shelves:

New gear gets a NEW chip until you tap it, and the Travel Log tab badges when something's waiting. Each explorer profile earns and equips its own gear.

Statehood Birthdays

Every state joined the Union on a specific date, and on that anniversary the Atlas celebrates: the birthday state glows gold with a pill like "🎂 ARKANSAS TURNS 190!" With 50 statehood birthdays scattered through the year, there's one most weeks.

No alerts, no streaks, no pressure. The celebration is simply there for whoever opens the map on the right day.

Explorer Profiles

One iPad, up to four explorers, each with completely separate progress: their own Atlas, stamps, hints, drawings, trivia history, Outfitter gear, and settings.

National Symbols + Milestones

Two parallel progression tracks at the national level.

National Symbols unlock at: 1, 5, 10, 18, 26, 34, 44, and 52 completed mazes. Each unlock surfaces a new American symbol (eagle, flag, anthem, monument, and so on) inside the National Dossier, accessible by tapping the "United Mazes of America" title at the top of the Atlas screen.

Milestones trigger at: 1, 5, 10, 25, 40, and 50 completed mazes. Each one fires a brief celebration overlay on the Atlas with a kid-friendly title like "HALFWAY THERE" or "THE HOME STRETCH." It's a momentary cheer for the journey: it lingers a few seconds and then it's gone, so enjoy it when it lands. Nothing is recorded for it afterward.

The two tracks don't perfectly overlap, and that's intentional. National Symbols are about the collection (each unlock adds a permanent entry to your Dossier). Milestones are about the journey (each one celebrates the moment, then steps aside).

For badges that do stick around, see the Achievements grid in your Travel Log: a separate set of awards (No Hints, Perfect Trivia, Speed Runner, Gold Collector, Completionist, and more) that stay collected once earned.

The National Dossier itself is worth a look. It shows your collected symbols, your rank progression, and unlocks more content as you progress. Tap your rank badge in the Atlas header to see your current rank, your next rank, and how many mazes separate them.

Sync + Multiple Devices

If you sign into iCloud on multiple devices, your progress can sync automatically between them. Toggle it on in Settings → Sync.

Profiles note: iCloud sync carries the first (primary) explorer profile. Additional explorer profiles live on their own iPad and don't travel between devices yet.

What syncs: - Completed states + medal tiers - Discovered landmarks + State Identity 7/7 items - Trivia state (Perfect Trivia awards, bonus completion) - Hint pool - Symbol, flag, seal discoveries - Expedition / Diamond completion flags - Adventure leg completions and timings - National Dossier symbols + rank

What doesn't sync: - In-progress maze drawings (your current scribble doesn't travel with you, by design, so you can pick up fresh on the other device) - Some local preferences (Calm Mode, sound on/off, and so on). These stay device-specific.

Sync is "any-true-wins" for most progress states. If Device A completed Texas and Device B completed Florida, both devices end up with both states completed.

Reset All Progress is also device-specific: it clears the local device's progress but doesn't auto-propagate the wipe. Run Reset on each device if you want a clean slate everywhere.

What Resets What

Three different "resets" do three very different things. Worth knowing before you press anything:

The Clear button (toolbar). Wipes your current drawing off the canvas. Nothing else. Use it freely.

The Normal/Challenge toggle. A soft reset. Clears the state's completion flag and hint count so you can attempt the other mode fresh, but preserves your stamp, medal, landmarks, Identity discoveries, trivia, and Diamond.

The state's Reset button (info panel). A full per-state wipe: completion, stamp and medal, Best Run time, discovered landmarks, Identity discoveries, trivia answers, Perfect Trivia award, Challenge completion, and Diamond. All of it is cleared for that one state, and all of it is re-earnable. One thing never resets: hint rewards. Each landmark and Identity bonus pays out once, so a reset can't be farmed for hints.

Settings → Reset All Progress. The nuclear option: everything above, for every state, plus the once-per-install hint ledgers. The app confirms before doing it.

Questions, corrections, requests

We update this page when game mechanics change. If something on the page doesn't match what you're seeing in the app, or if there's a mechanic you've discovered that we haven't documented yet, let us know at contact@unitedmazesofamerica.com.

Last meaningful update: 2026-06.

United Mazes of America — unitedmazesofamerica.com