Questions about the activity maker

Three self-checking activities from one list of 4 to 40 questions: a maze where only correct answers lead from Start to Finish, a riddle decoder where correct answers spell a secret message, and an I have, who has card loop. Each comes with an answer key, as a PDF on A4 or US Letter, as a picture, or printed from the page. The footer of every page carries one small credit, Made with Answerpath, answerpath.app, below the activity and never inside the maze, the decoder or the cards; Premium sheets leave it out.

Put the question in the first column, the answer in the second and up to 3 wrong answers in the next ones, select the rows and copy them. Then choose Paste a list and paste. Comma and semicolon separated lines work too; a cell that holds a comma goes in double quotes. Every line shows how it was read, and a line that cannot be used stays in the list marked Needs a fix rather than being dropped.

A question can be up to 160 characters and an answer up to 60. Longer text is not cut: the row says how long it is and waits for you to shorten it. On the sheets, an answer too wide for a maze box is set one step smaller and then on two lines, and a question wraps; when the boxes are still too small, each box shows its question number and the questions are listed on the next page.

Yours come first: up to 3 for each question. For a number answer the maker also writes wrong answers by fixed rules: one off in the last written place, the sign flipped when a sign is in play, the operation mixed up, ten times too big or too small, then two or three off. Units are kept as typed. A correct answer to another question in the list is never used as a wrong answer.

Not by answering. Only the correct answer to the question in a box touches that box, the path never touches itself, and every box off the path is a dead end: none of the boxes around it shows its right answer or a likely wrong answer to it. So after a wrong turn the next answer is not nearby, and the student goes back one square, as the sheet says. Every maze is searched route by route for this before it is shown. A student who moves at random can still wander, as in any maze, and the sheet says how many boxes the path has.

From 4 by 4 to 8 by 8 boxes, picked from the number of questions so that plenty of boxes are left for wrong answers, or chosen by you. Squares hold up to 40 questions and hexagons up to 35, because the path may not touch itself and hexagons touch more neighbours.

You choose. With every blank its own question, each letter of the message needs its own question, so students cannot fill in a repeated letter by guessing. With repeated letters sharing a question, every blank of one letter shows the same question number, so the message needs only as many questions as it has different letters. The page says how many each choice needs. A message has 5 to 80 letters, digits and spaces.

Each card says I have and an answer. If two cards had the same answer, both students would stand up for the same question and the loop would split. The page names the questions so you can change one of the answers.

When the number of questions does not fill the last sheet, the maker can fill it with blank cards so every sheet cuts the same way. Each blank card says it is not in the game and is listed on the key. You can turn them off in the card loop settings.

The maze, the decoder and the cards each have a 6 character code. The same questions, settings and code always give the same activity, so you can make the same maze again later. Type a code in the format's settings to bring one back, or make a new one for a different maze from the same questions.

On screen and when printing from the page, yes: the page uses your device's own fonts. The PDFs and pictures are set in fonts that cover Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and maths signs. If a question uses other characters, the page says which ones and where, and offers printing from the page instead of a PDF, rather than printing empty boxes.

In this browser only, as you type. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account. Save a backup file to move your sets to another browser or keep a copy. Answerpath has no copy of anything you type.

Yes. Share this, beside the downloads, makes a link that holds the question list (questions, answers and typed wrong answers), the title, the secret message, the paper and every format setting with its code, so the other teacher gets the same maze, decoder and cards. The link is not stored anywhere: everything is in the part after #, which a browser never sends to a server. It opens as Shared with you, and nothing is saved in their browser until they choose Keep a copy.

Yes. On an iPhone or iPad, open the site in Safari, tap the Share button, then Add to Home Screen. On Android and on a computer, choose Install Answerpath in the menu or at the foot of any page when your browser offers it. After one visit online the maker, the examples and the printables open without a connection, and PDFs and pictures work offline once one has been made.

Answerpath is not affiliated with any publisher, curriculum body or teacher marketplace.