* Changed the User Tip window title to correctly mention "weekly", and also added text at the bottom to say how to get more tips immediately, as well as adding a note in the user guide (Thanks James R!) * Separated the vague app menu item "Reset to Defaults" into TWO new different items: "Reset Document Settings to Saved Defaults" and "Reset Document Settings to Factory Defaults", and more clearly described their differences in the user guide. * The title tab now sports a NOTE with a full list of possible puzzle macros you can use in the title string, below the title controls. * Corrected app icon support for MacOS 26 and older. * Reworked all the buttons to be opaque so they are more legible under MacOS 26.

* You can now specify whether the maze title appears on the puzzle page, the solution page, or both (under the Layout:Title tab.) This will affect both the printed pages and exported mazes (if you turn on "including title..." checkbox in the Export window.) * Added new puzzle macro for today's full date, localized to your computer's region setting: $$datetoday * Updated the App and Doc icons for MacOS 26/Tahoe. * User interface beautification project for MacOS 26 - Re-wrote the descriptive text boxes above the control tabs, to be more concise. Intro Screens cleanup, added User Guide Info button on the screen next to the DONE button. Finished adding the optional stone background texture into the export and bulk-builder windows. * When user first opens the app, the "user tip" will not show up right away, but instead will wait a week before displaying... making the initial user experience less "popup-cluttered". * Added Action menu item STOP to stop building maze. * Added Author/Copyright to header comment in POV-Ray file export. * Renamed the Chevron and Rainbow shapes to full words for clarity ("Dn" is now "Down") * User Guide cleanup, now the menus section at the end has every menu item listed in the table of contents. * Pro: New Feature: "Action: Daily Maze" Will create a unique maze each day, and the maze will be identical to any other "Auto-Generated Daily Mazes" built on that same calendar day, anywhere around the world. * Pro: You can now export to a new "ESP File" (JSON) that captures all the puzzle/solution information in a computer-readable way. You can use this to create book-publishing workflows, or to pour puzzles into your own interactive web or native computer games. You can find it when exporting your files as the "and ESP File" checkbox. There is an "ESP File Guide" document found in the HELP menu. * Bulk Builder document aesthetic cleanup. * BugFix: SVG Export now very closely matches the Maze-Phrase vertical letter positioning as shown in the preview window.

• You can now turn off/on tooltips on the main window and menu bar, with a new button under the App Settings window's "Appearance" tab. • Big User Guide clarification/updates to the Bulk Builder section on pages 19-21 and top of page 24, and to the Title section on the bottom of page 35, to make it easier for you to see how to add an automatic puzzle counter to the title of your exported or bulk-built puzzles (Thanks DaveR!) • Added descriptive text bubbles above the controls in each tab of the Application Settings window. • Added a new Application-Settings tab "AUTHOR INFO", and the author/copyright fields you enter here will now be used in other future export file formats. • Added the author/copyright text fields info into your exported SVG files... they will show up in the header comment. • BugFix: The broken SEARCH capability in the User Guide and Bulk Builder Guide windows (under the Help menu) is now fixed! • Pro BugFix: Regular (non-Maze-Phrase) mazes, when built with Bulk Builder, now will correctly use and update any puzzle macros in the title field of the puzzle. This allows you to, for example, have a maze title of "Maze # $$designcounter", and when you bulk-build, each maze will have its own title of "Maze # 1", "Maze # 2", etc. (Thanks DaveR!) • Pro BugFix: The design counter is now cleared after each bulk build completes, so its displayed value doesn't linger in the $$designcounter puzzle macro.

* New magic Puzzle "$$macros" can be used in the Title or Maze Phrase text fields to auto-display useful text, like the day of week, puzzle shape, etc. See the new User Guide section "Use Auto-Updating Puzzle-Macros in your Mazes". * All mazes will now USUALLY have just ONE path at the start or end marker, instead of multiples. * Large mazes (30+) on the difficult levels will now find much more twisty paths for you. * Setting the difficulty level to 1 will always choose the very shortest solution path found, and setting it to 11 will always pick the very longest found. The inner settings will pick a random solution within the range from shorter to longer. * New Cell Labels ("Minos Melee Maps") will label each maze cell with a unique number, so you can play dice-rolling monster-map games with the printed mazes. * When using the Rect Tall/Wide shapes, the Short Side Size slider's maximum value will now always shrink to the size of whatever the current puzzle size slider is. * Made the progress window slightly transparent so we can more easily see the underlying preview progress. * Added a SEARCH field at the top of the user guide window for simple searching of words or phrases (Thanks JamesR) * Added a "Save to PDF file" button on the user guide window for opening with other PDF viewers and on other devices. (Thanks JenO) * Added illustrated "user tips" to the software, which will automatically pop up once a week. You can turn off the user tips from the Settings dialog, and/or step through them manually from the "Next User Tip" menu item under the Help menu. * Added more text clarification on some of the Maze-Phrase error dialogs. (Thanks JenO) * When switching your maze to a Maze-Phrase, the "Solution Path" drawing style now switches to "Letters+Line", which should cause less confusion about "Where did my solution line go?" (Thanks SallyL!) * Renamed the Maze-Phrase checkbox option "Exact-Fit" to the more descriptively named "Exact-Fill" (Thanks SallyL) * Added a top-level "View" menu to more easily enter/exit full-screen mode. * Pro: Bulk Exported files will now add the Bulk Design/Variation after the export counter in the file name. * BugFix: When re-opening your saved documents, the colors you chose now are remembered exactly and don't "slowly drift" toward other colors. This change unfortunately will RESET your prior saved document colors to defaults this one upgrade-time, and you will need to re-choose any custom colors and save the updated document. After that it will forever remember the proper color. (Thanks IanM) * BugFix: The very lowest difficulty (1) will now always choose the shortest possible solution length and the very highest difficulty (11) will now choose only the longest solution length. * BugFix: You can once again create rectangular puzzles under 10 characters in width. Just choose one of the Rectangle shapes first, then you can reduce the puzzle size below 10. * BugFix: All mazes should now find many more possible solutions, meaning you will now very rarely see the "Maze could not be built..." error. * BugFix: SVG Export ("Application Settings:SVG") now adds your font choice for title, letters, word-list into the file, so the actual font will carry through when you import to InDesign or Affinity, Also altered the "Application Settings:SVG" pane with a new "Add Fall-back fonts" checkbox, to allow finer handling of SVG exports when you are exporting to InDesign or Affinity and are going to immediately convert them to PDF (Thanks Nicole) * BugFix: SVG Export now displays the START Arrow (if you have chosen to show arrows) in the same orientation as it is in the preview. * BugFix: Pro: The Shape Editor window is now size-adjustable, to fit on smaller laptop screens (740 height), and you can drag its edges to make it fit bigger screens (Thanks DaveR)

• Added a new wall drawing style: "All Walls+Path". • Renamed menu items and updated user guide descriptions for "Save Document Settings as Defaults" and "Reset Document Settings to Defaults" so they correctly describe what they do. • Bugfix: Rectangle shapes can now be any even or odd width (i.e., the rectangle "Short Side Size" slider now works properly.) [Bugfix_2410081] (Thanks Zolymar) • Bugfix: Fixed the alignment of the warning text displayed when the maze shape is less than 10x10. • Bugfix: Exporting an SVG maze with a solid-colored cell floor now creates a correct/valid SVG file.

* Maze building now works a little harder to find more possible maze solutions, and more accurately chooses between shorter and longer paths (based on difficulty.) * All Font-chooser popup-menus (Title, Maze-Phrase, S/E letters,...) now display the list of fonts *in* the font itself for WYSIWYG choosing. * Better error messaging for exact-fit Maze-Phrases, giving better hints about what went wrong and how to fix the problem. * With the REVERT menu action, you can now restore to prior file revisions! You can save a puzzle, generate later ones, then revert to any prior saved one! * New "Infinity" (lemniscate) shape added. * Added a separate path color for the SOLUTION page, so that you can now have a "Path-only" maze with a black path for the puzzle, and a (different) light gray path for the solution side, allowing you to then set the solution marker to be a more visible black line. * SVG Export files are a little more friendly when importing into other software. * SVG FONT PICKER! You can now choose between different SVG Font families to use when exporting your puzzles as SVG... see the new "SVG Export" Tab on the Application Settings window. * Added other arrow style options (Thick, thin, pointy) for the solution arrows. (Thanks Jen) * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Updated maximum number of mazes built from 50 to 100! * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Major change to Bulk Maze Phrases, now you simply type or copy/paste the batch maze phrases into a text box. You no longer have to create (and then import) a separate file. See Bulk-Build under the newly-renamed "Maze Phrases" tab. * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Renamed the "Batch Build" menu item to the more common "Bulk Builder" wording in the software and the user guide and web site and App Store. * Pro: Bulk-Builder: will now detect any errors when building each maze, and write an _Err.txt file in place of exported files, and that text file will contain an error message of what went wrong, followed by the settings of the puzzle that could not be built. * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Added a fancy new RANGE slider control so you can pick a lower and upper bound for random maze SIZE and random maze DIFFICULTY. * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Added a STEPPER control after the "How Many" slider, because sliding precisely to 100 is a drag. * Pro: Alpha-Numeric Shapes now have a new (limited) font-choice menu, instead of the prior simple serif/sans checkbox, giving more font variety. * Pro: User Shape Editor: drawing/erasing/editing now has UNDO! * Pro: User Shape Editor: added a new "Fill with Shape" menu that lets you pre-fill the shape area with an existing geometric shape to start your own design from (and there was much rejoicing!) * Pro: User Shape Editor: Added ability to hold down SHIFT key while mouse-dragging to constrain straight compass lines, and OPTION key will constrain diagonal lines (Thanks Jen!) Bugs Fixed: * Export now lets you turn on FANCY puzzle export ("[x] including title" checkbox at top), which will format the puzzle with your title in the image! * Added a checkbox in the Export dialog letting you turn on/off a warning if about to overwrite existing files when exporting. (Thanks Thomas!) * Newly opened documents (either a new empty maze or a saved maze file) no longer think they are altered and need to be saved. * If you open a document that references fonts that are NOT on your computer, you now get a warning dialog that fonts were not found, and your fonts will be changed to default fonts instead. (Thanks Michael!) * Added a new "no-direction" image for the Start/End wall direction buttons when you drag the marker into the interior of the maze. (Thanks JamesR) * The printed page margins are wider now (Thanks SteveD!) * Pro: Bulk-Builder: Hitting the STOP button now halts the currently-progressing maze-build too. * Pro: Bulk-Builder MazePhrase new detects wrap-around and issues a warning message. -and much more-

-Pro: Reworked the Batch Settings so they are saved WITH the maze document now. You now have two possible workflows: (1) You can save a single set of defaults for all future batch operations, or (2) you can create "template settings" in different maze documents which would let you have different batch settings (e.g., different export directories) for different batch projects. See the User Guide "How To" section for more information. -Pro: Changed BATCH randomize settings and restructured the user interface and updated user guide. You can now choose your own subset of the list of shapes to randomly build (Thanks April!) -Pro: Changed BATCH "random shape" behavior. Each time a random shape is chosen during a batch session, it will no longer be chosen again. That way you will unique shapes instead of multiples of the same shape. Of course if you choose to make 20 different mazes and only allow 3 different shape types, then it will re-use shapes from your three chosen 3 until it creates 20 total mazes. -Pro: Added a "Save Settings as Default" button on Batch sheet for easy saving of settings. This is the same as the Application menu item "Save current settings as default" -Many wording clarifications and consistency cleanup in Intro Screens (thanks Katya!) -Cleaned up SVG Export file a little. -Re-organized User Guide sections so the "How To" section comes before the "Details" section. -Added "how-to" sections to the User Guide for setting up single batch settings or multiple batch setting "templates" for professional workflows. -BugFix: In the Batch window if NO random shapes are selected from the list, the START button is now dimmed. -BugFix: Creating a user shape with an island will now display a single error dialog later when you try to build the maze, instead of a repeating barrage of "Shape has an island!" error messages when changing the maze size. (Thanks Riccardo!)

-Bumped minimum supported Mac OS version to 10.14 (Mojave), and native support for Apple Silicon Macs. -Pro Upgrade - There is an in-app upgrade option to the “Pro” version, which immediately gives you: * Batch-automation, letting you instantly and automatically generate up to 50 mazes at a time, great for publishing maze books. * Mazes can grow up to 80x80 dimensions. * User-defined-shape designer, letting you create any maze shape you want. Your shapes can be quickly exported/imported by other Pro users. * New alpha-numeric shapes (in serif or sans-serif font). * New export option for text info file. -Finally added mini icons for each shape in the puzzle shape drop-down menu, for quick visual identification (Thanks Marina & others) -Maze building is faster, and searches deeper/harder for good maze solutions. -Export has a major UI update, now there is a single EXPORT menu item, which brings up a window for you to choose the export directory and if you want to export the answer file at the same time. -Added "Arrows" back in as a new Start/End style (Thanks Marina.) -Added Rainbow-Up and Rainbow-down shapes (for Elli) -Added the iso-Triangle (Delta) cell shape style (thanks for the nudge, Nick & Lisa!) -You can choose to show the MazePhrase answers "Sparse" as before, and now "Dimmed" which fills all the other letters into the answer maze but as light gray. -Added ability to turn OFF the outer wall openings on Start/End areas (Thanks Marina.) -You can now choose a letter for the “Start” and "End" markers. Note that the character can be Unicode in any language/alphabet, even emoji (Thanks Marina.) -Added (?) button at lower right of main window for instant access to the user guide. -Added EXPORT button down next to PRINT button (Thanks Marina and others) -MazePhrase font size setting is now used for both maze and answer display, and the "Solution Path Size" no longer independently affects the answer font size. -Major changes to Maze-Phrase "exact-fit" solver, now works much harder to find a solution when "Exact Fit" is on. -Added a "Set all colors to B&W" option to App menu, for easy global change for printed publications (Thanks Marina!) -Export has a "Reveal Directory in Finder" button, which will open the directory you have chosen, so you can easily access it from the Finder later. -Maze title text font size will auto-shrink as the text gets longer, to reduce problems with verbose paragraph text as a title. Works on the Preview and on the printed pages. -The Application "Preferences" menu item is now renamed (per Apple's change in MacOS 13) to "Settings". -New option in Settings dialog for displaying animated maze-building progress. -You can now choose your own font for the Start/End Marker letters. -SVG Export now uses a sans-serif font for Start/Finish letters, and a different serif font for any MazePhrase letters. (Thanks Nick) -Cell Shape popup menu now has the common/technical shape names listed, and the names are consistent with the Stats display now. (e.g., Sigma, Delta...). -Added a WARNING dialog when opening older maze documents, since they will not re-build the same path with this new engine. -Added "Contact Author" help menu item that sends me an e-mail. -The Main and Layout tabs you selected when you quit the app will be remembered and popped back to when you run it again. -BugFix: POV-Ray MazePhrase letters are now properly aligned. -BugFix: SVG Export can now properly handle punctuation (&, ", ', etc.) in the MazePhrase letters. (thanks Nick!) -BugFix: Fixed the Bounding Box of SVG export so that very wiggly outer walls no longer get cut off (Thanks Sue!) -BugFix: MazePhrase (non-exact-fit) more closely tracks the DIFFICULTY setting, so higher difficulties now make longer MazePhrase solutions. ...and more!

-BIG New Feature: Maze PATH style (See Layout/Walls.) Now you can choose to draw path lines along all the maze corridors, instead of walls beside the paths. This is possibly most useful when exported as SVG/PDF for cutting of a maze with a router/cricut/CNC machine. -Start and End wall-breakout directions are now configurable! -Big layout changes to the Layout tab, broken into Maze/Cell/Wall sub-sections. -Added 5 new shapes: Vertical Oval, Chevron-Up, Chevron-Down, Chevron-Left, Chevron-Right. -Allowed slightly smaller size (10x10) for shapes (Jen) -Cleaner user interface, and better preview display in dark mode. (Thanks Katya!) -MazePhrase now has a #-of-letters counter text above text box, updated as you type. -Updated the maze-maker so it makes nicer looking mazes on EASY difficulty. -When doing MazePhrase mode, the Solution Marker style is now automatically switched to MazePhrase letters, and no other styles are allowed. -Reworked the Intro Screen, adding a PRIOR button and refining the user interface for easier navigation (Thanks Katya!) -Swapped position of Export and Appearance in the Prefs window. (Thanks Katya!) -Added a small "not yet built" prompt under Maze Preview whenever maze is cleared. -Huge update to the last page of the Intro screen, which now shows a scrollable table of ALL my software products, and clicking any row will open that product's web page. (Thanks Katya!) -POV & SVG export now fully support wiggly walls. -The title in the preview window above the maze resizes after you resize the window. -Allow ANY punctuation & symbol characters in MazePhrase text. -Added "Phrase (Puzzle) Letter Vertical Adjust:" slider to MazePhrase to slide letters up and down a bit in cells. -Changed PREVIEW area to toggle via radio-buttons. -BugFix: Resizing the window now updates the preview's maze title text size. -BugFix: When using Arrow Solution markers, and the END cell for the maze solution is not touching an edge wall, the last arrow in the solution becomes a non-directional cell dot instead. -BugFix: Maze wall "width" popup menus now describe wall thickness in a "relative way" (not fixed point size), so actual thickness is indeed relative to (and scales with) exported image size.