Part of the Fortnightly Topic Challenge #35: Restricted Title 1
Surprised no one went for this low hanging fruit yet
Get from MAZE to DONE
When you're DONE with the MAZE, apply the following the changes: -- You can probably game this puzzle by working back and forth, but I would prefer if you do the maze first ignoring the changes. You'll probably have more fun. =D
+0 +2 +2 -14 -10 +5 +0 +7 -17 +6 +15 +5 -7 -5 -5 -1 -7 +7 -14 -9 -6 +1 +4 +15
This MAZE DONE at your final answer.
The way this maze works is:
Each square can be associated with a four-letter word. We can move from square A to square B if the words differ in only one position, that is, we can form a word ladder with the words we go through.
However, there is a catch:
If we just try to follow a simple path to the end, we realize it's actually impossible! This is because some squares are actually clues for multiple four-letter words, and some squares will have to be used more than once!
The path through the maze:
The final answer:
Taking the changed letters at each step of our word ladder, and adding the offsets, we get:
This maze done at MIDNIGHT. (according to OP, this was meant to be a pun: as this puzzle was posted on May 31, it indicates that this May's done at midnight.)
