Questions

What exactly is a word search?

A grid of apparently random letters with words hidden inside it. The words run horizontally, vertically or diagonally, and any of them may be written backwards. The job is to find all of them. Everything else — the theme, the grid size, how many words — is just how a particular puzzle is set.

Who actually uses these?

Three groups, and only one of them is a classroom. Teachers are the largest by far — a word search is a quick refresher on material just covered, and it reaches students that a page of questions does not, particularly in language, vocabulary and English as a second language. Workplaces use them to get adults to engage with training material, or for something lighter at a seasonal event. Individuals make them for a birthday, a party, or twenty minutes of quiet. The maker does not care which you are.

Where are the answers?

Every puzzle has an answer key, and you never have to hunt for it. On screen, Show answers rings each word where it sits in the grid. In print, the key is a second page, separate from the student sheet — so you can hand out one and keep the other.

What do I get when I print?

A student sheet and a separate answer key, sized for A4. No advertising, no watermark, no logo and no URL across the bottom. What is on the paper is the puzzle — which matters when thirty copies are going out to a class.

Can I photocopy it, or use it in something I publish?

Yes, to both. There is no charge and no licence to accept. Print it, copy it for a class, put it in a newsletter or a parish magazine. You do not need to credit this site, and nothing printed from here asks you to.

Can students solve them on screen?

Yes. Drag across the letters, or use the arrow keys and Enter — the keyboard route exists so the puzzle is not locked to a mouse or a touchscreen. Nothing is saved to the puzzle itself, so the same sheet is clean again for the next person, and it prints identically whenever you come back to it.

How do I make my own?

Paste or type a list into the word search maker, one word per line. The grid fills in as you go, so you can see the sheet before you commit to it. You do not need an account to make one or to print it.

How long can the words be, and how many can I have?

As long as you like, and as many as fit. The grid grows to hold the longest word and the number of words you give it, from twelve squares across up to thirty-four — so a long word gets a bigger grid rather than being quietly dropped. If a list is too large even for the biggest grid, the maker tells you which words did not fit instead of pretending they did.

Can I edit a puzzle after publishing it?

No. A published puzzle keeps the address it was given, because those addresses get written on worksheets and bookmarked and sent to colleagues, and a puzzle that changes under an address somebody has already handed out is worse than one that cannot change at all. If you need a different version, make a new one — and if the old one should come down, ask.

Do I need an account?

Not to find, solve, print or make a puzzle — which is nearly everything this site does. An account only exists so you can come back to the puzzles you made and the ones you saved. There is no password: signing in sends a link to your address, and that is the whole of it.

Do they have to be in English?

No. There are Spanish, French, German and Latin puzzles here already. One caveat worth knowing before you build a sheet for a class: the letters used to fill the empty squares are drawn from the English alphabet, so a non-Latin script — Greek, Cyrillic, Japanese — stands out sharply against them and the puzzle stops being much of a puzzle.

I found a puzzle that should not be here.

Tell us and it goes. Anyone can publish here and nothing is read by a person first, so this is the report that matters most — use the contact form and choose “A puzzle that should not be here”. The same route works for a misspelling, a wrong answer, or a word that is not actually in the grid.

Still stuck?

There is a contact form, and a person reads what comes through it. If your question is about a particular puzzle, sending the link is the difference between an answer today and a reply asking which one.