Getting a word search onto paper
A word search is one of the few puzzles that is arguably better on paper: no scrolling, no tapping, a pencil to circle with, and it works for a table of six people at once. Everything on this site was built with that in mind, so printing isn't an export — it's a first-class way to use the page.
Two ways to print, and they're for different things
- The Print button
The grid you're looking at.
Sitting under the puzzle on every page. It prints the exact grid on your screen — same letters, same word list, site furniture stripped out. Use it when you've found a puzzle you like and want that one on paper, or to carry on a half-solved grid away from the screen.
- Download a puzzle pack
Up to 10 fresh ones.
The panel below the grid builds a PDF of brand-new puzzles from the same word pool, with an answer key on its own page at the back. Use it when you need a stack — a week of worksheets, a rainy afternoon, a table of solvers who all want their own.
What a pack contains
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Open any puzzle page and find the pack panel — it's the 🖨️ Download a puzzle pack (PDF) line under the grid. Every page in the table above has one.
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Choose a difficulty and how many. One to 10 puzzles, one or two to a page. Every puzzle in the pack is generated separately, so ten copies means ten genuinely different grids — nobody at the next desk has yours.
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Tick what the sheet needs. An answer key collected on its own final page you can keep back, a name-and-date line for a classroom, backwards words, and large print — which drops to one puzzle a page automatically, because the point of large print is large.
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Name it and download. The pack title prints as the header on every sheet, so “Class 4B — Week 12” comes back looking like it was meant for them. The file is built in your browser and saved straight to your device.
| Setting | Grid | Words | Directions | Places a word can hide |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 10 × 10 | 9 | Across and down only | 300 |
| Medium | 12 × 12 | 13 | Across, down and diagonal | 532 |
| Hard | 14 × 14 | 18 | Across, down and diagonal, backwards too | 828 |
That last column is the difficulty in one number: how many starting squares a six-letter word could be using in that grid, counting every direction the setting allows. Easy isn't easy because the words are gentler — it's easy because there are far fewer places to look.
Picking a sheet for the solver
The single most useful thing to know when you're choosing from the table above is that long words are easier to find than short ones, which surprises people who assume the opposite. It isn't about vocabulary. A long word simply has fewer places to be: it needs a long clear run, so most starting squares are ruled out before you begin.
Where a word can hide
Starting squares available to a word of each length in the 12 × 12 medium grid, across all eight directions.
- 4 letters 756
- 5 letters 640
- 6 letters 532
- 7 letters 432
- 8 letters 340
- 9 letters 256
- 10 letters 180
A five-letter word has 3.6 times as many possible homes as a ten-letter one. That gap is why the average-length column in the table above is worth a glance: US States averages 8.2 letters and farm animals 5.7 — a real difference in how long the same grid takes.
So: for younger solvers or a first attempt, a short-word list on the easy setting is the kind end of the range. For someone who wants to be kept busy, a long-word list on hard adds diagonals and backwards words at the same time. There are 16 themed lists in the table to choose between, plus the mixed pool if the subject doesn't matter.
Printing well
The sheets are black on white by design — no background tints, no coloured headers, nothing that drinks ink or turns grey on a tired photocopier. A few practical notes worth knowing before you send thirty pages to a shared printer.
- Keep the answer key back Keys are collected on their own final page rather than printed beside each puzzle, so you can simply not hand out the last sheet. Untick the box entirely if the pack is going straight to a solver.
- Large print is a real setting It grows the grid and the word list together and forces one puzzle per page. Worth using for anyone solving without reading glasses to hand — a cramped grid is the usual reason a word search gets abandoned.
- Two-up saves paper, not effort Two puzzles to a page halves the stack and keeps the grids legible at the easy and medium sizes. At hard, or in large print, one per page is the only sensible layout.
- Print from the PDF, not the page The browser Print button is for the one grid on screen. For a stack, the pack PDF has proper margins and page breaks, and won't reflow differently on somebody else's printer.
Everything is free to photocopy
Print as many as you like, for a class, a club, a care home, a library or a kitchen table. Copying and handing out our puzzles for non-commercial use needs no permission from us and never expires — the one thing we ask is that they aren't sold or republished, which the terms set out in plain English. There is no account to make and nothing to sign up to; the PDF is built by your own browser and saved to your device.
Other things here that print
Word searches aren't the only paper puzzles on the site. Every crossword page builds packs the same way — minis for a quick one, midis for the classic one-grid-per-page sheet, and fill-ins for a puzzle with no clues at all. Cryptograms print with a writing line above every cipher letter, and word scrambles come as numbered worksheets with an optional word bank. If you want your own words on all of them, there's a crossword maker and a scramble maker alongside the word search one.