Play word search in your browser: a mixed grid on this page and twenty themed ones, from animals to vegetables, each 12×12 by default with sizes up to 20×20. There is no app, no sign-up and nothing to click through before the letters appear. It works offline after your first visit and can be played entirely from the keyboard.
Word Search board is loading.
Most people pick a word and stare at the grid until it appears. That works on a small grid and gets slow on a 20×20. A few habits make a real difference.
The fill letters here are drawn by English letter frequency, so the grid is full of E, T, A, O, I and N, just like ordinary text. Look instead for the letters the fill hardly ever uses: J, Q, X, Z, K and V. A Z in a 12×12 grid is nearly always part of a word such as ZEBRA or PIZZA. Find the rare letter, then check its eight neighbours for the next letter of the word.
Half of the eight directions are backwards, and the diagonals are where most people stop looking. For each word, hunt for its first and its last letter: a backwards word starts where your eye expects it to end. Doubled letters help too. The LL in GORILLA or the OO in MOON forms a pair that looks the same in every direction, and such pairs are uncommon in random fill.
When a few stubborn words are left, stop hunting and sweep. Take the first letter of one missing word and read the grid a row at a time, stopping at every copy of that letter to check its eight neighbours. It is slower per step but covers every cell. On a 20×20, a finger on the screen or the arrow keys help you keep your place.
Long words are easier to spot and, once banded, they take letters out of play for the rest. Three-letter words such as FOX or SUN hide easily among the fill, so leave them for the end. If you are still stuck, a hint gives only the first letter and its position; you still find the word yourself.
This page plays a mixed list of 79 words, four from each theme. The twenty themed pages each use their own list of 54 to 78 words: animals, food, countries, sports, science, space, ocean, garden, kitchen, school, music, weather, travel, holidays, colors, jobs, birds, insects, fruits and vegetables. Every list was written for this site: common, family-friendly English words of three to twelve letters.
Grid size is in Settings and applies to the mixed grid and every theme from the next new game:
The kids page is separate: an 8×8 grid with five short words, which run only across, down and along the two diagonals that go to the right, never backwards. The timer is off by default there and hints are always free.
Each grid is generated on your device from a seed. The longest words are placed first, in any of the eight directions, and words may cross where their letters agree. No chosen word sits inside another chosen word, so you never get ANT and ELEPHANT in one grid, and every word appears exactly once, so there is only one place to find it. A word that cannot fit is swapped for another from the same list, and a 10×10 never uses words longer than ten letters.
The empty cells are filled with letters weighted to English frequency, and a short filter re-rolls any fill letter that would spell an offensive word in any direction.
Word search puzzles appeared in US newspapers and puzzle books in the late 1960s and spread quickly, because they need no general knowledge and anyone can start one. They also go by names such as word find, word seek and find-a-word. Teachers took to them early for spelling and topic vocabulary, and themed grids are still a classroom staple. The idea has barely changed: a square of letters, a list of words, and the pleasure of spotting one hiding in plain sight.
The timer starts on your first press, pauses when you switch tabs or press Pause, and stops on the last word. Stats are kept separately for the mixed grid and each theme: played, won, win rate, best and average time, all in this browser. The first two hints are free; once ads are enabled, more hints cost a short ad or a 30-second wait.
Restart replays the same grid and New game makes a fresh one. Every grid has a code such as A7K3Q to type in or share as a link, and the win panel offers a short share text. There is no undo, because a wrong selection is never recorded, and no daily word search; the printable page turns any theme into a PDF.
The grid scales to your screen, larger grids scroll inside the board on a phone and are played by tapping the first and last letter, and every letter can be reached with the arrow keys and selected with Space or Enter. Tidy Puzzles runs entirely in your browser: there is no app to install, no account to create and no interstitial before you can play. After the first visit the game also works offline, because each puzzle is generated on your device from a seed. Every board can be played with the keyboard alone, on a phone or a desktop, and your stats and unfinished puzzles stay in this browser rather than on a server.
Find every word in the list. Each one is hidden in a straight line in one of eight directions. Drag from its first letter to its last, or tap the first letter and then the last.
Yes. Words run across, down and along both diagonals, forwards or backwards. The kids grid uses only four directions and never places a word backwards.
Yes, where their letters agree. But no word is hidden inside another, and each appears exactly once.
Open Settings and choose 10 × 10, 12 × 12, 15 × 15 or 20 × 20. The new size applies from the next new game, on this page and on every theme.
It marks the first letter of one word you have not found and says where it is, for example row 3, column 7. It never finds the whole word for you.
Yes. The printable page makes a PDF in your browser with up to six grids on any theme and an optional solution page.
Yes. After your first visit the game is cached and grids are generated on your device.
Yes. Arrow keys move, Space or Enter marks the first and last letter, every letter is a labelled button and finds are announced.
PDF sheets on any theme, with a solution page.
An 8×8 grid with five short words in four directions.
Seventy-seven animals, from FOX to ARMADILLO.
Every planet, plus rockets, rovers and quasars.
Berries, citrus and tropical fruit.
Flip and match pairs on 4×4 or 6×6 boards.
Picture logic you can solve without guessing.
Unique-solution grids from Easy to Evil.
Last updated 2026-09-27. Written and maintained by the Tidy Puzzles team; puzzles are generated on your device. How it works.