Kitchen word search: tools, appliances and cooking

Play a kitchen word search with 78 words from around the room: appliances such as STOVE and FRIDGE, tools from WHISK to COLANDER, and cooking verbs like SIMMER, ROAST and DICE. Twelve are hidden in each 12×12 grid. No app, no sign-up and no interstitial before play; it works offline after your first visit and plays from the keyboard.

How to play the kitchen word search

1. Twelve kitchen words are hidden in straight lines: across, down or diagonal, forwards or backwards.
2. Drag from the first letter to the last, or tap both in turn.
3. A correct find is banded in colour and struck off; wrong picks are ignored.
4. Hint marks the first letter of a word you have not found.
5. Find every word to finish; the found count sits in the header above the grid.

Kitchen word search strategy

The kitchen list has more three-letter words than any other theme: CUP, MUG, POT, PAN, WOK, LID, JUG, JAR, FRY and MIX. A 12×12 often gets two or three of them, and they are the words that keep a grid from being finished.

Short words last, with a plan

Leave three-letter words until the long ones are banded. Then take each in turn and sweep the grid row by row for its least common letter: the W of WOK, the J of JUG and JAR, the X of MIX, the Y of FRY. Check the eight neighbours of every hit. For POT, PAN and CUP, find the P and check both directions.

Nested words

POT is inside TEAPOT, PAN inside PANTRY and MIX inside MIXER. The generator never picks both, so if TEAPOT is in the list there is no separate POT.

Letters the fill rarely makes

K runs through this list, in WOK, FORK, KNIFE, WHISK, KETTLE, SKILLET, SINK, RACK, COOK and CORKSCREW, and K is uncommon in the fill. So are Z (FREEZER) and V (STOVE, OVEN, SIEVE, SERVE, CLEAVER, MICROWAVE). Doubles help too: the EE of FREEZER and PEELER, the TT of KETTLE, the LL of SKILLET and GRILL.

Words in the kitchen word search

The 78 kitchen words are the shortest on the site on average, a little over five letters each. Ten have only three letters, and the longest, MICROWAVE and CORKSCREW, have nine, so every word fits even a 10×10.

The list moves around the room. First the big things: STOVE, OVEN, MICROWAVE, FRIDGE, FREEZER, SINK, FAUCET, COUNTER, CABINET, PANTRY. Then what you eat from (PLATE, BOWL, CUP, MUG, GLASS, FORK, KNIFE, SPOON), what you cook in (POT, PAN, SKILLET, WOK, KETTLE, TEAPOT) and what you cook with: LADLE, SPATULA, WHISK, TONGS, GRATER, PEELER, BLENDER, COLANDER, SIEVE, STRAINER, MORTAR and PESTLE. Last come fourteen verbs, BAKE, BOIL, FRY, ROAST, GRILL, STEAM, SIMMER, CHOP, SLICE, DICE, STIR, MIX, POUR and SERVE, and the people doing them, CHEF and COOK.

KNIFE keeps its silent K, which is easy to forget when you scan for the N. FAUCET is the American word for a tap.

Stats, hints and printables

The timer pauses when the tab is hidden, and Kitchen stats (played, won, win rate, best and average time) stay in this browser. The first two hints are free; once ads are enabled, more cost a short ad or a 30-second wait. Every grid has a code such as A7K3Q to replay or share, and the printable page makes kitchen sheets.

Plays anywhere, no app, no account

The kitchen grid fits a phone propped on the counter, with letters large enough to tap, and it plays from the keyboard on a laptop. 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.