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Printable word search maker

This word search generator hides your own words in a letter grid. Paste your word list, choose the grid size and the directions words can run, and print a word search with a matching answer key, with no watermark and no account. The puzzle is built in your browser at true page size, and the words you type never leave your device.

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Spaces and punctuation are stripped for the grid; the printed list keeps them.
Details
Sheet— Grid— Words— Pages— Seed—

How this generator works

Placing words in a grid is a packing problem, and this page solves it by enumeration. For every word it checks each legal starting square in each allowed direction, and scores every candidate by how many letters it would share with words already on the grid. It then takes one of the best-scoring candidates at random. If the words have to be laid out again to avoid an offensive word, it passes over any candidate that would spell one with letters already placed, and takes a lower-scoring one if every best-scoring one would. Easy allows two directions (across and down), medium adds the two downward diagonals, and hard allows all eight. Preferring shared letters makes the puzzle feel dense, and the list is placed longest word first, because a nine-letter word placed last has almost nowhere left to go. The Details panel reports how many of your words were placed. If a word cannot fit anywhere, the page names it in a notice and leaves it off the printed list.

The empty squares are then filled with letters drawn mostly from your own words, in the proportions they appear there. Fillers drawn evenly from A to Z would scatter J, Q, X and Z across the grid, and experienced solvers read those as "not part of a word" and skip past them, a free hint the puzzle never meant to give. With fillers from the puzzle's own letters, the background has the same texture as the answers. The maker also screens the letters it generates for offensive words, whether random filler spells one or two of your words spell one where they meet. It redraws those filler letters, or lays the words out again, and a list with very few different letters can then get a few filler letters from the rest of the alphabet. The whole sheet is SVG in real millimeters, and the answer key is a second page with the words ringed and the fillers in light gray. Printing goes through your browser's own dialog, so choosing "Save as PDF" as the destination saves the puzzle and the key as one file.

Fillers are placed without checking whether they spell one of your words somewhere else on the grid. That happens occasionally with short words on large grids, and the effect is an extra copy for a solver to find; the puzzle still works. The hard setting adds backwards and upward directions, which makes the puzzle harder for young solvers, so medium suits most classroom sheets. Print at 100% or "Actual size", because "Fit to page" rescales the grid.

Frequently asked questions

What grid size should I choose?
The grid can be 8 to 30 letters per side, and it has to be at least as wide as your longest word. About one and a half times the length of your longest word makes a comfortable puzzle. Fifteen suits most classroom lists of fifteen to twenty words; go to twenty or more for longer lists, and down to ten for young solvers. If a word is longer than the grid, the page names it and tells you the grid size that fits it.
Can I hide phrases with spaces, hyphens, or apostrophes?
Yes. Spaces, hyphens and apostrophes are stripped before placement, so "ICE CREAM" is hidden in the grid as ICECREAM, the usual word search convention, while the printed word list shows the phrase as you typed it, in capitals. Accented letters are folded to their nearest A–Z letter, so CAFÉ is hidden as CAFE and PIÑATA as PINATA. A letter with no A–Z equivalent cannot go in the grid: it is dropped, and the page names it and warns that the printed list and the grid will differ.
Where is the answer key?
It is the second page of the printout, with every word ringed and the filler letters in light gray so the solution reads at a glance. Untick "Include an answer key" to leave it out, for example when you are copying class sets and want to keep the key back.
Why aren't the filler letters completely random?
They are random, but drawn mostly from the letters of your own words. When every letter from A to Z is equally likely, rare letters such as J, Q, X and Z turn up all over the grid, and a solver soon learns to skip them. Drawing from your own words makes the filler look like the hidden words around it. The maker also screens the letters it generates for offensive words. When it finds one, it redraws those letters or lays the words out again, and for a list with very few different letters a redraw can take a few letters from the rest of the alphabet.
Is anything uploaded or stored?
No. This page reads your word list, lays it out as vector geometry on your device, and prints it through your browser's own dialog. Nothing is sent anywhere, there is no account or watermark, and no settings are saved: close the tab and the puzzle is gone.

Related tools

Or play one instead

This sheet is for printing. To solve a grid on screen, Word Game Library deals a fresh one every round, and it can hand its puzzle back to this page already filled in.