Word Search
A free word search that runs in the browser. A square of letters, a list of words hiding inside it, and one tap at each end of a word to mark it. Three grid sizes, and the word list can be English, Hebrew or Spanish whatever language the buttons are in.
- Free
- No ads
- No account
- No download
- Works offline
- Single player
How do you play?
- Pick the word language - Buttons under the board switch the list between English, Spanish and, in a Hebrew interface, Hebrew. The grid is redealt in that language and the rest of the app stays where it was.
- Find the first letter - Read a word off the list, then look for its opening letter on the board. Tapping it marks the start with a coloured ring.
- Tap the far end - A second tap on the word's last letter closes the line. The two ends must sit on one row, one column or one 45 degree diagonal.
- Guess for free - A selection that is not a word gives the board a small shake and leaves. Nothing locks, nothing is deducted, and the next try starts immediately.
- Clear the list - Every word marked ends the board and stops the clock. The record is that time, kept separately for each grid.
About this game
Tap the first letter. Tap the last one. The word lights up. Dragging does the same thing and is never required.
The grid is built words-first, and that is the whole design. Every word on the list is planted at a real position in a real direction before a single filler letter is drawn, so the list beside the board is exactly the set of words that went in. A generator that scatters letters and then looks to see what turned up is the one that hands a child a list containing a word that is not there, and a child cannot tell an absent word from a well-hidden one. They keep looking. Then they give up. Across 36,000 dealt boards no list came out shorter than its tier asks for and no board had to be thrown away and rebuilt, at a cost of 3 placement tries per word on the small grid and 5.3 on the large one.
Difficulty moves three things at once. The grid goes 8 by 8, then 10, then 12. The list goes 6 words, then 8, then 10. And the set of directions a word may hide in goes from two to three to all eight, which is the axis that actually decides how the puzzle feels: across and down sit on lines the eye already sweeps, while a word running backwards and uphill has to be hunted letter by letter.
Filler is the other half of a word search. On the small grid 44.1 percent of the squares belong to no word at all; on the large one it is 55.6 percent, so more than half of what a player scans is noise by design. The letters are not drawn uniformly either. Each language has its own frequency table, because a grid of rare letters makes the planted words stand out from their surroundings and the search stops being a search. Words run 6.5 letters on average, so three matching letters in a row is usually the real thing.
The admission. At the hardest tier the words barely cross each other, 1.09 shared squares on an entire board, so a letter you have already found almost never shortens the next word. There is no hint button either. That leaves patience as the only method on a 144 square grid, and patience is a fine thing to practise and a dull thing to be stuck inside.
What does it teach?
Seeing a word as a shape
After a few boards the eye stops reading letter by letter and starts recognising whole words by their outline. That is the same jump that turns decoding into reading.
Searching on purpose
144 squares cannot be covered at random. A child who starts going row by row has learned a search method, which outlasts any particular word.
Two alphabets, one game
Switching the word language puts a fluent English reader in front of a Hebrew grid and slows them right down. The list holds 215 English words and 180 Hebrew ones, written separately rather than translated.
Staying with something
One word can take a minute. Nothing counts down and nothing can be lost, so that minute is practice at not giving up.
Tips
Hunt one letter, not a word
Sweep for the opening letter alone. A single character is far faster to spot than a sequence, and only once your eye stops do you check which of the eight directions carries on.
Long words have fewer homes
An eight letter word on a 12 by 12 grid fits in very few places, so it is the cheapest to find first. The short ones then fall out on their own.
Read rows, not words
Instead of hunting a chosen word, read one row end to end and see what jumps. On the small grid every word sits on a row or a column, so an orderly pass clears it.
The direction you skipped
When a hard board seems to be missing a word, it is almost always running backwards or climbing. Try the four directions nobody checks first.
What age is it for?
5 to 6
The 8 by 8 grid with six words in two directions. Average word length there is 6 letters, which is long enough to recognise and short enough to finish.
7 to 9
The 10 by 10 grid with eight words, and the descending diagonal joins in. This is where scanning rows stops being enough.
10 and up
The 12 by 12 grid, ten words, all eight directions. Over half the board is filler and the clock starts to be worth beating.
Grown-ups
A hard board in under two minutes. Then switch the list to a language you do not read fluently and the same puzzle turns difficult again.
Accessibility
Every square is a real button that announces the letter on it along with its row and column, and two taps complete any word in the game. Dragging is a shortcut rather than a requirement, which matters for a small hand that does not aim precisely yet and for alternative pointing devices. Enter and Space do exactly what a finger does, so a whole board can be solved from the keyboard. A found word is marked by colour and by a line through it in the list, so the distinction never rests on colour alone, and the ten marker colours are spread across lightness as well as hue. There is no countdown and no failure sound. The word list is written in its own language's direction even when the interface is in another.
Playing together
Split the list
Hand out the words before starting. Everyone owns their own, and it becomes obvious how often one opening letter leads somewhere else.
Say it before you touch it
Whoever spots a word names its direction out loud first, then taps. It turns a lucky glance into something that can be explained.
Play the other language
Switch the list and start again. An adult who reads English fluently discovers that a Hebrew or Spanish grid slows them to a child's pace.
Race the clock
Two people solve the same tier and compare times. Records are stored per grid, so an easy run and a hard one are not comparable.
Common questions
Is every word on the list really in the grid?
Yes, and it falls out of how the board is made. Each word is planted before any filler letter exists, and the list you see is exactly the words that were planted.
I found a word somewhere else and it counted. Why?
Because it was genuinely there. Filler letters spell a listed word by accident about 7.5 times in every 10,000 hard boards, and the game accepts any occurrence rather than only the one it planted.
Can I do a word search in Hebrew?
Yes. A horizontal Hebrew word runs right to left inside the grid, the way it is read, while the grid itself never mirrors.
Do I have to drag my finger?
No. Two taps, one at each end, do the same job, and so does the keyboard.
Is there a hint?
None, deliberately. A hint would let a player skip the scanning, and the scanning is the entire puzzle.
What happens if I close the tab?
The board, the words already marked and the clock are all waiting when you come back.
Does it cost anything?
No. The page loads and you play, with no sign-up and no adverts.