How to Play Word Search
Find every word on the list inside the grid of letters. Each word occupies consecutive cells in one straight line — across, down or diagonally, and in the harder grids backwards as well — and you mark it by dragging from its first letter to its last. Words may cross and share letters. The puzzle is finished when the whole list is struck through.
The rules, step by step
- 1Read the word listEvery word underneath the grid is hidden in it exactly once. The words all belong to one theme, and none of them is shorter than five letters.
- 2Find a first letterPick a word and sweep the grid for its least common letter. That is faster than looking for the whole word, because you are matching one symbol instead of seven.
- 3Mark it from end to endDrag from the word's first letter to its last, or tap the two ends in turn. Either end may come first — a word read backwards counts exactly the same.
- 4Check all eight directionsWords run across, down and diagonally, forwards and backwards. How many of those eight directions are in play depends on the level you are playing.
- 5Expect words to crossTwo words may share a cell, and the letter in it belongs to both. Finding one word often exposes part of another running through it at an angle.
- 6Clear the list to finishThe puzzle ends when every word on the list is struck through. The clock runs from your first touch on the grid and stops on the last word.
Try it — the rules above, running
The body · 0 of 8
- ANKLE
- ELBOW
- KIDNEY
- KNUCKLE
- SKELETON
- STOMACH
- THROAT
- THUMB
New puzzle builds a fresh grid on the theme and level you last chose, Hint lights up the first letter of one word you have not found — never the whole word — and the three-dot menu at the end of the bar holds today’s shared puzzle, the twelve themes, the grid size and the keyboard shortcuts.
Your statistics · easy
- Played
- 0
- Won
- 0
- Win rate
- 0%
- Streak
- 0
- Best streak
- 0
- Best time
- —
This level
10 × 10, eight words, every one reading forwards — across, down, or down-and-right. Nothing is spelled backwards.
Keyboard
- Arrows
- Move around the grid
- Enter
- Mark the first letter, then the last
- Esc
- Clear the selection
- H
- Hint
- F
- Full screen
Where do you start a word search?
- 1Read the theme firstKnowing the grid is about the kitchen or the ocean primes you for the letters you are about to hunt, and makes the word list stick in your head instead of needing re-reading after every find.
- 2Start with the longest wordIt has the fewest possible homes on the grid and it fills the most cells, so finding it first gives you the most information about where everything else can be.
- 3Sweep for its rarest letterLook for the J, the K, the X or the W rather than for the word. One unusual letter on a board of 225 is easy to spot; a seven-letter sequence is not.
- 4Check the eight neighboursFound the first letter? Look at the eight cells around it for the second letter of the word. That fixes the direction, and the rest of the word confirms itself instantly.
- 5Mark it end to endDrag from the first letter to the last, or tap both ends. The cells light up and the word is struck off the list below the grid.
How do you mark a word you have found?
Two ways, and they work together. Drag: press on the first letter and slide to the last. Tap: tap the first letter, then tap the last — better on a phone, where a drag across fifteen cells is a long way for a thumb. Tapping the same cell twice clears the selection. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move around the grid and Enter marks the two ends; Escape cancels.
Direction never matters. The board reads the cells you selected and compares them to the list both forwards and backwards, so dragging RADAR or SEAWEED from either end marks it. If the two cells you picked are not on a straight line, the board says so rather than counting it as a wrong guess.
What do you do when you are stuck?
- Change axis. If the remaining words are not in the rows, they are in the columns or the diagonals — and almost always the diagonals.
- Read the grid, not the list. Pick an unusual letter you can see on the board and ask which word on the list contains it, instead of the other way round.
- Work the edges. Long words are pushed towards the middle by the need to fit, so the corners and edges are where the shortest words tend to end up.
- Use the hint. It lights the first letter of one unfound word for a few seconds and tells you which word it is. The direction is still yours to find, so it is a nudge rather than an answer.
Can the same word be hidden twice?
Not here, and that is a deliberate piece of engineering rather than luck. Once the words are placed, every remaining cell is given the list of letters that would complete a listed word running through it in any direction, and those letters are excluded before the filler letter is picked. Without that check, roughly one hard grid in 220 contains a second copy of a word — and a second copy is what makes a correct find fail to mark, which is the single most common complaint about word search apps.
How do you win more often?
- Search for the rarest letter, never the whole wordA grid of 225 letters holds perhaps two Js and three Vs, but around thirty Es. Sweeping for the rarest letter in your target word turns a seven-symbol match into a one-symbol match, and the eye can do the second one at a glance.
- Give the columns their own passYears of reading make horizontal words almost free and vertical words almost invisible — most players' unfound words at the two-minute mark are vertical. Deliberately reading down each column, ignoring the rows entirely, finds them in a fraction of the time.
- Take the long words firstA nine-letter word fits on a 15 × 15 grid in far fewer places than a five-letter one — there is simply less room for it — so it is both easier to find and more valuable, because the letters it occupies narrow down where everything else can be.
- Sweep one diagonal direction at a timeLooking for 'a diagonal word' finds nothing, because that is four different searches at once. Trace the down-right diagonals as a set, then the up-right ones, and so on. Backwards diagonals are worth doing first, since they are where unfound words usually hide.
- Use the theme against the gridThe list is not random: every word belongs to one subject, so its letters cluster. A kitchen grid is thick with Ts and Rs and an ocean grid with As and Ss, which means the filler resembles the words and the odd letter out — a K, a W — is nearly always part of an answer.
Common questions about word search
- Do word search words ever go round corners?
- No. Every word is a straight line of consecutive cells. If a word seems to bend, you have found part of one word and part of another crossing it.
- Can a word search word wrap around the edge of the grid?
- Not in this one. Some printed puzzles allow wrapping, which most players find unfair; here every word fits inside the grid from first letter to last.
- Is there any penalty for a wrong selection?
- None at all. The board tells you the letters are not on the list and clears the selection. Only the clock is counting, and you can ignore that too.
- Can you play a word search with the keyboard?
- Yes, and no mouse is needed. The arrow keys move a highlight around the grid, Enter marks the first letter and then the last, and Escape clears a selection you have changed your mind about. H gives a hint and F fills the screen.
Ready to stop reading? Play word search on the full board, with controls and statistics tailored to that game.