Word Search
Also known as a word find, word seek, word sleuth or letter grid puzzle.
A grid of letters with words buried in it — across, down, diagonally, and on the harder sizes backwards too. Drag across a word to claim it. The list underneath tracks what is left. Before any grid is served, every word on the list is counted in all eight directions and must appear exactly once: never zero, so nothing on the list is impossible to find, and never twice, so a correct sweep is never turned down.
Daily Puzzle
Settings
Drag from the first letter of a word to the last.
How to play Word Search — the rules
- Goal: find every word on the list inside the grid of letters.
- Drag from the first letter of a word to its last. On a keyboard, press Enter on the first letter and again on the last.
- Words run across, down and diagonally. On Medium and Hard they can also run backwards.
- Words may cross and share letters, but each one appears exactly once, so there is never a second place that would also be correct.
- There is no penalty for a wrong sweep. Take as long as you like — the timer is only there for your own record.
Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter to mark the start and end of a word, Esc to cancel.
What the badge means: filling the empty squares with random letters can accidentally spell one of the listed words somewhere else. If that happens, you can sweep a perfectly real word and be told it does not count. So before a grid is served, a checker that shares no code with the grid builder counts every listed word in all eight directions and requires exactly one. Grids that fail are repaired or rebuilt until they pass.
About the daily puzzle: unlike the rest of our games, this one cannot be the same worldwide — the words depend on the language you are playing in. Everyone playing today in this language gets the same grid, generated from a public seed. Across languages the grids are necessarily different.
Strategy and tips
How to Play Word Search: seven techniques for finding words faster
Frequently asked questions
What is a word search?
A grid of letters with words hidden inside it, running across, down, diagonally or backwards. You find each word on the list and sweep across it. It is also known as a word find or word seek.
What does "appears exactly once" mean?
Every word on the list is counted in all eight directions before the grid is served, and must come out to exactly one. Exactly one matters in both directions: zero would mean a word you can never find, and two would mean a spot where a correct sweep gets rejected because the game expected the other one.
Why can a word not be very short?
Because short words turn up by accident. A ten-by-ten grid holds roughly seven hundred two-letter runs, so a two-letter word appears somewhere by chance more often than not, and the "exactly once" promise becomes impossible to keep. Every word here is at least three letters long.
Why are some words never used together?
Because some pairs make the promise impossible. If one word sits inside another, placing the longer one creates a second copy of the shorter. The same happens in reverse — placing STAR also spells RATS backwards. Palindromes fail on their own, since one placement reads the same in both directions. We check for all three before building a grid.
Is the daily puzzle the same for everyone?
For everyone playing in the same language, yes — one grid a day from a public seed. It cannot be the same across languages, because the words themselves differ. This is the one game on the site where we do not claim a single worldwide puzzle.