Word Search Maker

What the maker does with your word list

Type or paste up to 25 words, one per line, and the counter under the box tracks how many you have used. Spaces inside an entry are fine, so "dragon fruit" is placed as one unbroken run of letters. The maker sorts your words longest first, places each one, then fills every remaining square with random letters. Anything that could not be fitted is named in the warning line rather than quietly dropped, which is the bit that matters before you photocopy thirty sheets.

Grid size runs 10 by 10, 12 by 12, 15 by 15, 18 by 18, 20 by 20, 22 by 22 and 25 by 25, with 15 by 15 selected by default. Four direction switches decide how hard the puzzle is: horizontal and vertical are ticked to begin with, diagonal and backwards are not. Once a puzzle is on screen the three export buttons become active: print the puzzle with its answer key, download the puzzle as a PNG, or download the answer key as a separate PNG.

The style panel is worth two minutes

Below the options there are two collapsible style groups. The first offers thirteen background themes, from plain and lined paper through chalkboard, stars and space, jungle leaves and confetti to a pastel gradient, plus an opacity slider running from 5 to 40 per cent so a theme stays behind the letters. The second group sets typography: six print safe font stacks, title size, letter size from small through to extra large, upper or lower case letters, grid line thickness and colour, an option to hide the word list entirely, and a choice between a classic highlight answer key and a book style key that draws coloured capsules over each found word.

Picking a size and a word count that suit the class

The only hard constraint is that your longest word has to fit inside the grid, so a 10 by 10 grid cannot hold "photosynthesis". After that it is density. Fewer words in a big grid means more filler and a longer hunt; more words in a small grid means heavy overlap, which often makes words easier to spot because real letters cluster.

For Foundation and Year 1, a 10 by 10 grid with six to eight short words, horizontal and vertical only, and extra large upper case letters is about right. Year 2 and Year 3 cope well with 12 by 12 and ten to twelve words, and this is the sensible point to switch diagonals on. Year 4 to Year 6 can take the default 15 by 15 with fifteen words and all four directions. For high school revision or a puzzle intended for adults, 20 by 20 upwards with twenty to twenty five subject terms gives a puzzle that takes real time.

A worked example from a Year 4 water cycle unit

Say you are finishing a two week water cycle unit and want a settling activity for the Friday session. Paste in evaporation, condensation, precipitation, collection, runoff, groundwater, vapour, cloud, ocean, river, transpiration and reservoir. That is twelve words and the longest is thirteen letters, so choose 15 by 15. Leave horizontal and vertical ticked, tick diagonal, leave backwards off. Set letter size to large and the background to none so the photocopier does not smear a pattern across the page. Give it the title "Water Cycle Review" so the sheet is identifiable once it lands in a folder.

Generate, check the warning line to confirm all twelve were placed, then print. Because the word list doubles as a spelling list, ask students to write a definition beside three of the words they find, which turns the sheet into a vocabulary task rather than a time filler.

Differentiating from one word list

Rather than building three puzzles, build one word list and export it three ways. Generate with horizontal and vertical only for students who need a win, regenerate with diagonals and backwards on for early finishers, then tick "hide word list" for your strongest group so they must recall the terms before searching. Each regeneration reshuffles placement, so the sheets do not look identical.

Two typography settings help specific students. Extra large letters with bold black grid lines reduce visual crowding for low vision or tracking difficulties, and lower case letters suit early readers who have not yet met capitals in running text.

Getting it onto A4 cleanly

Print from a desktop browser, choose A4 portrait, and set margins to default or normal. Grids of 18 by 18 and above sit better on "fit to page" than at 100 per cent. If you picked a background theme, tick "background graphics" in the print dialogue, otherwise it will not appear; if you did not, leave it unticked and save toner.

The print output is built as two pages on purpose: the puzzle, then the answer key. If you only want the puzzle, print page one alone from the page range field. Our guide on printing worksheets that actually fit the page covers the scaling and margin settings in more detail, and how to make a word search for your classroom walks through word list choice.

Licence, watermark and selling what you make

Free use covers personal, homeschool and classroom use, including printing class sets. On the free tier, printed and downloaded puzzles carry a light tiled "ZillaKit.com" watermark across the grid and a single credit line under it. The watermark is deliberately faint and the puzzle is still perfectly usable, but it is visible, so plan for it if you are making something you will hand to a parent group.

A Premium plan removes the watermark, unlocks the custom background upload so you can drop in your own school or brand artwork, and adds a commercial licence covering resale and publication, including puzzle books, paid worksheet packs and products. Without that licence, selling puzzles produced here is not permitted. If publishing is the goal, the word search book checklist for KDP and make a puzzle book to sell on KDP set out what a print on demand file needs before you upload it.

Related tools

For a whole book rather than a single sheet, the Word Search Book Maker batches many puzzles into one document. The Crossword Puzzle Maker suits vocabulary where you want clues rather than a hunt, the Maze Generator covers early finishers who are not up to word work, and the Flashcard Maker turns the same list into revision cards.

Questions teachers ask