Word Search
Find hidden words in a grid of letters. Drag to select, work through the word list, solve the puzzle.
Word Search
8×8 grid, 6 words. Right and down only.
Standard play. Timer runs. Hints available.
How to play
You get a grid filled with letters and a list of words hidden somewhere inside it. Each word sits in a straight line, running in one direction. Your job is to find them all.
On desktop, click the first letter and drag to the last. On mobile, tap and drag your finger across. If your selection matches a word, it stays highlighted and the word gets crossed off the list. If it does not match, the selection disappears and you try again.
When you get stuck, hit the Hint button. The first hint tells you where the word starts. The second adds the direction. The third highlights the whole thing. You get three per puzzle in Classic and Timed Trial modes.
Want more detail? Read the full rules and tips.
How to get faster at word search puzzles
Techniques that work once scanning the grid randomly stops being enough.
Small grids are forgiving. You can stare at an 8×8 grid and the words eventually pop out on their own. Once the grid hits 12×12 or larger, that passive scanning breaks down. Too many letters fighting for your attention, too many possible directions. The techniques below help when brute-force looking stops working.
Scan by first letter
Pick a word from the list. Find every instance of its first letter on the grid, then check each one by reading outward in valid directions. If the word starts with an uncommon letter like Q, X, or Z, there will only be a few candidates. If it starts with E or S, expect more, but the method still narrows things down faster than random scanning.
Start with short words
Shorter words are easier to spot and faster to verify. Each one you find shifts your visual field, making it easier to see what remains. Save the long words for last, when fewer distractions remain on the grid.
Target uncommon letters first
Words with J, Q, X, or Z in them are easier to locate because those letters appear less often in the fill. A word like QUARTZ practically jumps off the grid. Words made entirely of common letters (TASTE, SENSE) are harder to separate from the noise and should usually be left for later.
Check the diagonals
Most people naturally scan left-to-right and top-to-bottom, so horizontal and vertical words get found quickly. Diagonal placements, especially backward diagonals, tend to survive longest. On hard difficulty and above, make a deliberate pass checking diagonal lines once the straightforward words are done.
Use found words to narrow the search
Each found word covers a strip of cells you can mentally ignore. The remaining unfound words must occupy different cells (unless overlapping is allowed at Einstein level). As you clear words, the grid effectively shrinks.
What each difficulty level looks like
- Easy — 8×8 grid, 6 words, only right and down. Most people clear these in under a minute. A good warmup or starting point if you have not played before.
- Medium — 10×10 grid, 10 words. Adds left and up directions, which means words can run backward. The grid is still small enough to scan manually, but you need to check four directions instead of two.
- Hard — 12×12 grid, 14 words. Diagonals enter the picture. The jump from 10×10 to 12×12 is bigger than it seems because diagonal scanning is less natural for most people.
- Expert — 15×15 grid, 18 words in all 8 directions. Systematic technique becomes non-optional. Random scanning is too slow.
- Einstein — 20×20 grid, 24 words, all 8 directions, and words can overlap. This is the full experience. Each puzzle takes several minutes even for fast solvers.
What is a word search puzzle?
A word search is a grid of letters with words hidden inside it. The words run in straight lines across the grid, and you find them by reading the letters in sequence. Depending on the difficulty, words can go in two directions (right and down) or in all eight, including backward and diagonal.
The puzzle format has been around since the 1960s, when it started appearing in newspapers and puzzle books. It spread quickly because the rules are so simple. You do not need to know math, logic, or a foreign language. If you can read, you can play, which is why word searches remain popular with everyone from kids learning vocabulary to adults looking for a quiet ten minutes during lunch.
Most word search sites online still look and feel like they were built in 2010: white backgrounds, banner ads, no progress tracking, no adjustable difficulty. This version is different. The grid scales across five difficulty tiers. The hint system gives you progressively more information without spoiling the solve. Your progress is tracked locally, and there are no ads interrupting the experience.
The puzzle type works particularly well on mobile. Drag your finger across the letters to select a word. The direction locks to a straight line so you do not accidentally zigzag. Found words get highlighted in color on the grid and struck through on the word list, so your progress is always visible.