Free word search generator
Type your words, choose how the page should look, and download a print-ready PDF. Building and previewing needs no account, and what comes out has no watermark on it.
Most free generators give you one puzzle on a web page and a print button. This one is built for making books: many puzzles, laid out as real pages, with an answer section at the back and page numbers that run in the right order. It happens to make single puzzles very well, which is what most people want first.
How it works
The word list is plain text. A topic is a title, a colon, then the words separated by commas. One topic per line, one puzzle per topic:
That is the whole format. It is quick to type, quick to paste from a spelling list or a lesson plan, and quick to have an assistant draft if you would rather not write it yourself. Words with spaces are fine: SEA BREEZE prints with its space in the word list and is hidden in the grid as SEABREEZE, which is how word searches have always worked.
Everything else is a control on the left, and the page redraws as you change it. What you see is the actual PDF, not an approximation of it.
Two topics are already loaded, so there is something on the page the moment it opens. Replace them with your own words and watch the preview change.
What you can change
All of it, on the free plan. Nothing about how the page looks is behind a payment. Locking a font would be a strange thing to charge for, and nobody would pay it.
- Grid
- Size from small to 20×20 or beyond, words per puzzle, and whether words may run backwards
- Page
- Letter (8.5×11) or 6×9, margins, one or more puzzles per page, and the same for solutions
- Type
- 46 font families, sizes, and five presets: Kids, Large Print, Classic, Challenge, Minimalist
- Styling
- Title colour, shaded bands, alignment, borders, gridlines, and how found words are marked in the answers
- Word list
- Where it sits on the page, how many columns, alignment, and alphabetical order
- Pages
- Numbering, wording, position, and the hint that points at each answer
The same puzzle twice, or never the same twice
Every grid is built from a seed. Keep the seed and the same word list reproduces exactly the same book, letter for letter, useful when you have printed a worksheet and need another copy months later. Change the seed and you get a completely different arrangement from the same words.
It also means two people who pick the same topic on the same day end up with different puzzles, which matters if you are making something to sell.
What free actually means here
The free plan is not a demo with a watermark stamped across it. It produces a real, print-ready PDF at exactly the quality the paid plan does, in both trim sizes, with every font and every layout control available.
What it limits is volume: ten puzzles per book and ten downloads a month. Pasting your own word lists is unlimited and always free, however many words and however many topics. There are also twenty sample topics from the library to try, one per subject.
An account is needed to download, because the monthly count has to attach to somebody. Building and previewing needs nothing at all. You can see the whole thing before deciding whether it is worth signing in for. The pricing page has the details of what the paid plan adds, which is more volume and a library of 1,346 ready-made topics.
Printing it
The download is an ordinary PDF. Print it at home, take it to a copy shop, or upload it to a print-on-demand service. It is yours, with no per-copy fee and nothing to credit. If you are making something to sell, the notes on building a word search book for print cover trim sizes and page counts.
Print at 100%, not “fit to page”. Scaling shrinks the margins, and a puzzle book that has been scaled to 94% is the usual reason a grid ends up slightly off-centre.
Paste a spelling list, a set of vocabulary, or anything else. The preview updates as you type, and the download is a real PDF.