Word search maker

Type the words and the generator hides them in a grid of letters straight away. The preview is the puzzle your players get.

Words can run all eight ways, or only left to right. Switching off the backwards and diagonal directions is the quickest way to make a grid a younger class can finish.

The letters nobody uses can spell a word or a sentence. The generator reserves them while it builds, and tells you if a letter has nowhere to go.

The grid can be cut to a circle, a diamond, a star, a smiley or a cross. Fewer cells means the same words need a bigger board, and the generator handles that for you.

Turn on media and the list beside the grid shows your own text, pictures or audio — players work out the word first, then go looking for it.

The empty cells are filled from a character list you control, so a puzzle in another alphabet is not padded out with A–Z.

Let players rebuild the puzzle, so the same word list lands in a different grid each time they open it.

Put players in teams and they hunt the same grid at once, each find showing up for everyone.

A countdown turns the hunt into a race, with your own message on the screen when the time runs out.

Open a ready-made example and play it exactly like your players would.