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Hide your own words in a puzzle
A spelling list, the names at a birthday party, this term's vocabulary — type the words and get a printable puzzle with an answer sheet.
Preview
How it works
Three steps, one printable
Type your words
One per line or separated by commas. Up to 24 of them.
Choose a difficulty
Across and down for younger children, diagonals and backwards for older ones.
Print the pair
The PDF holds the puzzle and, if you want it, the answer sheet behind it.
Good to know
Questions, answered
Printing tips live in our guide on printing at home without wasting paper.
How many words can I hide?
Up to 24. Beyond that the grid gets crowded and the puzzle stops being fun, so the generator caps the list there.
What do the difficulty levels change?
Easy places words left to right and top to bottom only. Medium adds diagonals. Hard adds backwards words in every direction, which is a big jump — most under-tens find medium plenty.
What happens to accents and punctuation?
They are stripped: Bär becomes BAR, and anything that is not a letter is dropped. Words shorter than two letters are ignored.
Why did a word not fit?
Either it is longer than the grid or there was nowhere left to put it. Turn off "Pick the grid size for me" and raise the size, or take a word out. The tool always tells you which words it could not place.
Can I use this for my class?
Please do. Paste a spelling list, print the puzzle and the answer sheet, and you are done. Teaching and personal use are free.