Word Search (aka Word Find) is a simple puzzle where you try to find words in a grid of letters. The words can be found forwards, backwards, vertical and diagonal. The easiest way to find words is to start with the first letter of the word and skim over the grid looking for that letter. Once you find the letter, look around it to find the next letter in the word. Continue finding matching letters until none can be found. If the letters do not match, start over by continuing your search for the first letter and repeating the steps to find matching letters. Lets go through an example.

We have a very simple puzzle (8x8 grid) with one word in it. The word we need to find is "search". If we start at the top-left of the grid we see that the first letter is found immediately. Look at the surrounding letters to see if it matches the second letter in the word. We found the second letter however that is where the matching stops since we can't match the third letter.

We need to find the next s in the grid. Scanning the grid from left-to-right and top-to-bottom will determine the next starting point on the second row and the sixth column. Again we will scan the surrounding letters to determine if there is match. We find the second letter to the bottom left of the starting point. Continuing in the same direction we see that the word "search" is found and is in the direction of left-to-bottom (diagonal).

Most of the puzzles have up to 20 words that need to be found. You have completed the puzzle when you have found all of the words.

The word search puzzles on this site are interactive in that you can click on the first and last letters of a word in the grid which will select the word and cross it out in the list. You have solved the puzzle when all of the words have been selected.