Word Search

Find hidden English words in Animals, Countries, Technology, Sports, Programming, Fruits, or Random puzzles. Choose a 10×10, 12×12, or 14×14 grid, drag across straight lines, use start-cell hints, play daily puzzles, and track local wins, times, hints, and streaks.

How to Use the Word Search

Choose a category and difficulty, then find every listed word by dragging across a straight row, column, or diagonal. Found words stay highlighted and are crossed off the list.

  1. Choose Animals, Countries, Technology, Sports, Programming, Fruits, or Random. Changing category starts a new random puzzle; it leaves daily mode.
  2. Choose Easy, Medium, or Hard to set the grid size, word count, and allowed placement directions.
  3. Select Daily Puzzle for the current UTC day's category-and-difficulty grid, or New Puzzle for a newly generated random grid.
  4. With a mouse, pen, or touch screen, press the first letter, drag in a straight line to the final letter, and release. Reverse-direction selection is accepted.
  5. Check the word list for unfound targets. Use Hint to flash the starting cell of one remaining word.
  6. Find the complete list to stop the timer and record a win and best time; use Restart to regenerate the current random or daily selection.

Search strategies

  • Scan for uncommon first letters and letter pairs, then trace only the directions allowed by the selected difficulty.
  • Use the word list to search for the longest or most distinctive targets before short words blend into the filler letters.
  • On Hard, check from right to left and bottom to top because words may be placed in any of eight directions.

Common mistakes

  • Selections must form one exact horizontal, vertical, or 45-degree diagonal line from first letter to last.
  • A single tap does not select a word; keep the pointer or finger down while dragging across the letters.
  • Selecting a different category while in daily mode starts a random puzzle, while changing difficulty keeps the current mode.

Persistence, privacy, and controls

The current puzzle and statistics stay in localStorage and can be lost when browser data is cleared. There is no cloud sync, leaderboard, custom word-list input, or printable puzzle. Grid selection is implemented for mouse, pen, and touch dragging; there is currently no keyboard selection workflow.

FAQ

How do I select a word?

Press the first letter, drag in a horizontal, vertical, or diagonal straight line to the last letter, and release. You can drag either forward or backward across a placed word.

What do Easy, Medium, and Hard mean?

Easy has 8 words on a 10×10 grid placed right or down. Medium has 10 words on a 12×12 grid and adds diagonals. Hard has 12 words on a 14×14 grid and allows all eight directions, including reversed placements.

How does the Daily Puzzle work?

The daily grid is determined by the UTC date, language, category, and difficulty. That combination gives everyone the same puzzle for the UTC day; completing it once updates the local daily streak.

What does Hint show?

Hint highlights the starting cell of one unfound word for about 2.5 seconds. It does not trace or mark the rest of the word, and it increases the local hints-used count.

How do I win and set a best time?

Find every word in the displayed list. The timer stops when the final word is marked, and the fastest completion is saved separately for Easy, Medium, and Hard.

Are puzzles and progress stored privately?

Puzzle generation happens in the browser. The current grid, found words, timer, wins, best times, hints, and daily streak use local storage on this device and are not synced or backed up.