Create printable word search puzzles from custom word lists with configurable grid size and difficulty.
A word search puzzle looks like a random grid of letters until you know what to look for. This tool hides every word from your list as a straight run of letters - horizontal, vertical, or diagonal - and fills the remaining cells with decoy letters so the grid reads as noise. You set the grid size and difficulty, and it returns a printable puzzle. The surprise is that harder difficulty mainly widens the allowed directions, so the words you supplied can be running backward or diagonally, and solvers who only scan left to right walk right past them.
A concrete input and expected output from the current implementation.
Input
Word list: MOON, STAR, COMET. Grid: 8 x 8. Difficulty: Hard.
Expected output
An 8 x 8 grid of letters (64 cells) holding MOON, STAR, and COMET, each as a straight, unbroken run - some possibly reading backward or diagonally - with decoy letters in every unused cell, plus an answer key marking each word's location and direction. The list occupies at most 13 of the 64 cells, and the longest word, COMET, spans 5 cells, so this list always fits.
A word search must contain every listed word as a contiguous straight run, and the answer key is where the generator shows each placement so you can verify it. The arithmetic confirms the layout is always possible: 13 content letters against 64 cells, longest word 5.
Words are placed as straight runs of letters, and each run is valid only where it meets no conflict: wherever two words cross or overlap, they share the same letter, or one would stop reading correctly. Overlapping is normal - it lets a small grid hold a long list - and it is why two generated layouts of the same list rarely match.
Cells left empty after placement are filled with random decoy letters so the grid reads as noise rather than hinting at the list. Fitting is geometric: a word cannot bend, so the longest word must be no longer than the grid's side, and the denser the list relative to the grid area, the fewer empty straight runs remain - which is why a packed grid is harder to build than to solve.
No. Placement is random, so the same words and settings come back in a different layout every time - handy for handing a fresh copy to another student. If you need an exact copy, print the puzzle you already made; regenerating will not reproduce it.
Treat the list as single tokens. Spaces and punctuation are usually stripped or treated as separators, so enter 'NewYork' or split the phrase into two entries. Check the input field's hint for the separator it expects; one word per line is the common arrangement.
The example and behavioral notes were checked against the browser implementation. Standards and primary references below define the relevant format, formula, or platform behavior.
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