Word Search Tips: 8 Ways to Find Words Faster

Is there a trick to doing word searches? Yes, several. Stop reading the grid for whole words and look for letters instead: a Q, a Z, an X, or a doubled pair like LL or EE sits in one or two places in the grid, and a word from the list is almost always attached. Add the edges (long words have to fit somewhere), carry three or four words in your head per sweep, and turn the page when you are stuck.

Most people solve a word search the slow way: read the first word on the list, sweep the grid row by row until it turns up, repeat. It works, and it takes forever. If you play against the clock or against another person, you need a method. These eight save time on paper and in the online game.

1. Read the word list first

Spend ten seconds on the list before you touch the grid. Note the long words, the words with unusual letters, and pairs that share a start, such as “snow” and “snowflake” on a Christmas puzzle. You will spot those without trying once you know they exist.

Keep checking the list as you go. It tells you what is left, and it stops you circling a word that happens to be in the grid but was never on the list.

2. Hunt letters, not words

The grid is full of vowels and common consonants. In ordinary English text E, T, A, O and I make up about 45% of all letters, while Z, Q, X and J together are under 1% (letter frequency). Puzzle makers fill the empty cells with letters that look like English, so a Q, Z, X, J or K in the grid almost always belongs to a word from the list. Find the rare letter, then look in all eight directions from it.

A Q without a U next to it can be ignored. Nearly every English word that has one has the other.

3. Double letters are a flag

LL, EE, OO, SS and TT stand out in a block of random letters, and random filler produces far fewer pairs than real words do. When you see a pair, check the list for a word that contains it and read outward from the pair in every direction. “Balloon” has two pairs in a row; it is one of the easiest words on any birthday sheet.

4. Search for several words at once

Once you know the list, hold three or four words in mind and sweep the grid once, rather than sweeping it once per word. Grouping words by first letter helps: every time you pass an S, you check for all the S words. On a 15 × 15 hard sheet with 23 words this cuts the number of full sweeps from twenty-odd to five or six.

5. Work the edges and corners

Long words have fewer places to fit, and full-length rows and columns are among them. Scan the top and bottom rows and the left and right columns for the longest words on the list first, then move inward.

6. Start with the longest words

It feels backwards, but long words are easier to confirm. Find the first two letters in the right order and the rest of the word either follows or it does not. Short words produce far more false starts: “cat” has dozens of near-misses in a grid, “caterpillar” has one. Clear the long ones early and the grid gets emptier for the rest.

7. Read in every direction

Words run forward, backward, up, down and along both diagonals. Backward words are the ones people miss, because the eye reads left to right. Practice scanning a row from right to left, and try reading the diagonals as if they were rows. On our easy sheets words run across and down only, so this tip starts to matter at medium.

8. Turn the puzzle

When you are stuck, rotate the sheet a quarter turn, or tilt your head at the screen. A vertical word becomes a horizontal one and the grid looks new. Step back, too: words often sit right next to words you already found, crossing them or running parallel.

Playing online

The same tricks work in the online game, where you drag across a word to mark it. Two things change. First, you cannot cross words off with a pen, so glance at the list more often. Second, in a battle the other player is clearing the same grid, so go for the rare-letter words first: they are the ones your opponent is least likely to find quickly. The game guide covers the controls and the timer.

Quick answers

How do you do a word search fast?

Rare letters, double letters, edges, several words per sweep, longest words first. Five minutes is a normal time for a medium 12 × 12 sheet; under two minutes is fast.

How do you find the answer key to a word search?

Every printable puzzle on this site has an answer key as the second page of the PDF, with the words outlined. In a puzzle book the keys are at the back; in a newspaper, usually in the next day’s edition.

Is it cheating to use the answer key?

On your own puzzle, no. Look up the one word you cannot find, mark where it was, and notice the direction it ran. Most people’s missing word is a backward or diagonal one, and seeing that is how you stop missing them.

What is the best order to find the words in?

Longest first, then anything with a rare or doubled letter, then the rest in groups by first letter. The three-letter words come last, when the grid is mostly crossed out.

Where the word search came from

The word search is younger than the crossword. The first one in English usually credited appeared on 1 March 1968 in the Selenby Digest, a free want-ad paper in Norman, Oklahoma, made by Norman E. Gibat from the names of Oklahoma towns; the Spanish puzzle maker Pedro Ocón de Oro published a similar “sopa de letras” earlier (Word search, Wikipedia). It spread through schools and newspapers and has been a classroom staple since.

Practice on any of our printable puzzles, or pick a topic from the collections and play online. If you are new to word searches, start with how to do a word search.