November Holidays and National Days
A word search for every day of November 2026. Each date has its occasion, a line on what the day is about and a free puzzle to go with it, so you can plan the month's puzzles ahead or pick a theme for any day you like. Every puzzle prints in easy, medium or hard, or plays online against a friend.
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Word Search of the Month
November, Day by Day
-
All Saints' Day
All Saints was moved to November to sit on top of something older. The church had kept it in May for a century before a pope shifted it onto the Celtic new year.
-
National Ohio Day
Ohio spent a century and a half technically not being a state. Congress approved its constitution in 1803, forgot to pass the resolution, and only noticed in 1953.
-
National Sandwich Day
The Earl of Sandwich did not invent it and was probably not at a card table. The account his own biographer preferred is that he worked at his desk and did not want to stop.
-
National Candy Day
Sugar was a medicine. European apothecaries sold it by weight alongside drugs for centuries, and it appeared in prescriptions rather than kitchens.
-
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes was not the leader and did not plan it. He was the explosives man, hired because he had spent ten years fighting in Flanders and knew what to do with thirty-six barrels of gunpowder.
-
National Nachos Day
Nachos were invented in about ten minutes by a man called Ignacio for a group of army wives who turned up after the kitchen had closed. Nacho is the nickname for Ignacio.
-
Marie Curie's Birthday
Curie is the only person to win Nobel Prizes in two different sciences. Her notebooks are still so radioactive that reading them requires protective clothing and a signed waiver.
-
National Cappuccino Day
The cappuccino is named after a colour and the colour after a religious order. Capuchin friars wore a particular brown hood, and the drink matched.
-
Go to an Art Museum Day
Most of a museum is in the basement. Large institutions typically display somewhere between one and five per cent of what they hold, and some hold several million objects.
-
The Marine Corps' Birthday
The Marine Corps was founded in a bar. Two battalions were authorised on November 10, 1775 and recruited at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where the proprietor became a recruiting officer.
-
Veterans Day
For four years the holiday was not on November 11. Congress moved it to a Monday in 1971 for the long weekend, and moved it back in 1978 after veterans objected.
-
Chicken Soup for the Soul Day
Chicken soup does measurably help. It is not the folk remedy that is wrong, only the explanation — the steam, the fluid and the salt do most of the work, and there is some evidence the broth itself does a little.
-
World Kindness Day
Spending money on someone else makes people measurably happier than spending the same amount on themselves, and they consistently predict the opposite beforehand.
-
World Diabetes Day
Frederick Banting sold the insulin patent to his university for one dollar, saying it belonged to the world and not to him.
-
America Recycles Day
Aluminium is the one that genuinely works. Recycling a can uses about five per cent of the energy needed to make a new one, and the metal can go round indefinitely without degrading.
-
Clarinet Day
The clarinet overblows at the twelfth rather than the octave, which is why it needs more keys than anything else in the orchestra and why it is hard to learn.
-
Baklava Day
The pastry is pulled, not rolled, until a whole table is covered by a single sheet you can read a newspaper through. A good baklava has forty layers or more.
-
Mickey Mouse's Birthday
Mickey exists because Walt Disney lost his first character in a contract. He had built Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, went to New York to ask for more money, and was told the studio owned Oswald and most of his animators.
-
The Gettysburg Address
Lincoln spoke for about two minutes. The man before him spoke for two hours, and is remembered only for having done so.
-
World Children's Day
Childhood as a protected stage of life is a recent invention. For most of history children were small workers, and the first laws limiting that are less than two hundred years old.
-
National Gingerbread Cookie Day
Gingerbread men are Elizabeth I's idea. She had them made in the likeness of visiting dignitaries and served them the biscuit of themselves.
-
National Cranberry Relish Day
Cranberries are harvested by flooding the field. The berries have four air pockets inside, so they float, and the whole crop is corralled across the water with booms.
-
Doctor Who's First Episode
The first episode went out the day after Kennedy was shot, to an audience that mostly had something else on its mind. The BBC repeated it the following week because so few people had watched.
-
National Sardines Day
Sardine is not a species. It is a size and a preparation — several dozen small oily fish are sold under the name, and which one you get depends entirely on which ocean you are near.
-
National Parfait Day
A French parfait and an American one are different things. In France it is a frozen custard made without churning; in America it is layers in a tall glass.
-
Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving has been the fourth Thursday of November only since 1941. Two years earlier Franklin Roosevelt moved it up a week to lengthen the Christmas shopping season, and half the country refused to follow.
-
Anders Celsius's Birthday
Celsius put his scale the wrong way up. In his original, water froze at 100 and boiled at 0, and somebody else turned it over after he died.
-
National French Toast Day
French toast is not French and is far older than France. A Roman recipe book of the fourth century has it: bread soaked in milk and egg and fried.
-
National Lemon Cream Pie Day
Meringue is egg white and air, and it works because the proteins unfold when beaten and lock around the bubbles. A trace of yolk will stop it dead.
-
Mark Twain's Birthday
Mark Twain is a river call. A leadsman sounding the depth shouted "mark twain" for two fathoms — twelve feet — which was just enough water for a steamboat.
Other Months
Looking for today's puzzle? The word search of the day has the full story behind today's occasion and the week ahead. Or browse all word search puzzles.