How to Make a Word Search Puzzle

Finding words in a word search puzzle can be an enjoyable and frugal pastime. At a bridal shower, a child's birthday party, or party or gathering of any kind, even Thanksgiving, it can keep your guests occupied while they are waiting for other guests to arrive, or waiting for dinner to finish cooking.

A word search puzzle can be even more fun when it is personalized to the people who are finding the words. They can search for their own name in the puzzle. It can also be customized for the occasion or event. Imagine a Wordsearch puzzle for a bridal shower that is customized with the bride's interests, a wordsearch puzzle for a family reunion that helps recall some of the family's history, or an anniversary puzzle that helps recall the special bond the couple shares.

A word search puzzle can be a part of a genealogy book to help youngsters get familiar with their ancestors while being entertained.

This type of puzzle goes by many names. Word search, word find, word seek, mystery word, word sleuth, wordsearch, seek and find puzzle, search and find puzzle, and find a word are just some of the many names it uses.

Word search puzzles are also fun and easy to make, so the puzzle creator can also be entertained.

The steps to create a word search puzzle are really easy.

1. Think of the words to put in your puzzle.

2. Create a grid

3. Put the words in the grid

4. Clean up the puzzle by putting in filler letters for the remaining spaces

5. Publish / make copies

6. Seek and find the words!

These steps will be further explained in this hub.

The first step to creating a word search puzzle is to think of the words you want to include in the puzzle. You can choose family names, occupations, or hobbies. Come up with a list. The more words you use, the bigger the puzzle will be.

Words that are too short can cause problems, because they might show up in more than one place accidentally in the puzzle, so I would avoid having a puzzle of all two letter words. But one or two short words will be fine.

You can take into consideration the age of the people who will complete the puzzle. Younger puzzlers might want a smaller list of words. You might think about how much time you want to keep them occupied. The more words you have the longer it will take to find all the words, and quite likely, the bigger the grid you will be making.

I think twenty to thirty words or so would be a good size. You might even have some lower priority words - ones you will add if you have space, but are willing to omit if there isn't enough space. I am using page one of my list of followers on HubPages. I am omitting the numbers to keep the puzzle simple. Hopefully, you will recognize some of the names here.

The next step is to create a grid in which you will put the words. You can do this on a piece of paper. Just draw the column lines with a ruler, spacing them equally. Graph paper would work especially well with this. I like the grid to remain flexible, so I place the grid in the center of a piece of paper, so that I can add another row or column if I have a word for which I can't find a space. Draw a good number of rows and columns. My original grid started out at 20 columns and 16 rows.

You can find graph paper on the internet, or use the picture on this hub.

You can also create your seek and find on the computer using a word processing software or a spreadsheet software. I am using an older version of Word, so I will explain the steps without going into detail. I chose insert table to get a table there. Then, highlight the whole table or a column on the grid, and right click. Choose insert, then rows below, and your table will double in number of rows. Then highlight a row on the grid or the whole table, and right click again. Choose insert, then columns to the right. These steps will double the number of columns you have.

I also fixed the column width so it would be roughly equal to the size of the rows, and changed the cell alignment to center the letters.

The next step in creating a seek and find puzzle is to put the words on the grid. Anything with more than one word must be combined into one word. You can put them in vertically, horizontally, and diagonally. Unless you are making a puzzle for very young children, you can even put them in backwards. Try to conserve space by using a letter from one word when working on another word, Conserve space by putting the words as close together as you can.

In the sample shown on the right, you can see MILLIONAIRETIPS placed as one word horizontally in the center of the grid. The word ORLANDOJOHN is placed vertically, and shares the letter L with MILLIONAIRETIPS. The word MOONLAKE is placed diagonally, and shares the letter M with MILLIONAIRETIPS. Further words can use any letters that are on the grid. Be careful to check that you have enough blank spaces to enter the whole word.

It is generally easier to add the longer words first, and then try to fit in the shorter words.

Once all the words have been entered onto the puzzle, you may have extra words for which you cannot find space, or extra space for which you do not have words. It is all right, we can clean it up.

Extra Words

If you have words remaining, you can add a row or a column to include your word. Or you can skip the word, whichever is your preference.

Blank Rows or Columns

If you have columns or rows that did not get used, like I did, you can add additional words, or delete each blank row or column. Since I am using one page of my followers, I have decided to stop here. It would be too confusing for me to add followers from other pages and try to figure out which follower was in which puzzle. I will delete the blank column on the left, and the two blank columns on the right. Right click on a cell in the column, and choose delete cells. Then choose delete the entire column option. If you are doing this on paper, you could space out your words so they took more of the grid, or you can fill the spaces as described below.

Remaining Spaces

Fill in the remaining spaces in the grid with random letters. If you have short words in your puzzle, you want to be careful to not accidentally repeat them here. Otherwise, I like to use common letters or starts of words, so that the people solving the puzzle think they are on the right trail of finding a word when they are not. Or you can just place all the letters of the alphabet in random places on the puzzle.

The finished puzzle is shown at the top of this page.

That's it. Be sure to place the clues on the puzzle so your puzzlers know what words they are searching for. My puzzle is the first page of my followers, and I have provided the list of my followers is provided in A Tribute to My 100 Followers. Make lots of copies, and distribute. You can even time your contestants and give out prizes to the person who solves it first.

For further entertainment, you can even teach your guests to make their own word search puzzles.

Making word search puzzles is fun, and can be a great way to personalize a puzzle for a wedding, or a family reunion. It makes a great gift and provides a great source of entertainment.