Discover the words hidden in the grid, written through one another in eight horizontal, vertical and diagonal directions. Select words by clicking on the first and last letters, in any order. If the selected letters match an item in the list, the letters are highlighted and the item is crossed out. Spaces, capitalization and diàçritîcš are ignored. Once the list is cleared you win. The letters remaining at the end, if any, may or may not spell a little Aesopean or other proverbial gem of wisdom. Recognizing those words in the gaps left between the stroked terms can help spot that last few stubborn hidden letters.
The grid can be resized, flipped and rotated in all directions. This may help to make some furtive words more readable. Also the spacing, boldness and capital case can be switched to make the letters stand out from their context. Optionally a handy hover-cross is shown, highlighting those letters that are in line with the letter that is currently under the mouse pointer. Especially the longer and diagonal words may benefit from this.
Click a word in the list for some hints about its whereabouts in the grid. Doubleclicking an item in the list will reveal its location in the soup of letters. This is known as cheating.
The available word search grids cover subjects ranging from animals and timbers via countries and capitals to Shakespeare and mythology.
All that is needed for your own word search game is a list of words, or short word groups as spaces and other non-alphabetic features are ignored. A mixture of a few longer items and some terms of 3 to 6 characters usually gives good results. Avoid words that overlap each other, with one being contained in the other, like ‘raw’ in ‘straw’ or ‘if’ in ‘life’, as they are bound to appear double in the playing field. The same applies to reverse contained words, like ‘art’ in ‘straw’ or ‘raw’ and ‘war’. Use the update function to automatically scan for overlaps, the numbers should update every time you click outside the word list.