Word search maker: type your words, print the puzzle and its answers

What is on a sheet

• A square of capital letters, 10, 12 or 15 letters a side, with your words hidden in it.
• The list of words to find under the square, written the way you typed them, in capitals.
• A line for a name and a date at the top, and a few words of your own if you type them.
• The puzzle number and what you chose, in small print at the bottom, so a puzzle and its answers can be matched.
• The answer sheet is the same square with the words marked in red and the other letters in gray. Beside each word it says where the word begins (the row from the top, the column from the left) and an arrow for the way it runs, so it can be read without the colors.

Your words

• Up to 20 words, 3 to 15 letters each. A word longer than the square is left out, and the page says so.
• Only letters go in the square. Spaces, hyphens, apostrophes and full stops are dropped: ICE CREAM is hidden as ICECREAM. A word with a digit or another sign is left out.
• Accents are taken off in the square (Á goes in as A, Ü as U). Ñ stays Ñ. The list under the square keeps the word as you typed it.
• A word that finds no room is left out and named above the puzzle. A bigger square, fewer words or another puzzle number can make room.
• Words can cross and share a letter. If one of your words is inside another (RAIN in RAINBOW), it is there twice: on its own, and inside the longer one.

The other letters

• The page fills the rest of the square with letters drawn by chance, A to Z, and Ñ too when one of your words has one.
• Then it looks them over. A letter it added may not finish one of your words a second time, in any of the eight directions. Such a letter is drawn again.
• It knows 62 rude words, in English and Spanish, and draws again when its own letters spell one of them. Your own words are not judged: what you type goes in.
• It knows no other words. Chance can spell anything else, in any language. Look the sheet over before you hand it to someone.

Puzzle numbers, and what this page does not do

• Every puzzle has a number from 1 to 9999. The page picks one by chance when it opens and when you press Another puzzle. You can also type one.
• The same number with the same words and choices gives the same puzzle every time, on any device. So the answers can be printed another day: type the same words in the same order, set the same choices and the number from the bottom of the sheet.
• It does not check anyone’s work, and the puzzle cannot be solved on the screen: it is for paper.
• It has no list of words of its own beyond eight examples, and it does not say which puzzle suits which age or grade. You choose.
• It keeps nothing: close the page and the words are gone.
• It has been tried in one browser’s print preview (Chromium, saved as PDF), not on paper from a real printer.

Every time the page is built, a program checks 58 examples worked by hand. Then it types 2,000 made-up lists of words, some with accents, spaces and things that are not letters, and writes each puzzle and its answer sheet the way the page prints them. A second reader, written separately, takes the letters back off the two sheets. It checks that the puzzle sheet marks nothing, that each word lies where the answer sheet says and runs the way the arrow says, that the marked squares are those words and no others, and it searches the whole square in all eight directions for every typed word and all 62 rude words: none may be there with an added letter in it. That checks the page’s own work, not the work done on the sheet.