Free word search maker

How the word search maker works

This page runs the word search generator that kdpbook uses to build its puzzle books, in your browser. It first cleans your list: only the letters of the chosen alphabet go into the grid (A to Z, with Ñ, Å Ä Ö, Æ Ø Å or the Polish or Icelandic letters added, or Cyrillic), so spaces, hyphens and the accents that alphabet doesn’t have are left out, while the word list under the grid keeps your spelling. It drops words shorter than 3 letters or longer than the grid, repeated words, and words hidden inside a longer one, since those would be found twice.

It then places the longest words first, at random positions picked from a seed, and spreads them over the directions you allow. With every direction allowed, it favors crossings, so words share letters. With diagonal or backward words, most of the filler letters are drawn from the letters of your own words, which makes the real words harder to spot. Last, it searches the grid in every direction for each word, and changes filler letters until every word appears exactly once. The answer key circles each word where it was placed.

Grid size, directions and word count

A word has to fit the grid: a 10×10 grid takes words of up to 10 letters. Bigger grids hold more words and take longer to solve. These are the starting points kdpbook’s puzzle books use for each difficulty; when you pick a theme, the maker suggests a number of words in the same proportion.

Large print word searches

Large print keeps the grid letters and the word list at 16 pt or larger, the setting kdpbook’s large-print puzzle books use. A long list or a big grid can’t reach that size on one page, so the maker first drops words from the end of your list, then shrinks the grid down to your longest word. Every word it leaves out is listed under the result, so put the words you care about most at the top. Eight or more very long words can keep the grid too wide for 16 pt letters; the maker then shows the size it reached, so you can shorten the longest words.

Printing, PDF and SVG

Each puzzle prints on one US Letter (8.5 × 11 in) or A4 page, with the title and the instructions at the top and the answer key on the next page. Download PDF saves those 2 pages as a PDF, built in your browser at 300 DPI; pick 5 or 10 puzzles in the PDF to get that many grids of the same words, all the puzzles first and then their answer keys in the same order. Download SVG saves the puzzle or the answer key alone as a vector file, at print size, for your own page layout.

From one puzzle to a KDP puzzle book

A book of word searches is a regular paperback on KDP. KDP’s low-content category covers notebooks, planners and journals and does not typically include puzzle books, so the book needs an ISBN; KDP offers a free one for paperbacks. Low-content vs medium-content books explains the difference.

KDP prints paperbacks from 24 pages, and 8.5 × 11 in is one of its large trim sizes. For a 108-page interior without bleed, KDP’s minimum margins are 0.375 in on the inside and 0.25 in on the outside, so the 0.5 in margins of these pages clear both. The margins and bleed calculator gives the gutter for any page count. Letters are never smaller than 8 pt and lines never thinner than 0.75 pt, which meets KDP’s minimums of 7 pt for text and 0.75 pt for lines.

This maker uses no AI model: the grid comes from your words and a seeded algorithm. KDP asks you to disclose AI-generated text, images or translations when you publish, so if an AI tool wrote your word lists or drew your cover, disclose that content. See KDP AI policy explained: what to disclose for AI text, images and translations.

Filling a whole book by hand is where kdpbook helps. Its puzzle book type builds a 108-page 8.5 × 11 in interior of word search, sudoku, criss-cross, cryptogram, word scramble and maze puzzles on your theme, large print by default, with the solutions at the back, plus the full-wrap cover and the listing. For word searches only, use the word search book. The default puzzle book is estimated at 460 credits. New accounts get 2,000 free credits once, with no card required. Free-plan books carry a kdpbook.io preview watermark and are shared in the community; a paid plan, from $25/month, exports clean files with a commercial license to sell them. A book made on the free credits can be exported again, clean, after upgrading. The sudoku maker and the maze maker print other puzzles the same way. Other tools that make puzzle books for KDP are compared in KDP puzzle book generators.