Free Printable Word Search Puzzles for Adults

Word searches are also called word finders, or mystery word puzzles. Traditionally, word searches were found in newspapers, on flight airline entertainment magazines, and other print sources. Today, you can find plenty of word searches online, many of which you can print and do the "old fashioned" way.

Word search puzzles provide you with a grid that contains a jumble of letters. Some of those letters spell out words, and the object is to find them all. Some newer word search puzzles, especially those done online or on cell-phones, may only contain a few words or even a secret message. 

Some traditional word search puzzles give you a list of words, while others leave you to your own devices. Having a list of words makes the word search much easier to complete. The words in a word search often all relate to a seasonally theme; for example, a Christmas word search might contain words like "holly" and "mistletoe."

The first known word search was published in 1968, and kids and adults have been enjoying them ever since!

Word Search Strategies

There are a few different strategies you can use to do these printable word searches listed below. If you have a word list, some people like to go through the jumbled letters and try to find the first letter of the words on the list. Once they've found the letter, they look around at the connecting letters to see if the word is formed. A word could be spelled backwards, forwards or on the diagonal.  Others use a similar strategy, except they try to find an unusual letter in the word and then seek that out in the puzzle. For example, if I knew the word "example" is in a puzzle, it might be easier to look for all the "X's" in the jumble instead of all the E's, since E is a much more common letter.

Free Printable Word Search Puzzles for Adults

Now that you have a strategy in place, here are some great websites that contain printable word search puzzles. While there are many word search puzzles available for kids, and teachers often use word search puzzles to help teach spelling, these word search puzzles are a little more on the challenging side and are geared more towards adults.

• Printable Puzzles With Hidden Messages: Livewire Puzzle has a long list of printable puzzles designed to fit perfectly on a standard letter size piece of printer paper. Lists of the hidden words in the jumble are provided, and in most cases at least 40 words are hidden in each puzzle. The puzzles are organized by category, including unique subjects such as 1950's Songs and Old TV Shows. Once you have identified all of the hidden words on the list, the puzzle will spell out a message. While there are plenty of puzzles here for adults, there is also a separate list of puzzles for kids.

• Printable Puzzles By Difficulty Level: Puzzle Club has a wide variety of printable word search puzzles geared towards all different difficulty levels. They are organized by themes, and themes include Holidays as well as many other subjects. The puzzles are organized by difficulty level, and most of the word lists contain between twenty and thirty words minimum, or more for the harder puzzles.

• Free Printable Wordsearch Puzzles: Search Puzzles has a long list of printable puzzles divided by category. While there are some that are more kid-oriented, there are plenty of adult puzzles listed on this website as well for you to print and enjoy. 

• Custom Printable Puzzles: Kokolikoko allows you to enter your own list of words and creates a custom printable puzzle with your very own word list. It limits you to easy or medium difficulty level puzzles. 

• Printable Word Search Puzzles by Category: Puzzle Choice has a wide range of printable word search puzzles organized by category. Categories include fun subjects such as Guitar Greats and X-Words.