How To Create A Crossword Puzzle In Microsoft Excel

The Best Sites for Free Crossword and Word Search Puzzles

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Crossword puzzles can be fun, challenging and educational. They're equally good for kids learning how to spell, for adults wanting to stimulate their mind, or for senior citizens looking to keep their minds sharp. Word search puzzles can be themed to appeal to children, they can cover a variety of topics, and some even have a hidden message that's revealed as the player finds the hidden words. Some sites allow users to create their own word searches so they can challenge friends and family. Those sites are very good for teachers looking to create vocabulary quizzes for their classroom.

Word Search Puzzles

If you head to word-search-puzzles.appspot.com, you'll find games you can play online. It's great when played on a phone, a tablet or a PC. You just pull the cursor across the letters to highlight the words you've found. When you find a word, it is crossed off on the list that shows on the left-hand side of the screen. You can download the app through the App Store or get it through Google Play if you'd like to play this on your mobile device.

Thewordsearch.com

Another site that offers great games that are free to play is thewordsearch.com. You can play online or print the searches easily enough if you'd rather go old school. Some of the most popular games on the site are those that give you a list of famous people or character names from major TV shows. You can choose word searches on topics like movies, sport, animals or food and drink. Why not test out your word search skills by trying to find Disney character names, or if you want something that's at least a little educational, why not try a science of geography word search?

Bestcrosswords.com

At bestcrosswords.com you'll find 16,000 archived crosswords, and 16 new ones are added each day. Each month around 600,000 crosswords are played on the site, which allows casual players and competitive crossword challengers a chance to enjoy themselves. If you'd like to challenge your skills against others, this is the site to head to as there's a dedicated competitive crossword section which you can get to if you're a registered user. The best players are ranked and their scores are published on the site.

Hidden Messages

Rather than searching for words from a specific topic, why not try one of the word searches at puzzles.ca/word-search as the hidden words in the word searches create a message when they've all been found. The hidden message isn't created by linking up all the hidden words because that would allow players to work on the sentence by simply rearranging the target words in the checklist. With the games on this site, the hidden message is made using the letters that are not used to create the hidden words.

Puzzle Maker

If you've run out of challenging word searches and puzzles to play, why not head to puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com? This site, which is run by Discovery Education, has a simple program which allows you to create your own personalized game. You just give the game a title, enter the number of letters across and down, which can be as many as 40 by 40, and then input the words you want to be hidden in your grid. The puzzle, which is created instantly, can then be printed.