Late October
How to play and solve Halloween word searches
A Halloween word search is the sheet that gets handed out most and thought about least. It fills the last fifteen minutes of the afternoon before the class party, it keeps a party table busy while the food comes out, and it works at a senior center activity hour where nobody is dressing up but the vocabulary still lands.
How to play a Halloween word search
- Every word in the list is hidden in the grid, in a straight line.
- On Easy, words run across and down only; harder sheets add diagonals, then backward words.
- Find each word, ring it in the grid, and cross it off the list.
- The answer key on the second page shows every word ringed.
How to find Halloween words faster, step by step
Most people look for a word's first letter. Look for its rarest letter instead. Here is a Hard Halloween grid from this page, where words run in all eight directions, and the word CANDY.
Step 1. C starts the word, but there are 13 of them in this grid. Y is the rarest letter in CANDY: only 6. Shade them.
Step 2. In the word, D sits next to Y. Check the eight squares around each Y: 2 have a D beside it.
Step 3. Follow the line from there in both directions. CANDY runs on a diagonal, backward. Ring it and cross it off.
When you are stuck
- Start with the odd letters. On this list, BROOMSTICK, MASK, PUMPKIN, TRICK, WIZARD and BLACK each have a J, K, Q, X or Z, and those letters have few hiding places.
- Go row by row with a finger or a ruler, so your eye does not jump.
- Check backward. On Hard and Expert, a word you cannot find may be running right to left or upward.
- Save the short words for last. By then most squares are already ringed.
Which Halloween words frighten younger children, and how this page handles it
What makes it worth building properly is that the same list does not suit all of those rooms. A word list assembled for a party of nine-year-olds is the wrong list for a kindergarten class, and the difference is not reading level. It is subject matter.
Every seasonal word list on the internet treats Halloween vocabulary as one bucket. It is not. PUMPKIN, CANDY and COSTUME are the fun half. SKELETON, GRAVEYARD, COFFIN, ZOMBIE and NIGHTMARE are a different proposition for a four or five-year-old, and a teacher who hands out a sheet without reading it first can spend the rest of the lesson on it.
The words below are split into two lists rather than one, and the gentler list is the default on this page. It is not simply the short words: SKELETON is easy to spell and hard to sit with, while BROOMSTICK is long and completely harmless. The split is by what the word is about, not by how difficult it is to find.
The full list is one click away and the page does not hide it, because for a fifth-grade Halloween party the scary half is the point. What it does not do is make that the default and leave a kindergarten teacher to find out at the copy machine.
The gentler list: 28 words
Costumes, candy, and fall, with nothing about death, bones, or being afraid. This is the default on this page.
- Broomstick
- Candle
- Candy
- Cape
- Cauldron
- Cobweb
- Costume
- Lantern
- Magic
- Mask
- Moonlight
- October
- Owls
- Potion
- Pumpkin
- Scarecrow
- Spider
- Hayride
- Treat
- Trick
- Witch
- Wizard
- Bats
- Black
- Cats
- Autumn
- Whiskers
- Cackle
The other 35, and why they are separate
These are on the full list rather than the default one. They are not harder to find; they are a different decision about the room you are printing for.
- Creature
- Creepy
- Fangs
- Frightful
- Gargoyle
- Garlic
- Ghost
- Ghoul
- Goblin
- Goosebumps
- Graveyard
- Halloween
- Haunted
- Midnight
- Monster
- Mummy
- Nightmare
- Raven
- Scary
- Shadow
- Shiver
- Skeleton
- Skull
- Spell
- Spooky
- Tombstone
- Vampire
- Werewolf
- Zombie
- Coffin
- Crypt
- Curse
- Darkness
- Dracula
- Eerie
Both lists are checked when this site is built: every word is four to twelve letters, no word contains another word on the same list, and the default list is a true part of the full one. A word inside another word has no honest answer key, so that check fails the build rather than being repaired quietly at print time.
Which Halloween word search to print
| Who it is for | Sheet | Settings | Squares that are part of a word |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ages 5 to 7 | Easy | Easy, 10×10, 10 words, gentler list | 51% |
| Young children who finish early | Easy, with pictures to color | Easy, 12×12, 12 words, gentler list, outlines to color | 42% |
| Grades 2 to 5 | Medium | Medium, 14×14, 16 words, gentler list | 39% |
| Teens and family tables | Hard | Hard, 16×16, 20 words, full list | 41% |
| Adults and puzzle fans | Expert, for adults | Expert, 20×20, 27 words, full list | 37% |
| Seniors and low vision | Large print | Easy, 12×12, 12 words, full list, large print | 44% |
Measured on the six sheets above, which the cards download.
- The level decides which way words run, and that is what makes a word hard to spot: Easy is across and down only, which a young child can scan one direction at a time.
- Grid size is not difficulty. A bigger grid is a longer hunt through more filler: 51% of the 10×10 sheet is part of a word, against 37% of the 20×20 one.
- Expert fills the empty squares with letters taken from the word list itself, so hunting for an unusual letter stops working.
- Large print with a smaller grid beats normal print with a bigger one for anyone working with a magnifier.
- Hidden message: turn it on in the builder and every square that is not part of a word holds a letter of "Jack-o’-lanterns were once carved from turnips", read across from the top row once all the words are found. Type your own instead for a class or a party; the message decides how many words fit.
Answer keys you can trust
- Every word appears exactly once. Each grid is scanned in all eight directions after it is filled, and a stray second copy made by the filler letters is broken up. The six sheets above were checked this way when this page was built.
- No word hides inside another. Two words where one contains the other never share a list, because finding one would find the other in squares the key does not ring.
- No rude words in the filler. Random letters read eight ways can spell things no one wants on a child's sheet. Every grid is checked in every direction and its filler changed until none remain.
- The key is page 2 of the same PDF, drawn from the same grid, so it cannot belong to a different puzzle.
- The key says where each word starts. Letters run across the top of its grid and numbers down the side, and each word in its list carries its first square and an arrow: CREEPY N9 ↖ on the Hard sheet above. A key printed in gray still settles an argument.
Halloween word search activities
The pictures, and when to switch them off
The Halloween pictures along the top and bottom of the puzzle page are simple drawings made for this site. They sit in the page margins, so they never shrink the grid or the word list, and they stay off the answer key.
- In color is the default, and it is the one to use for a party table or a fridge door.
- Outlines to color in turns the border into something to color, which gives the child who finishes first something to do with the crayons. It also uses almost no ink.
- No pictures suits older students and adults, and anyone photocopying a class set who wants the cleanest copy.
Free to print, and what this page does not do
Every sheet is made in your browser and there is no account, so a pasted word list never leaves your computer. More in how we make puzzle packs. The terms of use let teachers, parents, clubs, libraries and senior centers print and copy the sheets and their answer keys.
- A hidden message needs a grid of 20×20 or smaller. The whole Halloween list covers at most 405 squares, so on a 30×30 the message would need 495 letters or more.
- Your own word list keeps the pictures, but its words are not checked against the holiday list.