Day of the Dead word search
Thirteen words from the ofrenda, the flower and the graveside night are hiding in this 12x12 grid, and all eight directions are in play. Six more Día de Muertos boards print from this page, one each for the altar, the food, La Catrina, the traditions, a hard 15x15 and an easy one for children.
Curated by 
Esme Rook
·
Updated August 2026
Play it right here
Drag across the letters to select a word. Words hide across, down and diagonally, forwards and backwards. Works with mouse and touch.
What words are hidden in this Day of the Dead word search?
Thirteen: ofrenda, cempasúchil, calavera, catrina, papel picado, copal, ancestors, November, Mexico, incense, cemetery, photograph and mariachi. They hide in all eight directions on a 12x12 grid, so read the diagonals and read backwards too. CEMPASUCHIL is the eleven letter anchor and the sensible first target; COPAL is the short one that hides longest.
Día de Muertos is not Halloween
They land in the same week and they are not the same thing. Halloween is fright and costume, and it keeps its own board here with the pumpkin, the witch and the scare: the Halloween word search is over there. Día de Muertos is a Mexican remembrance held on the first and second of November, when families scrub a grave, build an altar and sit up with the people they miss. Not one word from that Halloween board appears on any of these seven, in either language, and the build refuses to run if one ever does. The cempasúchil is the one bloom the flower word search leaves out, and pan de muerto is missing from the food word search for the same reason: both belong to these two days.
Seven Day of the Dead boards to print, one for each part of the holiday
The board on this page is the general one. Six more print from here, and each takes one part of the holiday and gives it a whole grid: what stands on the ofrenda, what comes out of the kitchen, the figure of La Catrina, what families do across the two nights, a hard 15x15 for people who already know all of this, and a gentle sheet for children. Every sheet is built from its own word list and carries its own solution page. Two word terms run together on the board, the way word searches have always set them: pan de muerto is PANDEMUERTO, papel picado is PAPELPICADO, all saints is ALLSAINTS.
The 12x12 board on this page
The playable board above, printed exactly as it stands: thirteen words the holiday cannot be told without, from five letter copal to eleven letter cempasúchil, hidden across, down, diagonally and backwards.
The ofrenda: everything that goes on the altar
Twelve things that stand on a finished altar, on a 13x13 board: the portrait of the person being remembered, the glass of water set out for their thirst, the salt, the fruit, the petals and the sugar skull with a name written across its forehead.
The food: what the kitchen makes for these two days
The plate of the first and second of November on a 12x12 board: pan de muerto under its crust of sugar, atole and champurrado in the small hours, mole, pozole, tamales, peanuts, guava and the tangerines left out for whoever comes.
La Catrina: the tightest board here
Ten words on the smallest eight direction grid on the page, 11x11, about the elegant skeleton José Guadalupe Posada etched as a joke at the expense of the rich, and about the feathers, the parasol and the borrowed elegance she was given afterwards.
The two nights: what families actually do
Twelve words for the practice rather than the props, on a 14x14 board: the overnight vigil at the graveside, the headstone scrubbed clean, the first of November kept for the angelitos and the second for the grown souls, and the stories told until it gets light.
The hard one, 15x15, and the places it happens
The hardest sheet on this page: sixteen words in a 15x15 grid using all eight directions, from the fourteen letter xoloitzcuintle that walks the souls to Mictlán out to Pátzcuaro, Janitzio, Mixquic, Oaxaca and the Nahuatl sitting underneath the Spanish.
The gentle one, for children
Eight short words on a 10x10 grid, across and down only and never backwards, so a six year old can finish a whole sheet unaided while the altar is still going up: skull, photo, paper, sugar, light, mask, flame and paint.
Print it or play it
Play the 12x12 right on this page or print the free PDF; the separate solution sheet marks all thirteen words on the same grid, so the puzzle can go round the table while the answers stay in your pocket. The playable board, the PDF and the solution all come from one generated puzzle, so they can never disagree. Every sheet prints clean in black and white, which is what a school copier and a kitchen table both want in the last week of October.
