Winter word search
Twelve winter words are frozen into this grid, from a single snowflake to a whole blizzard. Solve it somewhere warm.
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 froze in here
Snowflake, mittens, icicle, fireplace, cocoa, scarf, blizzard, frost, sled, penguin, skating and boots. COCOA is the sneaky one: five letters, three of them O and C, in a grid that is legally entitled to be full of both. SLED will be the last one standing; four common letters always are.
The snow day sheet
This is the puzzle to keep printed in a drawer for the day school closes and the house fills up. It pairs beautifully with the real cocoa from the word list. For groups, print two copies and race; the loser refills the mugs.
Print it or play it
The playable grid, the free PDF and the solution sheet come from the same generated puzzle. If the blizzard refuses to appear, the solution page shows exactly where it was hiding all along. Winter has one date that gets its own grid: the New Years word search counts down instead of snowing.
Frequently asked questions
Is the winter word search free to print for a classroom?
Yes. Print the winter word search free for a class, a library session, a care home or a snowed-in afternoon at home. Any number of copies, no attribution, no sign-up. The two things you cannot do are sell the PDF and re-upload it elsewhere, as set out in the licensing policy.
What age is the winter puzzle for?
Ages 6 to 10, or US grades 1 to 4. The 12x12 grid holds twelve winter words from four letters (SLED) up to nine (SNOWFLAKE). It sits in the easy tier, so it is a comfortable solo puzzle for most primary readers and a quick one for adults.
Can we play the winter word search online?
Yes. The grid at the top of this page plays in the browser, mouse or touchscreen, which is ideal for a cold day when nobody wants to walk to the printer. Drag across a word and it is struck off the list. The free PDF is still there for anyone who prefers pencil and paper.
Is there an answer key?
Yes. A separate solution PDF circles all twelve winter words on the same grid. Download it from the Solution button. Because it is its own file, the class copies you print stay clean and the answers stay with whoever is running the session.
Seven winter word searches to print, one for each part of the season
Winter had the hardest job here: the board above already owns the obvious words, Christmas sits on top of the season, and SKIING and GLOVES were long gone to other pages. The answer was to go more specific rather than sideways, so the snow board says SNOWDRIFT, HOARFROST, SLEET and FLURRIES and means all four. The other five are the sports, the animals, the clothes, the night sky (winter has the best one) and the shovel by the door. Two word terms run together: frozen lake is FROZENLAKE, north star is NORTHSTAR, rock salt is ROCKSALT.
The 12x12 board on this page
The board above, printed: twelve winter words with a COCOA that hides behind its own repeated letters and a four letter SLED that will be the last one you find.
Snow and ice: twelve kinds, not one
Snow is not one word and this 12x12 board proves it: the drift, the flurries, the sleet, the slush, the powder, the hoarfrost on the fence, the whiteout, the ice floe and the lake frozen right across.
The sports: the twelve letter one included
A 13x13 board and the hardest of the seven: the snowboard, the toboggan, the slalom, the moguls, the ski lift, the curling, the bobsleigh, the snowshoeing and twelve letter cross country.
The animals: what they do about it
Not a list of cold animals but of what cold does to them, on a 13x13 board: the hibernating dormouse, the burrow, the ermine and ptarmigan that turn white, the arctic fox, the walrus and the caribou.
The clothes: getting a child out of the door
Twelve layers on a 13x13 board, in roughly the order they go on: the thermals, the turtleneck, the fleece, the down jacket, the parka, the snow pants, the mitts, the earmuffs and the balaclava.
The night sky, which winter wins
Winter has the clearest sky of the year and the longest nights to use it, so it gets a 13x13 board: Orions Belt, the Pleiades, Sirius, the Big Dipper, the north star, the solstice and the aurora.
Digging out: the unromantic board
The one nobody puts on a card, and the biggest grid here at 14x14: the shovel, the scraper, the rock salt, the grit, the tire chains, the snowblower, the antifreeze and the driveway that fills in again by morning.
