St. Patrick's Day word search

Rules

• The list under the grid names the St. Patrick's Day words to find; each is in the grid in a straight line.
• At the easy level, read rows from the left and columns from the top.
• At the hard level, also read the diagonals, and read everything in reverse.
• Crossing words share a letter, and there is exactly one copy of each word.
• Tap the start and the end of a word, or circle it on paper with a green pencil.

Luck, music and a little Ireland

The St. Patrick's Day list has three strands. The first is luck and legend: shamrock, clover, leprechaun, rainbow, gold, coins, treasure, horseshoe, wish, lucky, fairy and folklore. The second is the celebration, with a parade, a festival, a dance, a fiddle, a harp and a piper, everything green or emerald, in the month of march. The third is Ireland itself: irish, celtic, dublin, limerick, blarney, an island with a castle and a meadow, and the plain food of potato, cabbage and stew. Saint and patrick are both in the list, since the day is named after him.

The day usually falls on a school day, and the puzzle is short enough to fit before a lesson or after one. A simple extension for a geography class: when the grid is finished, find Dublin, Limerick and Blarney on a map of Ireland. For music, ask which three words in the list are instruments or the people who play them.

There is nothing about drinking in the list, so the sheet works for a family table or a children's party as well as for adults. On the hard grid begin with leprechaun, which is as long as a word can be on this site and fits in very few lines, then horseshoe, and then the many five- and six-letter words that make up most of the list.

Tips

• Celtic, clover, castle, coins and cabbage all begin with C. Read the second letter before you mark.
• Irish and ireland begin alike, and island is one letter away from ireland in places. Count the letters.
• K is scarce in the grid: shamrock, lucky, patrick, limerick and folklore are the only words that have one.
• A different grid is ready each day, and all of them stay open under their numbers after the seventeenth.
• Print with solution adds the answer page for whoever is marking.

How these puzzles are made and checked

A separate scan reads the finished grid from every cell in all eight directions. Every listed word must be found exactly once, at the stored position, and the grid must not spell a word from our deny list outside the listed words.

The puzzle of the day is chosen by the date on your device: puzzle 1 was the puzzle for 1 January 2026, and the number goes up by one each day. Easy: 366 puzzles, so the same puzzle comes round again after 366 days. Hard: 366 puzzles, so the same puzzle comes round again after 366 days. Every number stays open in the archive control above the grid. More detail is on the page how the puzzles are made and checked.