Thanksgiving word search for the table

Rules

• The Thanksgiving words listed below the grid are all hidden in it, each in one straight line.
• Easy: a word reads from left to right or from top to bottom.
• Hard: a word can also lie on a diagonal, and can be spelled backwards.
• Two words can share a letter where they cross. No word is in the grid twice.
• Mark a word by tapping its first and last letters, or circle it on the printed sheet.

A puzzle for the hour before dinner

Most of the Thanksgiving list could be read off the table. The main dishes are there (turkey, stuffing, gravy, potatoes, yams, cornbread, rolls, casserole) and so are the desserts' ingredients, pumpkin and pecan. Around the food are the things that make the day: family, friends, the parade and the football on television, the carving, the platter, the wishbone and the leftovers. A third group of words is about the meaning of the holiday, with thankful, grateful, gratitude and blessing, and a few come from its history: pilgrim, mayflower, plymouth and harvest.

The awkward part of Thanksgiving is the wait. The food is nearly ready, the children are hungry and the kitchen is full. That is when a printed puzzle earns its place. Lay a copy and a crayon at each seat of the children's table, easy level, and they have something to do with their hands. For older cousins, print the hard grid and make it a race, with first choice of pie as the prize.

Teachers use this puzzle in the short week before the holiday. It pairs well with a writing prompt: once the grid is done, each pupil picks three of the words they found and writes a sentence about what they are thankful for using all three. Because each sheet has a number, a pupil who was away can be given the same one later.

Tips

• Start with the longest dishes. Cranberry, casserole and cornbread each fit in only a few places on the grid.
• Thankful and grateful both end in FUL, and gratitude starts like grateful. Check the letters after GRAT before you circle.
• The W of wishbone and mayflower and the Y of yams, gravy and plymouth are quick to spot among the other letters.
• Tomorrow's grid uses other words from the same list, so the puzzle on Thanksgiving Day will be new even if you practised the day before.
• Large print makes the letters bigger for young children and grandparents, and the sheet still fits on one page.

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.