What word search is called around the world
Because nobody ever registered a name for the word search, every language came up with its own. Some describe the hunt, some describe the jumble, and one makes it sound like lunch.
Spanish: sopa de letras
"Letter soup." The name fits the picture of letters floating in a bowl, and it is the name used across Spain and Latin America. In Spain the puzzle is credited to Pedro Ocón de Oro, a Madrid puzzle maker who created more than a hundred kinds of pastime. You can read more in our history of word search.
French: mots mêlés
"Mixed-up words" or "tangled words". You will also see mots cachés, "hidden words", in French puzzle magazines.
Portuguese: caça-palavras
"Word hunt", the usual name in Brazil. In Portugal you are more likely to see sopa de letras, as in Spanish.
Dutch: woordzoeker
"Word seeker" or "word finder". It is about as close to the English name as any language gets.
German: Wortsuchrätsel
"Word search puzzle", built the German way by joining words together. Buchstabensalat, "letter salad", is a friendlier name often used for the same thing.
Italian: crucipuzzle
A borrowing that mixes cruciverba, the Italian for crossword, with the English word puzzle. It is the name you will find in Italian puzzle magazines.
English: more names than you might think
Even in English the puzzle has no single name. Word search and wordsearch are the most common, but puzzle books also use word find, word seek and word sleuth. Some versions are called mystery word puzzles, because the letters left over after you have found everything spell out a hidden message.
Coming soon in your language
The language menu at the top of the page lists the languages we plan to add. Each will get its own word lists, written in that language rather than translated, because a good word search depends on words that feel natural to the people playing it.