Play an animals word search built from 77 names: farm animals, big cats, apes and the odd PLATYPUS, twelve at a time on a 12×12 grid. No app, no sign-up and no interstitial before the grid appears; it works offline after your first visit and plays fully from the keyboard.
Word Search board is loading.
Animal names are made mostly of common letters. A, E, R, O and L run through LLAMA, BEAR, OTTER and GORILLA, and the fill follows English letter frequency, so they blend in. Start with the names that carry a letter the fill rarely uses.
ZEBRA and GAZELLE are the only Z words and LYNX the only X. SKUNK has two Ks, and SQUIRREL has the only Q. If one of these is in your list, find the rare letter and check its eight neighbours; the word usually appears in seconds.
More than twenty animals contain a doubled letter: the OO in RACCOON and KANGAROO, the FF in GIRAFFE, the LL in LLAMA, the PP in HIPPO. Identical neighbours are rare in random fill and look the same from both ends, a quick way into a backwards word.
FOX, ELK, COW, PIG and BAT are the hardest finds, because three letters can hide in almost any run of fill. By the time they are all that is left, the coloured bands have used up much of the grid, and a row-by-row sweep for the first letter will find them.
The animals list has 77 words, all everyday English names rather than scientific ones. They run from three letters (FOX, ELK, COW, PIG, BAT) to nine (ARMADILLO, PORCUPINE, CROCODILE), with five- and six-letter names such as TIGER, ZEBRA, BEAVER and MONKEY making up the bulk. Nothing is longer than nine letters, so every animal fits even the 10×10 grid.
The list is built in families. There is the farm (HORSE, PONY, DONKEY, GOAT, SHEEP, LAMB, COW, BULL, PIG), the big cats (LEOPARD, CHEETAH, JAGUAR, PANTHER, COUGAR, LYNX), the primates (MONKEY, GORILLA, CHIMP, BABOON, LEMUR) and a small Australian corner (KOALA, KANGAROO, WALLABY, PLATYPUS). Look-alike pairs are deliberate: RABBIT and HARE, TURTLE and TORTOISE, FROG and TOAD, ALPACA and LLAMA, BISON and BUFFALO.
A few spellings are worth a second look: LLAMA starts with a double L, RACCOON has two doubled pairs and MEERKAT hides a double E.
The timer pauses when the tab is hidden, and Animals stats (played, won, win rate, best and average time) stay in this browser. The first two hints are free; once ads are enabled, more cost a short ad or a 30-second wait. Every grid has a code such as A7K3Q to replay or share, and the printable page makes animals sheets.
On a phone the 12×12 animals grid fits the screen with letters large enough to tap, and every letter can also be reached with the arrow keys. Tidy Puzzles runs entirely in your browser: there is no app to install, no account to create and no interstitial before you can play. After the first visit the game also works offline, because each puzzle is generated on your device from a seed. Every board can be played with the keyboard alone, on a phone or a desktop, and your stats and unfinished puzzles stay in this browser rather than on a server.
The list has 77 animals. A 12×12 grid hides 12 of them, chosen at random each game; a 20×20 hides 28.
Three nine-letter names share the top spot: ARMADILLO, PORCUPINE and CROCODILE. The shortest are FOX, ELK, COW, PIG and BAT.
Yes. Each name runs in one of eight directions, including backwards and along both diagonals.
Yes. Choose Animals on the printable word search page to make a PDF with up to six grids and an optional solution page.
The words are family friendly. For younger children, the kids word search has CAT, DOG and DUCK in four directions on an 8×8 grid.
The mixed grid, with words from all twenty themes.
From garden birds to birds of prey.
Bugs, bees, butterflies and their life cycles.
Any theme as a PDF, with a solution page.
Flip and match pairs on 4×4 or 6×6 boards.
Picture logic you can solve without guessing.
Last updated 2026-09-27. Written and maintained by the Tidy Puzzles team; puzzles are generated on your device. How it works.