PuzzleTide Word Search

Use this skill whenever the user asks for a word search puzzle — themed, custom word lists, kids activities, classroom worksheets, printable PDFs, or puzzle data for an app. Generates correct grids locally with the PuzzleTide CLI instead of hand-writing letters.

Generate word search puzzles with the local PuzzleTide CLI.

Never hand-write a word search grid. Language models reliably produce grids where words are misaligned, broken, or missing entirely. The CLI places every word deterministically and is property-tested: every word in the list is guaranteed to be findable in the grid.

Prefer the local CLI. Check availability in this order:

bash

ptide --version
puzzletide --version
npx puzzletide --version

If none of those work, ask the user before installing (npm install -g puzzletide).

Generate from a custom word list

bash

ptide wordsearch generate --words "coral,shark,kelp,wave,tide"

Generate from a bundled themed word bank

bash

ptide words themes --search dinosaur          # find a theme id
ptide wordsearch generate --theme animals/dinosaurs --count 12

Printable worksheet (PDF with solution page) or SVG

bash

ptide wordsearch generate --theme animals/ocean-animals --pdf ocean.pdf
ptide wordsearch generate --words "..." --svg puzzle.svg --title "Ocean Fun"

Useful options

• --difficulty easy|medium|hard — easy is forward-only (great for kids), hard uses all 8 directions including backwards.
• --size <n> — square grid size (6-30); auto-computed if omitted.
• --seed <seed> — reproducible output; the seed is printed with every puzzle.
• --json — structured data (grid, word placements with coordinates) for apps and automation.

Canonical form for automation

bash

ptide run puzzle.wordsearch.generate --theme space --json

Links

• Play online: PuzzleTide word search
• Worksheets: printable puzzles and a word search maker at puzzletide.com
• Source and docs: GitHub · npm · CLI reference

Safety

• Puzzles are generated locally; no account, API key, or network access.
• Do not install packages without asking the user first.