Arabic Word Search: Make a Puzzle, Play It or Print It

Arabic Vocabulary Lists > Arabic Word Search

An Arabic word search hides Arabic words in a grid of letters, written right to left or top to bottom. The maker below builds one from six ready word sets or from your own words, in a grid of 8, 10 or 12 squares a side. Solve it on screen, or print it with an answer key.

If you only need a sheet to print, the six sets are also ready-made PDFs with answer keys, further down this page.

How to make and solve a puzzle

Choose a word set or type your own words, choose a grid size, and the maker hides every word in a fresh grid. To mark a word you have found, tap its first letter and then its last.

The six sets are animals, colors, food, family, the numbers one to ten, and Ramadan & Eid, ten words each. They are the same sixty words our free Arabic word games use, so a child who has played the memory match already knows what to look for. To use your own list, such as this week's class vocabulary, type the Arabic words instead. Vowel marks you type are taken out before the words go into the grid.

Words run in two directions only: right to left along a row, the way Arabic is written, or top to bottom down a column. None runs backwards or on a diagonal, so a learner always reads a word in its normal order. An 8 by 8 grid is quick to scan. A 12 by 12 grid hides the same words among many more letters, which makes the hunt longer.

New puzzle shuffles the words into a different grid. Print prints the puzzle, with the answer key or without it.

Free printable Arabic word search PDFs

Each set is also a ready-made PDF: the puzzle has the grid and the word list with meanings, and the answer key is a separate file, so you can hand out the puzzle and keep the answers.

Every word is copied with its spelling and transliteration from one of our vocabulary pages, except five Ramadan words (fasting, the pre-dawn meal, the meal that breaks the fast, the night prayers and the lantern), which come from Wiktionary. That is why the sets write sounds differently: qitta on the animals page, aḥmar on the colors page, 'ashara on the numbers page. The word table on our games page lists each word with its vowel marks and the page it comes from.

Why the grid has no vowel marks

A word search drops the short-vowel marks (harakat) because they sit above or below a letter, and a grid square holds one letter. قِطَّة becomes قطة (qitta, cat): the kasra, the shadda and the fatha go, and the three letters stay. Most newspapers and street signs print Arabic the same way, so the puzzle is practice in reading words without vowels. Our chart of every Arabic short-vowel mark shows what each one does.

The grid also splits every word into single letters. In the word list, قطة is written joined. In the grid, its letters stand apart in separate squares, each in the shape it takes on its own. Finding the word means recognising letters out of their joined forms, and telling apart letters that differ only by dots, such as ب ت ث (bāʾ, tāʾ, thāʾ) or ج ح خ (jīm, ḥāʾ, khāʾ).

Using the word searches in class or at home

Teach the words first, then hand out the puzzle. A word search works best as review, once learners know each word by sound and have seen it with its vowel marks, so that وردي in the grid reads as wardī (pink).

• Read the word list out loud together before anyone starts looking. The vowelled forms are in the games page table linked above.
• Print the answer key once, for the teacher, or on the back of the sheet so learners check their own work.
• When a learner finds a word, have them copy it next to the list with its meaning. Copying it puts the letters back into their joined shapes.
• For a class, make one sheet from the week's own words in the maker and print a copy for each learner.
• In pairs, one learner finds a word and the other reads it aloud with its meaning.

Words a learner keeps missing come back at the right time in our Arabic flashcards with spaced repetition. A learner who cannot yet tell the letters apart should start with the alphabet writing worksheets for all 28 letters. Our free Ramadan worksheets for kids add a separate nine-word Ramadan word search to tracing, coloring and a 2027 calendar, and the 99 Names of Allah poster makes a wall display for a weekend school. For reading the Quran itself on a phone or tablet, see our Quran apps compared.

Frequently asked questions

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