How to create Reverse Word Search puzzles?
This tutorial shows how to create Reverse Word Search puzzles with Puzzle Maker Pro - Reverse Word Search.
This tutorial is for:
What is Reverse Word Search
Reverse Word Search is a puzzle where a list of words must be placed in an almost empty grid, instead of Standard Word Search where you have to find words that are already placed in the grid.
In this example you can see that some words are already placed in the grid. For each unplaced word, one or more letters will be shown. With each puzzle you also get the complete list of words for that puzzle, in this case:
Astonishing, Blessing, Compelling, Delight, Discovery, Dream, Energetic, Enrich, Exclusive, Ferocious, Hero, Life-Changing, Now, Overwhelm, Passion, Pleasure, Power, Quality, Renewal, Results, Sensational, Service, Sexy, Soul, Thriving, Transforming, Unlimited, Whole.
If you already know Puzzle Maker Pro - Standard Word Search, or Zig Zag Word Search, the options and features of this module will be familiar to you.
Set up the Word List
Every word puzzle starts with your word list. You can either type / copy the words, or select a txt file with the words. Each word should be on a separate line.
The screenshot shows that a word list file was selected, and also shows a preview of a puzzle and solution that were generated from the word list:
Reverse Word Search Complexity
The complexity / difficulty of Reverse Word Search depends on several settings, such as:
- The words in your word list
- The size of the grid
- The number of clues in the grid
- The number of words that are already shown
The number of clues and the number of words can be set on the Advanced tab:
There are five settings for the number of Clues:
- Very Easy (1 clue for each 3 letters) - a 9 letter word will show 3 letters
- Easy (1 clue for each 5 letters) - a 9 letter word will show 2 letters
- Normal (1 clue for each 6 letters) - a 12 letter word will show 2 letters
- Hard (1 clue for each word)
- Very Hard (1 clue for each two words)
The letters will be selected randomly. Because of overlapping words, it's possible that more than the number of clues are shown for a specific word.
It's best to play with these options after setting the grid size and the word list, to determine which number of clues works best.
Puzzles for Kids
There are several features that allow you to create puzzles specifically for kids. Of course it starts with selecting a suitable word list and grid size. Additionally there are options for:
- Limiting the number of diagonals
- Switch off Reversed words
- Kids Diagonal: An option to enforce that diagonal words are always printed from top left to bottom right.
(The word list in this example is obviously not a great fit for younger kids, it's just used to demonstrate the Kid's Diagonal feature).
Solution Options
In contrast to Standard Word Search there are no options to set the 'noise' letters to fill the grid, since empty square will be shown as black squares. (Otherwise the puzzle would be unsolvable).
You can set the style of the lines that indicate the words in the solution, along with the line color and thickness.
Puzzle Styling Options
You can customize the styling of the puzzle by selecting your own font (and font color) and setting the colors for the lines and squares. For Reverse Word Search Puzzles it's necessary to print the lines in the grid, otherwise it will become really hard to solve.
You can change the font by clicking on the white panel that shows the font name (it also shows the text "Click to Edit Font Settings").
Word List Styling Options
Additionally there are some options to control the way the word list is displayed in Instant Puzzle Books.
- If your word list has hints / descriptions in addition to the words, you can choose to display those. That adds a significant bit of complexity. This feature can also be used to create language translation puzzles. (instead of just typing a word on each line, type the word and description, separated by a colon, like this "word:description")
- Words can be aligned left, center or right.
- Words can be sorted in several ways
Here's an example of a Reverse Word Search page in an Instant Puzzle Book (this example uses the Time Saver features):
