About this puzzle
Football, basketball, baseball, and soccer each have a puzzle of their own, so this list goes wider. It covers racket sports like tennis and badminton, Olympic events like gymnastics, fencing, and archery, winter sports from skiing to curling, team games from rugby to lacrosse to cricket, and a few words every athlete knows, including referee, medal, and trophy. Each note adds one solid fact, such as how a tennis score jumps from 15 to 30 to 40.
PE teachers like it for rainy days and the first week of an Olympics unit, and coaches hand it out on long bus rides to tournaments. Sports fans of any age will recognize most of the words, but the notes on lacrosse's Indigenous roots and volleyball's original name tend to surprise even people who follow sports closely.
The 32 words in this puzzle
Every word, with a short note. Handy for teaching the vocabulary before or after solving.
In every version (12)
- Bowling
- A perfect game in ten-pin bowling is 300, which requires twelve strikes in a row. A strike means knocking down all ten pins with the first ball of a frame.
- Cycling
- The Tour de France was first held in 1903. The modern race covers roughly three weeks of daily stages across France and sometimes neighboring countries.
- Golf
- In golf, the lowest score wins. The standard 18-hole round traces to St Andrews in Scotland, which reduced its course from 22 holes to 18 in 1764.
- Hockey
- Ice hockey uses a rubber puck and six players per side, including the goalie. In many countries, hockey means field hockey, which is played on grass or turf with a ball.
- Karate
- Karate developed on the island of Okinawa, and the name means empty hand in Japanese. It made its Olympic debut at the Tokyo 2020 Games, held in 2021.
- Medal
- Olympic winners receive gold, silver, and bronze medals. Modern Olympic gold medals are actually made mostly of silver, with a coating of real gold.
- Skating
- Figure skaters and speed skaters both glide on thin steel blades. Figure skating was first held at the 1908 Summer Olympics in London, years before the first Winter Olympics in 1924.
- Skiing
- Skiing began thousands of years ago as a way to travel over snow in northern Europe and Asia. Alpine skiers race downhill through gates, while cross-country skiers glide over long courses.
- Surfing
- Surfing developed in Polynesia and was refined in Hawaii. Hawaiian swimmer Duke Kahanamoku spread it worldwide, and surfing joined the Olympics at the Tokyo 2020 Games.
- Swimming
- Competitive swimming has four strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly. The individual medley race requires a swimmer to use all four.
- Tennis
- Tennis points go love, 15, 30, 40, then game. The four Grand Slam tournaments are the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open.
- Trophy
- Trophy comes from the Greek tropaion, a monument ancient Greeks built on a battlefield to mark a victory, often decorated with captured armor.
Added in Medium and Hard (8)
- Archery
- Olympic archers shoot at a target 70 meters away. The target has ten scoring rings, and the small gold center is worth ten points.
- Athlete
- Athlete comes from the Greek word athlos, meaning contest. Winners at the ancient Olympic Games received wreaths of olive leaves rather than medals.
- Diving
- Olympic divers leap from a springboard 3 meters high or a platform 10 meters high, about as tall as a three-story building. Judges reward a clean entry with very little splash.
- Gymnastics
- The word comes from the ancient Greek gymnazein, meaning to train or exercise. Olympic women compete on four apparatus and men on six.
- Marathon
- A marathon is 26.2 miles, or 42.195 kilometers. That exact distance comes from the 1908 London Olympics and became the official standard in 1921.
- Referee
- Referees enforce the rules and keep play safe. Different sports use different titles for officials, including umpire in baseball and tennis and judge in gymnastics.
- Volleyball
- William G. Morgan invented volleyball in 1895 in Holyoke, Massachusetts, as a gentler indoor game for businessmen. He originally called it Mintonette.
- Wrestling
- Wrestling is one of the oldest sports on record and was part of the ancient Olympics. Greco-Roman wrestling bans holds below the waist; freestyle allows them.
Added in Hard (12)
- Badminton
- Badminton is named after Badminton House, an English country estate where the game was played in the 1800s. Top players' smashes have been clocked at more than 250 miles per hour.
- Cricket
- Cricket is played by two teams of eleven. Its longest format, Test cricket, can last up to five days, with breaks for lunch and tea.
- Curling
- Curling began in Scotland. Players slide heavy granite stones across the ice toward a target called the house, while teammates sweep the ice to help each stone travel farther.
- Fencing
- Modern fencing uses three weapons: foil, epee, and saber. It is one of the few sports included in every modern Summer Olympics since 1896.
- Judo
- Judo was created in Japan in 1882 by Kano Jigoro. The name means the gentle way, and players score by throwing or pinning opponents rather than striking them.
- Lacrosse
- Lacrosse began with Indigenous peoples of North America. The Haudenosaunee, who still field their own international team, call it the Creator's Game.
- Pickleball
- Pickleball was invented in 1965 on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Players use paddles and a plastic ball with holes on a court the same size as a doubles badminton court.
- Rowing
- Rowers pull oars to move a long, narrow boat while sitting backward to the direction they travel. In larger boats, a coxswain steers and calls out the rhythm.
- Rugby
- Legend says William Webb Ellis invented rugby in 1823 by picking up a soccer ball and running with it, but historians have found little evidence for the story.
- Sailing
- Sailors use the wind to power their boats and can even sail at an angle toward it. The America's Cup, first raced in 1851, is often called the oldest trophy in international sports.
- Snowboarding
- Snowboarding grew out of surfing and skateboarding in the 1960s and 1970s. It became an Olympic sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan.
- Triathlon
- A triathlon combines swimming, cycling, and running in one race. The Olympic distance is a 1.5 kilometer swim, a 40 kilometer bike ride, and a 10 kilometer run.
A few facts to share while you solve
- Basketball and volleyball were both invented in Massachusetts within four years of each other, basketball in Springfield in 1891 and volleyball in nearby Holyoke in 1895.
- A golf ball typically has between 300 and 500 dimples. They reduce drag and help the ball fly much farther than a smooth ball would.
- The first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens, Greece, in 1896, with athletes from about 14 nations.
Four versions of this puzzle
Pick a version with the buttons above the grid. Each one has its own grid and answer key, and your progress on each is saved separately in this browser.
| Version | Words | Grid | Directions |
|---|---|---|---|
| Easy | 12 | 11 × 11 | The 12 most familiar words, reading forward across and down. |
| Medium | 20 | 15 × 15 | Twenty words across, down and diagonally. No backwards words. |
| Hard | 32 | 17 × 17 | Every word, in all eight directions including backwards, with look-alike filler letters. |
| Large print | 12 | 11 × 11 | The 12 most familiar words on a small grid with big letters. No backwards words. |
Hard and large print versions
Hard sports word search: all 32 words on a 17 × 17 grid, hidden forward, backward, up, down and along both diagonals, with filler letters borrowed from the word list. Print it without the word list for an extra challenge. Play the hard version, or see all hard word searches.
Large print sports word search: the 12 most familiar words on a 11 × 11 grid, printed with big letters and a big word list, and no backwards words. Play the large print version, or see all large print word searches.
Printing this word search
Press Print / PDF above the puzzle. You get a clean one-page sheet with the title, the grid, a word list with tick boxes, and optional name and date lines. The answer key prints on a second page. Prefer a file? Download it as a PDF or an image to print later or drop into a worksheet. Whatever version is showing on screen is the one that prints, and the large print version prints with bigger letters.
How to play online
- Find a word from the list in the grid. Scanning for its first letter is the quickest way.
- Drag across the word from its first letter to its last. On a phone, you can also tap the first letter, then the last.
- Found words get highlighted and crossed off. Stuck? Hint circles the first letter of a word you haven’t found.
Read the full guide to solving word searches, with tips that make big grids much faster.
Questions and answers
Why aren't football, basketball, baseball, and soccer in this sports word search?
Those four are so popular that each has a dedicated puzzle with its own vocabulary, like touchdown, rebound, bullpen, and offside. Keeping them out of this list leaves room for sports that rarely get a word search of their own, such as fencing, lacrosse, badminton, and cricket.
Is this puzzle good for a PE class or an Olympics unit?
It works well for both. Many words are Olympic sports, so students can solve the puzzle, then pick one sport to research: when it entered the Olympics, how scoring works, and which countries tend to excel. The word notes give each student a head start.
How hard is the sports word search?
Most words are familiar, so it is a comfortable puzzle for kids about eight and up on easy. Longer names like gymnastics, volleyball, and badminton make the medium and hard modes a genuine workout for teens and adults who want more than a quick warm-up.
Is there an answer key for this sports word search?
Yes. Choose Print / PDF above the puzzle and keep “Add an answer key page” ticked. The key prints on its own page, with every word highlighted. While playing online, Show answers outlines any words you haven’t found yet.
Can I print copies for my class or group?
Yes. Every puzzle on BetterWordSearch is free to print for personal, classroom, library and homeschool use. Print as many copies as you need. To change the words or make several different versions of the grid, use the word search maker.
What changes between Easy, Medium, Hard and Large print?
Easy hides the 12 most familiar words, reading left to right and top to bottom. Medium uses 20 words and adds diagonals. Hard hides all 32 words in every direction, including backwards, with look-alike filler letters. Large print uses the same words as Easy on a small grid and prints with big letters.
