USA Word Search

About this puzzle

The list is a quick tour of the United States in three parts. There are national symbols like the Bald Eagle, Liberty Bell, and Lady Liberty, famous places like the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, the Everglades, and the Gateway Arch, and the words of American government, like the Constitution, Bill of Rights, Congress, and Supreme Court.

Each note gives a solid fact about the word, which makes this a handy companion to a civics lesson, Constitution Day in September, or a family road trip to a national park. It pairs well with our US states puzzle, and kids who are studying for a citizenship-style quiz at school will recognize many of the words.

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)

Anthem

The national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, comes from a poem Francis Scott Key wrote in 1814 after watching the flag fly over Fort McHenry. It became the official anthem in 1931.

Bald Eagle

The bald eagle appears on the Great Seal of the United States, adopted in 1782. It lives only in North America, and its white head gives it a bald look from a distance.

Capitol

The building in Washington, DC, where Congress meets. It is spelled with an o, while capital with an a means a city that is the seat of government.

Congress

The branch of government that makes federal laws. It has two parts, the Senate with 100 senators and the House of Representatives with 435 voting members.

Flag

The American flag has 13 red and white stripes for the original colonies and 50 white stars on a blue field, one for each state. The 50-star design was first flown in 1960.

Freedom

Freedom is one of the country's founding ideas. The Declaration of Independence names life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as rights that all people are born with.

Golden Gate

The Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco opened in 1937. Its famous reddish color is called International Orange, chosen partly so it would stand out in fog.

Pledge

The Pledge of Allegiance is a promise of loyalty to the flag and the country. It was first written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 and has been changed slightly since.

President

The president leads the executive branch and serves a four-year term. The 22nd Amendment, ratified in 1951, limits a president to being elected twice.

Rushmore

Mount Rushmore in South Dakota shows the carved faces of Washington, Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Lincoln, each about 60 feet tall. It sits in the Black Hills, which are sacred to the Lakota people.

Uncle Sam

A cartoon figure in a top hat who stands for the US government. The name is often traced to Samuel Wilson, a meat packer whose barrels were stamped US during the War of 1812.

White House

The home and office of the president at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC. Every president since John Adams, who moved in during 1800, has lived there.

Added in Medium and Hard (8)

Bill of Rights

The first ten amendments to the Constitution, added in 1791. They protect freedoms such as speech, religion, the press, and the right to gather peacefully.

Constitution

The document that sets up the US government and its basic laws. It was signed in Philadelphia on September 17, 1787, and is often called the oldest written national constitution still in use.

Democracy

A system of government in which the people hold the power, usually by voting for leaders. The United States is a constitutional republic, a form of representative democracy.

Grand Canyon

A giant canyon in Arizona carved by the Colorado River over millions of years. In places it is more than a mile deep.

Lady Liberty

A nickname for the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France dedicated in 1886 in New York Harbor. The copper statue started out a shiny brown and slowly turned green with age.

Liberty Bell

This famous cracked bell hangs in Philadelphia. Its inscription, Proclaim Liberty throughout all the Land, inspired people working to end slavery, who gave the bell its name.

Niagara Falls

Three waterfalls on the Niagara River along the border between New York and the Canadian province of Ontario. Together they send an enormous amount of water over the edge every second.

Yellowstone

Yellowstone, mostly in Wyoming, became the first national park in 1872. It is famous for geysers like Old Faithful and for bison, elk, and bears.

Added in Hard (12)

Alamo

A former Spanish mission in San Antonio, Texas, where Texan defenders were defeated in 1836 during the Texas Revolution. Remember the Alamo became their rallying cry.

Bison

The American bison became the national mammal in 2016. Tens of millions once roamed the Great Plains, but hunting nearly wiped them out by the late 1800s.

Declaration

The Declaration of Independence, written mostly by Thomas Jefferson, was adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, announcing that the colonies were free from British rule.

Ellis Island

An island in New York Harbor that was the country's busiest immigration station from 1892 to 1954. More than 12 million immigrants passed through it on their way into the United States.

Everglades

A huge, slow-moving wetland in southern Florida, often called the River of Grass. It is one of the few places where alligators and crocodiles live side by side.

Gateway Arch

This stainless steel arch in St. Louis, Missouri, rises 630 feet, making it the tallest monument in the country. It celebrates the city's role as a gateway to the West.

Great Lakes

Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario together hold about one fifth of the fresh surface water on Earth. Lake Michigan is the only one entirely inside the United States.

Hoover Dam

This giant concrete dam on the Colorado River, between Nevada and Arizona, was completed in 1936. It formed Lake Mead and generates electricity for millions of people.

Mississippi

The Mississippi River flows about 2,340 miles from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. With all its branches, it drains water from all or part of 31 states.

Rockies

The Rocky Mountains stretch more than 3,000 miles from Canada to New Mexico. The Continental Divide runs along them, separating rivers that drain toward the Pacific from those that drain toward the Atlantic.

Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution is a group of museums and research centers, mostly in Washington, DC. It was founded in 1846 with money left by James Smithson, a British scientist who never visited America.

Supreme Court

The highest court in the United States, with nine justices. It decides whether laws and government actions follow the Constitution.

A few facts to share while you solve

• The bald eagle is not actually bald. Long ago, bald could mean marked with white, which describes the bird's white head feathers.
• On the American flag, the 13 stripes stand for the original 13 colonies and the 50 stars stand for the 50 states.
• The Statue of Liberty's official name is Liberty Enlightening the World, and from the ground to the tip of her torch she stands about 305 feet tall.

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.

Hard and large print versions

Hard usa word search: all 32 words on a 19 × 19 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 usa word search: the 12 most familiar words on a 12 × 12 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

1. Find a word from the list in the grid. Scanning for its first letter is the quickest way.
2. Drag across the word from its first letter to its last. On a phone, you can also tap the first letter, then the last.
3. 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.