Printing Puzzles at Home: A Simple Guide
Plenty of solvers still prefer paper and a pencil — a printed puzzle has no battery, no glare, and can be enjoyed anywhere. Every puzzle on this site has a clean print view. Here is how to get a good result from a home printer.
Before you print
- Use the Print button on the puzzle page. It opens a print-friendly version: just the puzzle and its word list, in large type, without menus or buttons.
- Choose "Actual size" or 100%. Most print dialogs default to "Fit to page", which can shrink the grid. Our print views are already sized for a standard sheet, so 100% (or "Actual size") gives the biggest, clearest result.
- Orientation is Portrait for all of our print views.
Paper and ink
- Ordinary copier paper is fine. A slightly heavier sheet (90–100 gsm) feels nicer under a pencil and resists show-through if you use a pen.
- Print in black and white / grayscale. Our puzzles are designed for monochrome printing — this also saves colour ink.
- Draft mode is usually enough. Puzzle grids are bold, high-contrast line work; they print cleanly even on an economical setting. If letters look faint, step up to Normal once.
Solving on paper
A soft pencil and a good eraser beat a pen for sudoku. For word searches, many solvers circle the first and last letters and rule a line through the word — whatever marks it clearly is the right method.
Printing for a group
Our printable puzzles may be printed for personal use and for non-commercial group settings such as classrooms, clubs and care-home activity sessions — that is exactly what the printable word search collection is for. If you find you are printing the same favourites again and again, the printed books collect over a hundred puzzles in extra-large print, and the printable pack there is a single file made for home printing.
