How word searches work
The St Patrick's list is built from the imagery of the day — shamrocks, rainbows, the leprechaun — and the Irish references that come with it: Dublin, Blarney, the harp and the fiddle. It gives the grid a good spread of letter patterns, from the very common (GREEN) to the genuinely distinctive (LEPRECHAUN).
LEPRECHAUN is ten letters and the obvious first target; it barely fits on the small grid and has almost no legal placements on any of them. HARP and JIG at the other end are three and four letters and will hide in plain sight for as long as you let them.
The grid regenerates every time you load the page, so the same theme never gives you the same arrangement twice. Words run in all eight directions including backwards and diagonally, and your fastest completion time for each grid size is saved in your browser.
The St Patrick's Day word list
| Word | Letters | Notable letters |
|---|---|---|
| SHAMROCK | 8 | K |
| RAINBOW | 7 | W |
| CLOVER | 6 | V |
| IRELAND | 7 | common letters only |
| PARADE | 6 | common letters only |
| GREEN | 5 | common letters only |
| LEPRECHAUN | 10 | common letters only |
| FIDDLE | 6 | common letters only |
| CELTIC | 6 | common letters only |
| DUBLIN | 6 | common letters only |
| BLARNEY | 7 | Y |
| HARP | 4 | common letters only |
| JIG | 3 | J |
| EMERALD | 7 | common letters only |
How to find words faster
- Find the longest St Patrick's Day words first. LEPRECHAUN is the longest entry at 10 letters, and long words have far fewer possible placements than short ones. Clearing them early removes a disproportionate share of the grid.
- Target the uncommon letters in this list. The rare letters present here are J, K, V, W, Y. Each one appears only a handful of times in the random filler, so finding the letter usually hands you the word.
- Leave JIG until last. At 3 letters it is the shortest entry, which means it has the most possible positions on the grid and hides best. Short words are always the least efficient thing to hunt first.
- Read every candidate in both directions. Roughly half the placements in any grid are reversed. If an area looks empty, try reading it backwards before moving on.
Frequently asked questions
How many St Patrick's Day words are there?
Fourteen, spanning the holiday imagery and a few Irish place names and instruments. On the ten by ten board the longest word may not always fit, and the list shows only the words actually placed.
Which word is hardest to find?
JIG. Three letters is about as short as a word search entry gets, and every letter in it is common. It has hundreds of possible positions on the grid and will usually be the last one found.
Is this suitable for a classroom?
Yes. The vocabulary is general, there is no gambling or drinking reference in the list, and the ten by ten grid is a comfortable size for younger solvers. It is designed for a general audience.