Classic Adventure Stories Word Search

About this puzzle

The ingredients of a classic adventure story: a quest and a voyage, a treasure, and a map full of places — an island, a castle, a lighthouse, a shipwreck — the characters you might meet there (pirate, knight, explorer, dragon) and the puzzles they must solve (riddles and legends). Famous books from Treasure Island to the tales of King Arthur use many of these ingredients.

The default layout is Medium on a 13×13 grid. Easy, Medium and Hard each use their own checked layout of the same words, and every one can be printed in standard or large print on US Letter or A4.

Word notes

Treasure

Usually hidden and well guarded; Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island (1883) made the pirate's treasure map famous.

Pirate

Sea robbers; the "Golden Age of Piracy" in the Caribbean lasted roughly from the 1650s to the 1720s.

Quest

A long search for something important.

Knight

A mounted warrior of medieval Europe; in legends, knights set out on quests to prove their courage.

Lighthouse

A tower with a powerful light that warns ships away from rocks and guides them into harbor.

Shipwreck

Real shipwrecks are studied by underwater archaeologists for clues about the past.

Compass

A tool that points to magnetic north.

Riddle

A question or puzzle with a clever answer; in adventure stories, riddles often guard the way forward.

Try this after the puzzle

Build a story together: each person draws three words from the list out of a hat and adds one sentence to a shared adventure. Then draw a treasure map that includes an island, a lighthouse, a shipwreck and a castle, and write a riddle that leads to the treasure.

All 14 words

Treasure · Island · Pirate · Quest · Voyage · Castle · Dragon · Knight · Lighthouse · Shipwreck · Compass · Explorer · Legend · Riddle