cranberryFind to reveal
Ripe cranberries hold four tiny air pockets, so they bounce when dropped and float when bogs are flooded for harvest.
Thanksgiving Word Search
Find familiar words. Discover something unexpected.
Puzzle10 words · 11×11 grid · Medium · Answer key included
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🎉 Solved — all 10 words found!
Did you know?
Find a puzzle word to reveal its fact.
0 of 10 facts revealed
leftoversFind to reveal
Bubble and squeak turns leftover potatoes and cabbage into a fried dish, taking its unusual name from the sounds made during cooking.
mayflowerFind to reveal
The Mayflower was a cargo ship built to carry wine and goods, never designed to ferry families across an ocean.
stuffingFind to reveal
The name for a comic farce comes from stuffing, because funny scenes were inserted into serious plays like filling between main parts.
gratefulFind to reveal
The Japanese thank-you word arigato grew from an expression meaning hard to exist, connecting gratitude with something thought rare and special.
thankfulFind to reveal
The word thank shares an ancient root with think; to thank someone once meant to keep them in mind.
wishboneFind to reveal
A bird's wishbone is made from fused collarbones, making the Thanksgiving luck ritual depend on a piece of flight equipment.
blessingFind to reveal
The word blessing comes from an Old English term for marking with blood, later softened to mean divine favor.
pilgrimFind to reveal
Some Mayflower passengers were religious Separatists; others were recruited by investors, making the Pilgrim voyage a mixture of backgrounds and purposes.
turkeyFind to reveal
The bird got its name by mistake: traders sold African guinea fowl through Turkey, and the label stuck to the American bird.
True stories · New York, New York
The runaway balloons
In the Macy's parades of the late 1920s, the giant balloons did not deflate at the end. Handlers simply let them go. The puppet maker Tony Sarg had each balloon built to leak slowly, then sewed in a return address and an offer of a reward, around twenty five dollars, for anyone who found and mailed back the rubber. The released giants drifted for days across the New York sky, and on Thanksgiving 1931 the aviator Clarence Chamberlin chased two of them down in his plane to claim the prize. The risky scramble grew alarming, and after 1932 Macy's stopped releasing the balloons and kept its giants tethered for good.
Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.
Cicero
Trivia
Which writer and editor campaigned for decades to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, succeeding in 1863?
Sarah Josepha Hale, who also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb.
On what day of the week did President Lincoln fix the national Thanksgiving holiday?
Thursday (originally the last Thursday in November).
Which U.S. state grows roughly 60 percent of the country's cranberries?
Wisconsin.
In which large American city does the famous Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade march each year?
New York City.
Which president held the first official annual turkey pardon ceremony, in 1989?
George H. W. Bush.
Trivia · 1 / 5
Which writer and editor campaigned for decades to make Thanksgiving a national holiday, succeeding in 1863?
Sarah Josepha Hale, who also wrote Mary Had a Little Lamb.
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Play →or printTrue stories · Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The letter that won a holiday
For roughly seventeen years, a magazine editor campaigned for a shared national Thanksgiving. Sarah Josepha Hale believed America needed one shared day of thanks, and from her desk at Godey's Lady's Book she pressed governors and a string of presidents to declare it. Then on September 28, 1863, with the country torn by civil war, she wrote to President Lincoln. Within days he proclaimed a national Thanksgiving on the last Thursday of November, and it has been kept every year since. Hale, already known for the rhyme Mary Had a Little Lamb, had helped make a shared day of thanks a national tradition.
Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.
W. J. Cameron
Find turkey, cranberry and pilgrim among the words hidden in this puzzle. Play free online or print the puzzle with its answer key.
Is this thanksgiving word search free to print?
This thanksgiving word search is a free printable puzzle with 10 hidden words in an 11×11 grid. Find words like CRANBERRY, LEFTOVERS, MAYFLOWER hidden across, down, and diagonally. You can play it right here in your browser — tap the first and last letter of a word — or download it as a printable PDF with the full answer key on page two. It's free for personal and classroom use, so teachers can print copies for a whole class with no sign-up and no account. Word searches like this one are a proven way to build vocabulary, spelling, and word-shape recognition, which is why they're a favourite with ESL learners, elementary classrooms, and anyone who likes a quiet puzzle with their coffee.
Print this Thanksgiving word search
Sources: Macy's parade balloon releases and 1931 Chamberlin flight (Transportation History) · Sarah Josepha Hale, Godey's Lady's Book, and Lincoln (National Park Service) · First official turkey pardon, George H. W. Bush 1989 (White House Historical Association) · Wisconsin produces about 60 percent of US cranberries (PolitiFact)
Word list, facts & trivia researched and compiled by Sam Letterman — spotted a mistake? Tell us and we’ll fix it.