The War of the Worlds
| R | I | N | V | A | S | I | O | N | ||||||||||
| O | G | H | C | D | O | P | I | R | T | H | ||||||||
| T | E | N | O | Y | G | T | E | L | E | S | C | O | P | E | ||||
| T | I | R | L | N | P | N | Y | Z | Y | H | R | S | E | P | ||||
| E | K | S | I | O | H | Q | Y | I | E | P | A | Y | A | M | Q | W | ||
| M | O | E | N | D | H | O | R | R | O | R | T | U | R | V | O | O | X | E |
| W | L | D | N | C | D | E | T | X | B | E | E | T | L | T | L | R | K | E |
| L | E | O | H | D | L | I | R | T | S | M | H | D | S | S | A | I | Y | E |
| R | L | M | H | L | I | S | L | L | E | W | A | H | L | I | A | E | G | A |
| E | I | E | I | S | H | J | S | S | R | R | T | R | A | U | R | T | H | O |
| E | I | T | N | R | C | K | C | S | V | A | S | N | T | J | O | A | E | A |
| A | R | A | N | A | R | R | A | U | A | A | R | H | B | I | T | M | E | D |
| A | O | L | R | M | E | N | T | R | T | I | E | T | A | K | A | S | S | F |
| A | O | L | S | W | D | L | U | R | O | I | T | N | C | W | R | N | Z | I |
| T | I | A | P | N | M | V | E | R | O | S | E | D | L | R | T | S | ||
| C | I | E | U | N | W | Y | Y | O | N | T | E | M | A | U | ||||
| T | B | F | H | O | E | X | P | L | O | S | I | O | N | V | ||||
| G | T | G | R | E | E | N | M | N | F | N | ||||||||
| E | L | C | A | T | N | E | T | G | ||||||||||
- ARTILLERY
- CYLINDER
- EARTH
- EXPLOSION
- FEAR
- GREEN
- HEAT RAY
- HORROR
- HORSELL
- INVASION
- LONDON
- MARS
- MARTIANS
- METALLIC
- METEOR
- MONSTERS
- NARRATOR
- OBSERVATORY
- OGILVY
- OTTERSHAW
- PULSATED
- SANDPIT
- SCREW
- SMOKE
- SMOULDERING
- STENT
- SURREY
- TELESCOPE
- TENTACLE
- THUNDER CHILD
- TRIPOD
- WELLS
- WOKING
Print this puzzle
Orson Welles narrated a radio version of this Martian invasion story. Many listeners are said to have believed Earth was really under attack, and the novel explores colonialism through heat rays, cylinders, and horror falling on London. Play this War of the Worlds puzzle online or print it for a classic-lit unit.
Prefer to check your work on screen? Open the answer key page.
Tips for Solving Word Search Puzzles
Words in this puzzle run in all eight directions: across, down and diagonally, and some of them read backwards. Knowing the rules narrows the search before you start.
How hints work
Press and hold a word in the list beside the puzzle above, or hold Space or Enter on it from the keyboard, and a ring fills while you wait. After five seconds every cell where that word's first letter appears is outlined in the grid. Keep holding another six seconds and the outlines narrow to only the places where its second letter follows on. Let go and the outlines clear. A word found with help keeps its outline, in the grid and in the list, so you can see afterwards which ones needed a hint. Hints are available while the clock is running, not while the puzzle is paused.
Ways to find a stubborn word
- Check the edges for long words. A long word needs a long straight run of cells, and the outer rows and columns are where those runs tend to begin or end. Trace the border first.
- Hunt the rare letter, not the first one. A word that contains a J, Q, X, Z, K, W or V is easier to find by that letter than by its opening one: there are far fewer of them on the grid, and each one you find is a candidate to read outward from in every allowed direction.
- Search the open ground. Once several words are marked, the remaining ones are hiding in the areas nothing crosses yet. Give the untouched patches your attention before re-reading rows you have already combed.
- Look for doubled letters and fixed pairs. LL, OO, EE, TH and QU stand out at a glance. Find the pair, then check whether the rest of the word runs from it.
- Scan one direction at a time. Run your eye along every row looking only for the word's first two letters, then down every column, then along the diagonals if the puzzle allows them. One direction per pass is faster than switching on every cell.
- Read the endings. If words here can run backwards, an ending like ING, TION or ER is as good a handle as the start: spot it, then read back the other way.
- Take the longest words first. They have the fewest possible positions, and marking them carves the grid into smaller regions for everything shorter.
- Pause when you are stuck. Pause stops the clock. A fresh look after a minute away finds what a tired one keeps missing, and Shuffle gives you a new arrangement of the same words if you would rather start over.
What the words in this puzzle mean
- ARTILLERY
- The guns the army brings up against the tripods, and which achieve almost nothing.
- CYLINDER
- The metal container each Martian craft arrives in, unscrewing slowly from within.
- EARTH
- The target of the invasion, chosen because Mars is dying and cooling.
- EXPLOSION
- The flashes seen on Mars through the telescope, which were the launches.
- FEAR
- The book's real subject — the collapse of ordinary society under it.
- GREEN
- The colour of the flashes from Mars, and of the flare as a cylinder lands.
- HEAT RAY
- The Martian weapon, an invisible beam that sets everything it touches alight.
- HORROR
- The tone Wells sustains by keeping the narrator ordinary and the events vast.
- HORSELL
- Horsell Common, the heath near Woking where the first cylinder lands.
- INVASION
- The plot, and the template for almost every alien invasion story since.
- LONDON
- The city the Martians advance on, emptied in the greatest panic Wells could imagine.
- MARS
- The Martians' dying home world, which drives them to take a warmer one.
- MARTIANS
- Huge-brained, bodiless creatures who feed on blood and cannot survive Earth's microbes.
- METALLIC
- The quality of the unscrewing sound from inside the cylinder, heard before anything emerges.
- METEOR
- What the first cylinder is mistaken for as it crosses the sky.
- MONSTERS
- What the crowd calls the Martians once they climb out of the pit.
- NARRATOR
- An unnamed writer on philosophy, whose ordinariness is what makes the story work.
- OBSERVATORY
- Ogilvy's, where the narrator watches the flashes on Mars before anyone understands them.
- OGILVY
- The astronomer who shows the narrator Mars and is killed approaching the first cylinder.
- OTTERSHAW
- The Surrey village where the observatory stands.
- PULSATED
- How the Martian bodies move — the wet, breathing quality Wells keeps returning to.
- SANDPIT
- The crater the first cylinder digs on the common where it lands.
- SCREW
- The cylinder's cap, which turns slowly from inside while the crowd watches.
- SMOKE
- The Black Smoke, a heavier-than-air poison the Martians use to clear whole districts.
- SMOULDERING
- The state of the countryside behind the heat ray's path.
- STENT
- The Astronomer Royal, killed with the delegation that approached under a white flag.
- SURREY
- The county the invasion begins in, a few miles from Wells's own house.
- TELESCOPE
- The instrument through which the launches on Mars were seen and misread.
- TENTACLE
- The Martians' limbs, which they use in place of the bodies they no longer have.
- THUNDER CHILD
- The torpedo ram that charges two tripods and sinks, the one human victory in the book.
- TRIPOD
- The three-legged fighting machine, the image the novel is remembered by.
- WELLS
- H. G. Wells, who wrote the novel in 1898 while living in Woking.
- WOKING
- The Surrey town where Wells lived and where he set the landing.
The War of the Worlds Word Search Answer Key
Checking a finished sheet, or stuck on the last word? The The War of the Worlds Word Search Answer Key marks all 33 hidden words in the grid and lists the row, column and direction each one starts from. It prints on its own sheet, so you can hand out the puzzle and keep the answers.
Show the completed answer key Hide the answer key
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