Empire in the mountains
The INCA built a vast EMPIRE through the ANDES MOUNTAIN range, and this word search gathers it. You'll be finding the ruling EMPEROR, the capital CUSCO, the famous cloud city of MACHU PICCHU, and the long stone ROAD that tied the whole empire together across PERU and beyond.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the grid changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode climb once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Farmers, builders and clever record-keepers
The Inca were master builders and farmers, and the words are here. They carved STONE so precise it needed no cement, cut farming TERRACEs into the mountainside, and grew MAIZE and the POTATO high in the hills. They kept records on knotted string called a QUIPU, prized GOLD for their SUN god, and filled the calendar with FESTIVAL days. You'll also spot the woolly LLAMA, the soaring CONDOR, the PRIEST at the TEMPLE and fine WEAVING.
An empire run without writing or the wheel
The Inca built the largest empire in the Americas, stretching thousands of miles down the ANDES — and they did it without a writing system, money, the wheel or iron tools. Instead they ran it on an astonishing network of stone ROADs, kept in repair by relay runners who could carry a message hundreds of miles in a day, and recorded everything from harvests to populations on the QUIPU, a bundle of knotted strings where the knots and colours stood for numbers and facts.
Their STONE-work is still hard to believe. At MACHU PICCHU and in the capital CUSCO, Inca builders shaped huge blocks so exactly that they fit together without any cement — and so tightly you still can't slip a knife blade between them, which is part of why they've survived centuries of earthquakes. They were brilliant farmers too, carving TERRACE steps into steep mountainsides and growing hundreds of varieties of POTATO, a crop they gave the world. MACHU PICCHU itself lay hidden from outsiders until 1911, which is exactly the kind of story that makes the Inca a thrilling topic on South American civilisations.
Great for a history topic
It pairs perfectly with a topic on South American civilisations and the Inca world — Easy mode keeps the grid small with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use our Make Your Own tool to build a grid from your own Inca words.