Everything that floats in one grid
From tiny paddle craft to ocean giants, this word search gathers the whole marina. You'll be hunting the busy FERRY and TUGBOAT, the racing SPEEDBOAT and the lazy HOUSEBOAT, the working BARGE, TANKER and TRAWLER, and a few oddities — the Venetian GONDOLA, the flat-bottomed PUNT and the deep-diving SUBMARINE.
Each puzzle pulls a fresh selection from the list, so the fleet changes every time you play — gentle on Easy, and a Hard-mode cruise once the diagonals and backwards words appear.
Vessels and the parts that sail them
The grid spans every kind of craft. There are the small ones you power yourself — the CANOE and KAYAK you PADDLE, the ROWBOAT, the RAFT and the PUNT — the twin-hulled CATAMARAN, and the working craft: the car-carrying FERRY, the little TUGBOAT, the heavy TANKER hauling CARGO, the fishing TRAWLER, the canal BARGE, the ocean LINER and the old-fashioned STEAMER. They all end the day tied up at the JETTY in the same HARBOUR. For masts, sails and rigging, our sailboats word search has those.
Why some things float and others sail
A huge steel TANKER looks like it should sink, yet it floats — and the reason is a clever trick called buoyancy. A boat's wide, hollow shape pushes aside a big volume of water, and as long as the boat weighs less than the water it shoves out of the way, the water pushes back hard enough to hold it up. That's why even an enormous ship stays afloat, while a solid lump of the same metal would drop straight to the bottom.
Moving is the next puzzle, and boats solve it in different ways. A CANOE or KAYAK is driven by a PADDLE, a sailing boat catches the wind, and a LINER or TANKER uses vast engines and propellers. People have been refining these ideas for thousands of years — from hollowed-out log canoes to the paddle STEAMER and the modern SUBMARINE that dives and resurfaces by changing its weight. All of which makes boats a great fit for a transport or seaside topic; it pairs nicely with our Sea Animals puzzle for a full ocean day.
Great for a transport or seaside topic
It pairs nicely with our Sea Animals puzzle for a full ocean day — Easy mode uses a small grid with no diagonals or reverse words. Play online, print a PDF pack, or use Make Your Own to build a grid from your own boats.