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Trick-or-Treat Word Search

A word search dedicated to trick-or-treat night, perfect for the excitement of Halloween. Hidden in the grid are seven words to find: pumpkin, mask, candy, bat, cobweb, costume and October. Each word carries a piece of the season's magic. Print it for free or download it as a PDF: ideal for a Halloween party or a fun classroom activity.

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✏️ Create your own word search

Created for free at creapuzzle.com

Trick-or-Treat, one by one

On the night of 31 October children knock on doors in costume, and the seven words in this grid are the ones they need for the evening. Below is a short note on each one, handy for chatting about Halloween once the grid is solved.

Pumpkin — The absolute symbol of Halloween, carved into a glowing jack-o'-lantern.

Mask — Used to disguise the face and playfully scare friends.

Candy — The most eagerly awaited prize of the night, collected by saying "trick or treat" at every door.

Bat — The only mammal that can truly fly, active at night, and one of Halloween's favourite symbols.

Cobweb — Spun by spiders, used to decorate "spooky" houses alongside fake white webbing.

Costume — The outfit everyone chooses for the night: a monster, a superhero, a fairytale character.

October — The month that ends with Halloween, when autumn colours everything orange.

Where trick-or-treat comes from

Halloween has ancient roots. Two thousand years ago the Celts of Ireland and Scotland celebrated Samhain, the end of summer and of the harvest, between 31 October and 1 November. The modern name is a shortened form of “All Hallows' Eve”, the evening before All Saints' Day. The carved lantern comes from an Irish legend about a man called Jack: for centuries the lanterns were hollowed-out turnips, and only in the United States did pumpkins, bigger and easier to carve, take their place.

Going from door to door in costume has a long history too. In medieval Britain and Ireland, poor people went “souling” on 2 November, offering prayers for the dead in return for small cakes, and in Scotland and Ireland children dressed up and performed songs or tricks for treats, a custom called guising. The phrase “trick or treat” was first printed in North America in the 1920s and spread widely after the Second World War. Even the words have stories: “costume” came into English through French from the Italian costume, which means custom or habit; “cobweb” contains the old word coppe, a spider; and October means “the eighth month”, because the Roman year began in March.

Four activities for Halloween night

For a creative and calm celebration there are plenty of activities to try, in class or at home:

  • A pumpkin to draw. Children draw a pumpkin with different eyes, nose and mouth and write one adjective underneath to describe its expression: cheerful, funny, mysterious.
  • A card mask. With card, elastic and felt-tip pens, each child makes a mask; then comes a small parade where everyone introduces their character in one sentence.
  • The October calendar. On a calendar of the month, children mark 31 October and count the days left. It is a simple exercise in numbers and time that can be repeated every week.
  • Treats with good manners. Before going out in costume, the class prepares three rules for polite behaviour: ask kindly, say thank you and accept a “no”. Then they act them out in pairs.

How this grid is built

Seven words hide in 12×12 squares: five horizontal, one vertical and one diagonal. PUMPKIN, COSTUME and OCTOBER, with seven letters each, are the longest words and BAT, with three letters, is the shortest. BAT turns up twice on the second row, because the letters B, A, T, A, B read BAT from either side. COSTUME is the lone diagonal and slopes down to the right, and MASK is the lone vertical. No word crosses another, and the tenth and twelfth rows are empty.

More words to fill the bag

To collect more treats, open the generator with the Halloween theme and add words such as spider, black cat, full moon, candle or broomstick. The generator joins compound words by itself, because it removes spaces and hyphens. A long word like pumpkin fits a 10×10 grid without trouble, but 13×13 leaves more room for diagonals.

Also in Italian

The Italian words are zucca (pumpkin), maschera (mask), caramella (candy), pipistrello (bat), ragnatela (cobweb), costume (costume) and ottobre (October). The Italian version, Crucipuzzle Dolcetto o Scherzetto, has three horizontal words, two vertical and two diagonal, and its longest word, pipistrello, has eleven letters.

More word searches to try

After the sweets there are more word searches to solve:

For more words and activities on the theme of Halloween, even for classroom parties, read the article Halloween word search puzzles.