Illinois word search word list

15 words, hand-picked to fit a 15×15 grid. Free to use in any puzzle you make, including ones you sell.

The button opens the free generator with this theme selected. It draws 15 words per puzzle and can make 1 different puzzles from this list without repeating a set — a 1-puzzle book comes to 10 pages at 6 × 9.

The list

• Bears
• Bulls
• Cardinal
• Chicago
• Cubs
• Farmland
• Lincoln
• Loop
• Midway
• Oak
• Prairie
• Soybean
• Springfield
• Violet
• Willis

Copy freely. One per line or comma-separated pastes straight into the generator's "Your own list" box if you want to add or remove words.

Crossword clues for every word

The same list with a plain-language clue for each word — written for the crossword type, and free to use in a grid you build yourself. Copy the lines as they are (word — clue) into the generator's own-list box and it makes the crossword for you.

• Bears — Chicago's NFL football team
• Bulls — Chicago's NBA basketball team
• Cardinal — Bright red crested songbird
• Chicago — Illinois's largest city, on Lake Michigan
• Cubs — Chicago's National League baseball team
• Farmland — Fields of crops covering much of this flat state
• Lincoln — Nebraska's capital city; the 16th president also lends his name to Illinois's nickname
• Loop — Nickname for downtown Chicago's business district
• Midway — One of Chicago's two major airports
• Oak — Sturdy tree whose fruit is the acorn
• Prairie — Flat grassland after which this state is nicknamed
• Soybean — Major crop grown across the Midwest for oil and feed
• Springfield — Illinois's capital city
• Violet — Small purple woodland flower
• Willis — Renamed Chicago skyscraper, once called Sears Tower

A puzzle made from it

Medium difficulty: across, down and diagonals, nothing backwards. Every word appears exactly once — the generator checks the finished grid rather than assuming. Solutions are in the book, not on this page.