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Spring word search

Sixteen signs of spring: the first robin and crocus, the thaw and the puddles it leaves, galoshes, a raincoat and an umbrella, tadpoles in the pond, lilac and blossom, and a kite on the breeze.

This is one of the gentler puzzles here. Words read only across and down on an 11 by 11 grid, and the leftover letters spell a rhyme about April weather.

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Prints on US letter paper: the puzzle page, then the answer key on its own page (2 pages in all). In the print window, choose your printer, or Save as PDF to keep a copy.

Solving tips

Look for the rare letters first: a Z, Q, J, X or K is easy to spot in big print. Then circle the long words, which cross more of the grid. Every letter belongs to a word or to the hidden saying, so the uncircled letters left at the end are the saying, in order.

In this grid, 9 words read across, 7 words down and 0 words diagonally, and none read backward. The longest is Galoshes and the shortest is Thaw, which hides best: look for it last.

About the words

In the Northern Hemisphere, astronomical spring begins at the March equinox, on or near March 20, when day and night are about equal. Weather forecasters count March, April and May as the spring months.

Blossom: Fruit trees such as cherry, apple and pear flower before or just as their leaves open. Each blossom that is pollinated can become a fruit.
Breeze: A breeze is a light wind. On the Beaufort scale, which sailors use to rate wind, breezes run from about 4 to 31 miles per hour.
Crocus: Crocuses grow from small, bulb-like corms and are among the first flowers of the year, often pushing up through snow. Saffron comes from a crocus that flowers in autumn.
Equinox: At an equinox the sun crosses the celestial equator, and day and night are nearly equal everywhere on Earth. There are two each year, in March and September.
Galoshes: Galoshes are waterproof overshoes pulled on over ordinary shoes. Rubber ones became practical after vulcanization, patented in 1844, kept rubber from going sticky or brittle.
Kite: Kites were flown in China more than two thousand years ago. Steady spring winds make March and April the traditional kite-flying season.
Lilac: Lilacs are shrubs with heavy clusters of fragrant purple, pink or white flowers in mid to late spring. The purple lilac is the state flower of New Hampshire.
Nest: Most songbirds build a new nest each spring. A robin shapes a cup of grass and twigs, lines it with mud and presses it smooth with her breast.
Pollen: Pollen is the fine powder that flowers and trees release to fertilize other plants. Tree pollen carried on the wind is the main cause of spring hay fever.
Puddle: Spring puddles come from rain and melting snow lying on ground that is still frozen or soaked underneath, so the water cannot drain away.
Raincoat: Charles Macintosh of Scotland patented a waterproof cloth in 1823, made by sandwiching rubber between two layers of fabric. In Britain a raincoat is still called a mac.
Robin: The American robin is a thrush with a brick-red breast. Many robins spend the winter out of sight in woods, so seeing them back on lawns pulling worms is taken as a sign of spring.
Sprout: A seed sprouts when it takes in water and the soil is warm enough. The root comes out first, then a shoot that pushes up toward the light.
Tadpole: A tadpole is the young of a frog or toad. It hatches in water with gills and a tail, then grows legs and lungs and loses the tail as it becomes an adult.
Thaw: A thaw is a spell of weather warm enough to melt snow and ice. In maple country, freezing nights and thawing days are what make the sap run.
Umbrella: The word comes from the Latin umbra, shade, because the first umbrellas were sunshades. The folding steel-ribbed frame used today dates from the 1850s in England.

The hidden saying (no peeking until you have found every word): The rhyme says that a wet April pays off in a flowery May. A version of it goes back to Thomas Tusser’s book of farming advice in verse, printed in England in the 1500s: “Sweet April showers do spring May flowers.”

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Spring word search