Arctic Word Search Printable

New puzzle hides 16 Arctic words, from animals to ice; print the grid with its answer key.

Name Date

Arctic Word Search

Find every word hidden in the grid. Words go across and down.

0 of 16 words found

NRHEQPNPYIXTTIC

NAURORAPPMECHHO

SASJBOCUENXLNRN

NMKAETYFMASLAOJ

OPYSLEDFTACLGIJ

WALRUSGICEBERGN

YRNHGRCNPTEWEDS

OKLDAYOGLACIERQ

WACEZFBTOYEGNLL

LHIAOTJSCFTELUA

ENARWHALLSUTAQD

TOMCARIBOUESNRN

ITHUMFYOMTUNDRA

UIMBHTIRGNHYVNP

CCPISELDKAYAKIM

This grid is wider and taller than its box. Slide it to see every letter.To drag, hold the first letter for a moment, then slide.Keyboard: Tab to the grid, arrow keys to move, Enter on the first and last letter.

WalrusWALRUS
NarwhalNARWHAL
BelugaBELUGA
CaribouCARIBOU
Snowy OwlSNOWY OWL
PuffinPUFFIN
CubCUB
IcebergICEBERG
GlacierGLACIER
AuroraAURORA
TundraTUNDRA
SledSLED
HuskyHUSKY
KayakKAYAK
ParkaPARKA
GreenlandGREENLAND

16 of 24 words from the Arctic Favorites list.

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Answer key: Arctic Word Search

NRHEQPNPYIXTTIC

NAURORAPPMECHHO

SASJBOCUENXLNRN

NMKAETYFMASLAOJ

OPYSLEDFTACLGIJ

WALRUSGICEBERGN

YRNHGRCNPTEWEDS

OKLDAYOGLACIERQ

WACEZFBTOYEGNLL

LHIAOTJSCFTELUA

ENARWHALLSUTAQD

TOMCARIBOUESNRN

ITHUMFYOMTUNDRA

UIMBHTIRGNHYVNP

CCPISELDKAYAKIM

WALRUS, NARWHAL, BELUGA, CARIBOU, SNOWY OWL, PUFFIN, CUB, ICEBERG, GLACIER, AURORA, TUNDRA, SLED, HUSKY, KAYAK, PARKA, GREENLAND

Next step Go south: print the penguin word search Make a puzzle from your own polar unit words

All 93 words

Arctic Animals 17

Arctic Fox A small hunter with a rounded body that holds in heat and a large, fluffy tail.
Arctic Hare A mammal of the tundra whose shortened ears and limbs help it keep its heat.
Arctic Tern A bird that sees two summers a year, flying to the Antarctic coast and back.
Arctic Wolf A pale subspecies of the gray kind, native to Canada's most northern islands.
Beluga An all-white whale with no fin on its back, so it swims easily under ice.
Bowhead A baleen whale that may live more than 200 years.
Caribou In North America, a reindeer goes by this name.
Gyrfalcon The largest member of the falcon family; it breeds on northern coasts and tundra.
Harp Seal For its first two or three weeks its pup wears a coat of white.
Lemming A small rodent of the tundra, related to voles and muskrats.
Musk Ox A thick-coated animal whose Inuktitut name means "the bearded one".
Narwhal A toothed whale; the male has a spiraled tusk up to almost 10 feet long.
Polar Bear A white-furred hunter of the sea ice, counted as a marine mammal because it depends on the ocean.
Puffin A seabird of the auk family with orange legs and a broad beak marked in red and black.
Reindeer A deer found right around the top of the world; some herds migrate and some stay put.
Snowy Owl A big white bird of prey native to the far north of three continents.
Walrus A bulky fin-footed animal of northern seas, known by the two long teeth that jut from its mouth.

Show all 93 words (76 more)

Polar Bear Words 14

Breathing Hole An opening in the ice where a seal comes up for air and a bear may wait.
Carnivore An animal that lives on meat, as the polar bear does on seals.
Claws Small, sharp and hooked, they snatch prey and help a bear climb onto ice.
Cub A polar bear is born as one, in a winter den.
Den The winter shelter where a mother polar bear gives birth.
Fur A polar bear's looks white because it scatters light and has no pigment.
Guard Hairs The outer layer of a polar bear's coat: hollow, see-through strands that trap heat.
Hunter A polar bear is one that waits at the edge of the ice for a seal.
Paws A polar bear's are large, for walking on ice and paddling in water.
Predator A hunter of other animals; a polar bear lives mostly on seals.
Roam To wander widely, as polar bears do when the ice cover changes through the year.
Sniff What a polar bear does to find prey from far away.
Stalk To creep up on a seal slowly, as a polar bear does with head and neck held low.
Swimmer In the water a polar bear is one; its eyes sit near the top of its head.

Ice and Snow 16

Aurora The northern lights: glowing curtains and rays in the night sky of the far north.
Blizzard A snowstorm so windy that blowing flakes hide nearly everything for hours.
Crevasse A deep split that opens in moving ice as it is pulled and stressed.
Glacier A body of ice that grinds the rock beneath it, carving landforms such as fjords.
Ice Cap A frozen cover over a highland, less than 50,000 square kilometers in area.
Ice Floe One flat piece of the frozen sea, adrift; it may be 20 meters wide or more than 10 kilometers.
Iceberg A drifting mountain of frozen fresh water, more than 15 meters long, calved from a glacier.
Midnight Sun The summer days north of the Arctic Circle when daylight never ends.
Pack Ice Frozen seawater that floats free of the shore and drifts with wind and current.
Permafrost Soil that has not thawed for at least two years; the oldest has been frozen for about 700,000 years.
Pingo A cone-shaped hill with a core of ice that grows only in permafrost.
Polar Night The time when the Sun does not rise above the horizon for over 24 hours.
Polynya A stretch of open water surrounded by frozen sea.
Sea Ice It forms when the ocean's top layer freezes; it spreads in winter and shrinks back in summer.
Snowdrift A mound of flakes heaped up by the wind.
Whiteout Weather in which the horizon vanishes and sky and land look the same.

Plants of the Tundra 14

Arctic Poppy A cold-climate flower of the far north with white or yellow petals.
Arctic Willow A tiny creeping shrub; no woody plant in the world grows farther north.
Bearberry A dwarf shrub suited to far-northern and alpine climates.
Cloudberry A plant with amber-colored fruit built like a blackberry.
Cotton Grass A plant of the sedge family found in cool, alpine and far-northern lands.
Crowberry A plant of the heather family that grows around the top of the Northern Hemisphere.
Dwarf Birch A low kind of a familiar tree, found mainly on the tundra.
Fireweed A flowering plant named for how quickly it covers ground that has burned.
Lichen A partnership of algae and fungi; reindeer feed on it.
Moss Campion A small wildflower, also called cushion pink, common across the high north.
Saxifrage The purple kind is very common in the far north and on some high mountains.
Sedge A grass-like flowering plant; its family has about 5,500 species.
Treeline The edge beyond which it is too cold or harsh for forest to grow.
Tundra Land where bitter cold and a short summer hold back the growth of trees.

Life and Travel in the Far North 16

Compass An explorer's direction finder, marked in degrees from 0 at north around to 270 at west.
Expedition A team's organized trip into wild country; some set out to reach the Pole.
Explorer Someone who sets out to reach or map a place such as the top of the world.
Husky A hardy dog of the polar regions, bred for pulling.
Icebreaker A ship built to force a path through frozen waters.
Igloo Another name for it is the snow house.
Inuit Indigenous peoples of the far north of North America, including Greenland and Nunavut.
Inuksuk A stone landmark built by the Inuit and other northern peoples of North America.
Kayak A slim paddled craft; the word comes from the Inuktitut qajaq.
Mukluks Soft boots, by tradition made from sealskin or the skin of reindeer.
Musher The driver of a dog team.
Parka A hooded coat, traditionally made of caribou or seal skin.
Sami The Indigenous people of the north of Norway, Sweden and Finland.
Sled What a dog team pulls; in Greenland the Inuit traditionally hitch the dogs to it in a fan shape.
Snowshoes Gear with a large footprint, strapped to boots for crossing drifts without sinking.
Umiak An open boat covered in skins, once used on coasts from Siberia to Greenland.

Arctic Places on the Map 16

Alaska The northernmost state of the United States.
Arctic Circle The most northern of the five major lines of latitude, at about 66 degrees north.
Arctic Ocean The smallest, shallowest and coldest of the world's five great seas.
Bering Strait The narrow sea passage between Russia's Far East and Alaska.
Canada Only one country has more total area; three of its territories reach far north.
Finland A Nordic country that borders Sweden, Norway and Russia.
Greenland An ice-covered island with the Arctic Ocean on one side and the Atlantic on the other; its capital is Nuuk.
Hudson Bay A large body of salt water in northeastern Canada.
Iceland An island country of the Nordic region, between the far-northern seas and the North Atlantic.
Lapland Finland's largest and most northern region.
North Pole The top of the globe: the point where the line Earth spins around meets the surface.
Norway A Nordic kingdom that includes the islands of Svalbard.
Nunavut Canada's largest and most northern territory, formed in 1999.
Russia The largest country on Earth; it crosses eleven time zones.
Siberia A vast region that makes up all of North Asia.
Svalbard A Norwegian group of islands where two oceans meet, north of mainland Europe.

How this list was compiled: 93 Arctic words in six lists: animals, polar bear words, ice and snow, tundra plants, life and travel in the far north, and places on the map. Facts in the clues were checked on October 3, 2026 against each word's English Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/, CC BY-SA 4.0); spellings against English Wiktionary. Sami is spelled without its mark. Licence: own work

How it works

This arctic word search printable deals 16 of 24 favorites first. 93 words fill 6 lists: Arctic animals, polar bear words, ice and snow, plants of the tundra, life and travel in the far north, and places on the map.

Read the full guide

Polar bear word search printable: the Polar Bear Words list

Pick Polar Bear Words under Start from a list for 15 words about one animal: Polar Bear itself, then Cub, Den, Fur, Paws, Claws, Guard Hairs, Breathing Hole and more. Each clue is a fact about the bear, such as why its fur looks white.

Animals, ice, plants and places

Arctic Animals holds 17 words, from Walrus and Narwhal to Gyrfalcon. Ice and Snow has 16, such as Pingo, Polynya and Permafrost. Arctic Places on the Map has 16, from Greenland to Hudson Bay. Easy Arctic keeps to 18 short words of up to 5 letters; Hard Arctic holds 42.

Musher turns into "The driver of a dog team" once Show clues, not words is ticked under More options.
Caribou and Reindeer are both on the list: they are two names for one kind of deer.

Questions and answers

Which Arctic animals are in the word search?

Arctic Animals names 17: Polar Bear, Walrus, Narwhal, Beluga, Caribou, Reindeer, Arctic Fox, Arctic Hare, Arctic Wolf, Musk Ox, Snowy Owl, Lemming, Puffin, Bowhead, Harp Seal, Gyrfalcon and Arctic Tern.

Are Antarctic animals on this list?

No. This page is the far north. Penguins and Antarctica are on the penguin word search. One bird here visits both ends of the Earth: the Arctic Tern flies to the Antarctic coast and back each year.

What is the difference between Sea Ice, Pack Ice and an Ice Floe?

Sea Ice is frozen seawater. Pack Ice is sea ice that is not attached to the shore and drifts. An Ice Floe is one flat floating piece at least 20 meters across. An Iceberg is different: freshwater ice from a glacier.

Why are Ice, Snow and Seal not hidden by themselves?

ICE is part of ICEBERG and SEAICE, SNOW part of SNOWDRIFT and SNOWYOWL, and SEAL part of HARPSEAL, so a grid could show them where the key does not. Seal by itself is in the ocean word search.

All 93 words

Arctic Animals 17

Polar Bear Words 14

Ice and Snow 16

Plants of the Tundra 14

Life and Travel in the Far North 16

Arctic Places on the Map 16

How it works

Polar bear word search printable: the Polar Bear Words list

Animals, ice, plants and places

Questions and answers

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