Seasons Crossword Puzzle

Print a criss-cross vocabulary crossword on the four seasons: why they happen, their dates, and the signs of each.

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Seasons Crossword

Read each clue and write the answer in the squares that start at its number, one letter in each square.

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Word bank

  • Bloom
  • Equinox
  • Fall
  • Harvest
  • Migrate
  • Orbit
  • Solstice
  • Spring
  • Summer
  • Thaw
  • Tilt
  • Winter

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Answer key: Seasons Crossword

1H2M3TAIH4SPRINGAVR5WINTERAST6S7OL8STICERU9BBM10FALLIMO11TILT12EQUINOXRM

Across 4 SPRING · 5 WINTER · 6 SOLSTICE · 10 FALL · 11 TILT · 12 EQUINOX

Down 1 HARVEST · 2 MIGRATE · 3 THAW · 7 ORBIT · 8 SUMMER · 9 BLOOM

Next step Find season words in a word searchPractice the months of the year

All 93 clues

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Why the Seasons Happen 23

  • Analemma Diagram of the Sun's position at the same clock time through a year
  • Antarctic ___ Circle: south of it the Sun is up for 24 hours at least once a year
  • Aphelion Earth is here in July, 94,500,000 miles from the Sun
  • Arctic ___ Circle: north of it the Sun can stay up for twenty-four hours
  • Axis Earth's leans over a bit instead of standing straight up and down
  • Elliptical Shape of Earth's path, which makes the seasons 89 to 93 days long
  • Equator The Sun passes directly above this line twice a year
  • Equinox Day when the planet leans neither toward the Sun nor away from it
  • Hemisphere The top half or the bottom half of the globe; their seasons run opposite
  • Latitude The mild zones lie between about 23.5° and 66.5° of it, on either side of the middle
  • Midnight ___ sun: daylight right round the clock in the far north's warm months
  • Orbit Earth's yearly path round the Sun, a bit lop-sided
  • Perihelion Earth is here in January, 91,400,000 miles from the Sun
  • Polar ___ day or ___ night: 24 hours or more of unbroken light or dark
  • Pole When yours leans toward the Sun, your half of Earth warms up
  • Refraction It lets you see the Sun when its true position is below the horizon
  • Rotation Earth's daily spin, the reason we have day and dark
  • Solstice One arrives about June 21 and the other about December 22
  • Subsolar ___ point: the place where the Sun is perceived to be directly overhead
  • Theia Name of the big body thought to have hit the young Earth and knocked it off-kilter
  • Tilt The lean of our planet, the real cause of the seasons
  • Tropic ___ of Cancer: the northernmost circle where the Sun can be seen directly overhead
  • Zenith Top of the sky: the point a plumb line points away from

Calendars and Climates 19

  • Annual Word for something that happens once a year
  • Astronomical Word for seasons set by Earth's position in relation to the Sun
  • Autumnal Adjective for the September day of balanced light and dark
  • Calendar Twelve pages on the wall, one for each month
  • Climate What a 30-year average of sun, rain and wind describes
  • Dog ___ days: the hot, sultry days of the warm season
  • Gregorian Name of the modern count of days, a modification of the Julian one
  • Leap ___ year: one with an extra day, every fourth year
  • Monsoon Wind that swings round with the time of year and changes the rainfall
  • Phenology Study of periodic events in the lives of plants and animals
  • Quarter The share of a year that each of the four seasons roughly fills
  • Reversed What the seasons are in the southern half of the world, on the same dates
  • Sirius Star system whose rising once marked the start of the hottest days
  • Temperate Word for the mild middle zones of the world, with their four seasons
  • Three Months in each season of a weather forecaster's year
  • Transition Forecasters' word for the two seasons between the warmest and the coldest
  • Tropical ___ year: the time the Sun takes to return to the same position in the sky
  • Vernal Adjective for the March day of balanced light and dark
  • Wet ___ season: when most of a region's yearly rain comes, lasting at least one month

Spring and Summer Signs 25

  • Bloom A tulip does this when its petals unfold
  • Blossom A peach or plum tree is covered in it for a short time each year
  • Bud A twig's promise of a leaf, sealed tight until the warm days
  • Drought Cracked ground, low rivers and a ban on watering the garden
  • Estivation Long rest some animals take through a hot, dry time; the American spelling
  • Germinate What a buried bean does in its first days, before any leaf shows
  • Growing ___ season: the portion of the year when local conditions let crops be raised
  • Heat ___ wave: abnormally hot weather that lasts for several days
  • Hurricane June 1 opens the six months in which the North Atlantic is likeliest to brew one
  • Kite Toy with a tail that needs a breezy hill and a ball of twine
  • Longest Kind of day that late June brings up north: none has more light
  • Mud ___ season: northern New England's name for the weeks of soft dirt roads
  • Picnic Outing with a cooler, a ball and ants on the potato salad
  • Pollen Fine yellow dust on the pond and the porch in the warm months
  • Puddle Splash target for rain boots after a downpour
  • Ripen What a green tomato does on a sunny windowsill
  • Sandal Shoe that lets your toes feel the breeze
  • Sap Maple trees are tapped for it as the cold ends
  • Shade What a beach umbrella or a big oak gives you at noon in July
  • Snowmelt Mountain streams run high with it when the white cover goes
  • Spring Coats come off and the days grow longer than the nights
  • Sprout Pale green tip that pokes out of a bean kept on damp paper
  • Summer Season when the noon Sun climbs highest in the sky
  • Thaw Days when the pond ice goes soft and the roof begins to drip
  • Vernalization A plant's flowering brought on by a long spell of cold

Fall and Winter Signs 26

  • Antler A buck wears a pair, drops them, and regrows them every year
  • Autumn It comes after the hottest season and before the coldest
  • Blizzard Whiteout that closes roads and schools
  • Brumation A lizard's cold-weather shutdown, a word coined in the 1920s
  • Carotenoid It was in the leaf all along, masked by green, and shows gold in October
  • Chlorophyll When a leaf stops making this pigment, its hidden colors show
  • Deciduous Word for a tree that goes bare for part of the year
  • Dormancy Period when a living thing's growth is temporarily stopped
  • Evergreen Word for a holly bush or a fir: never bare
  • Fall Season of leaf piles, cider and earlier sunsets
  • Frost It sparkles on a windshield before sunrise and has to be scraped off
  • Hare Snowshoe ___: its other name, varying, refers to its change of coat
  • Harvest Combines in the wheat and pickers in the orchard: the busy farm time
  • Hibernate To drop into a seasonal low-energy state, as some animals do
  • Icicle Frozen drip that lengthens overnight under a leaky gutter
  • Migrate What a flock does when it leaves its nesting grounds for the cold months
  • Mitten One of a pair on a string through a child's coat sleeves
  • Molt To trade a worn-out coat of fur or feathers for a new one
  • Monarch Milkweed butterfly with an easily recognizable wing pattern, a late-season traveler
  • Rake Tool that combs an October lawn into piles
  • Ring Tree ___: a trunk lays down a new one annually
  • Shortest Kind of day that late December brings up north: none has less light
  • Sled Ride for a white hill, pulled back up by its rope
  • Tern Far-traveling seabird that sees two warm seasons a year, one at each end of the world
  • Torpor State of lowered activity in an animal, usually with a reduced body temperature
  • Winter Season of the least direct sunlight for your half of the world

How this list was compiled: Clues written for this site for grades 3 to 8, in four sets. Dates, distances and causes were checked against NASA's Space Place page What Causes the Seasons?, NOAA's page Meteorological Versus Astronomical Seasons, the National Weather Service's page on the equinox and the solstices, and English Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0) in October 2026. Month clues are written for the Northern Hemisphere. Licence: own work

How it works

This seasons crossword puzzle prints on Letter or A4 with a word bank and answer key. The first puzzle has 12 words, including Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter, Equinox, Solstice, Tilt and Orbit. Other clues name a season by its months.

Read the full guide

Four sets after the basics

Why the Seasons Happen has Hemisphere, Perihelion, Aphelion and Tropic. Calendars and Climates has Vernal, Autumnal, Monsoon and Gregorian. Spring and Summer Signs has Blossom, Pollen, Drought and Hurricane. Fall and Winter Signs has Deciduous, Chlorophyll, Dormancy and Antler.

It is the tilt, not the distance

Earth is closest to the Sun in January and farthest in July, so distance cannot be why July is warm in the north. Perihelion and Aphelion are clued with their distances, 91,400,000 and 94,500,000 miles, from NASA's Space Place.

  • Pair the first puzzle with a globe and a lamp: tilt the globe and watch which half gets the direct light.

Questions and answers

Is the seasons crossword free to print with an answer key?

Yes, with no sign-up. Press Print: the puzzle, its clues and the word bank come first and the answer key comes last, on a sheet of its own.

What grade is the seasons crossword puzzle for?

Four Seasons Basics suits grades 3 to 5, with answers such as Spring, Thaw and Harvest. The four themed sets suit grades 5 to 8, with answers such as Perihelion, Phenology and Carotenoid. These bands are our judgment, not a published standard.

What causes the seasons?

Earth's tilted axis. As Earth orbits the Sun, the axis always points in the same direction, so through the year different parts of Earth get the Sun's most direct rays. That is the short answer of NASA's Space Place.

When do the four seasons start?

By the astronomical count, the equinoxes fall on or around March 21 and September 22 and the solstices on or around June 21 and December 22. Weather forecasters start the seasons on the first of March, June, September and December.

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