Groundhog Day word search

Pick a list. Three are by age, and the fourth is plain weather words for a class doing a forecast that week. Any word can be changed or added, up to 30. Choose the grid size, print, and the answer key follows on page two.

Sheet number is the seed. The same words, settings and number give the same grid every time, so a whole class can work on one puzzle. Press New grid for a different one.

Groundhog Day falls on 2 February in the US and Canada. If the groundhog comes out of its burrow and sees its shadow, there are six more weeks of winter. If the sky is cloudy and there's no shadow, spring comes early. That's the whole rule.

The idea is much older than the groundhog, and the animal doing the forecasting has changed more than once as the custom crossed borders and then an ocean. Germans watched a badger on Candlemas, the same date, and in Britain it was a hedgehog. A clear Candlemas was said to mean a long winter. The Pennsylvania Dutch, settlers from German-speaking Europe, swapped the badger for the groundhog. The Punxsutawney Spirit newspaper reported the town's first observance in 1886.

Today the Groundhog Club's Inner Circle runs the morning at Gobbler's Knob, in top hats and tuxedos. The president holds an acacia cane that, so the story goes, lets him understand Phil's Groundhogese. The animal has other names as well. Woodchuck and whistle pig are both real names for the animal, which is a kind of marmot and one of the few that truly hibernates.

Ages 5 to 7 manage best with the 10 × 10 grid and words running only across and down. From about 8, diagonals add a challenge without being unfair. Backwards words are the hardest. Keep them for teenagers and adults.

Spaces and apostrophes are dropped inside the grid, so Gobbler's Knob is hidden as GOBBLERSKNOB. Filler letters can spell a short word by accident. Every word is checked once the grid is full, and the filler is redrawn until each one appears exactly once.