Animals Criss-Cross
- CAT
- DEER
- FOX
- GIRAFFE
- HIPPO
- KOALA
- LEMUR
- LEOPARD
- MOUSE
- SQUIRREL
- TIGER
- WOLF
Created for free at puzzleandprint.com
Animal criss-cross puzzle
Interlock your own list, or take one of four ready-made animal grids.
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Animals Criss-Cross, Answer Key
- CAT
- DEER
- FOX
- GIRAFFE
- HIPPO
- KOALA
- LEMUR
- LEOPARD
- MOUSE
- SQUIRREL
- TIGER
- WOLF
Created for free at puzzleandprint.com
Or take one that is already made
Four grids from ten words to twenty. Every one is a two-page PDF, the puzzle, then the answer key on its own page.
Animal criss-cross puzzle, starter10 words · small gridDownload PDF ↓
Animal criss-cross puzzle, everyday14 words · medium gridDownload PDF ↓
Animal criss-cross puzzle, bigger grid18 words · large gridDownload PDF ↓
Animal criss-cross puzzle, challenge20 words · full pageDownload PDF ↓Every sheet here is free to print as often as you like. If one saved you time, the tip jar is on Ko-fi.
Animals are the right subject for a first criss-cross, because the spelling is already secure. A child who has to work out both where TIGER goes and how TIGER is spelled is doing two hard things at once and will give up on the puzzle. When the word is known, the whole of the attention goes to the fitting, which is the skill this puzzle is actually teaching.
The list also has the length spread the interlock needs. CAT, DOG and FOX are three letters, ELEPHANT, HEDGEHOG, SQUIRREL and ANTELOPE are eight, and a grid built from that mixture has room to breathe: long words running the height of the page with short ones hanging off them. A list where every word is six letters produces a cramped grid and a duller puzzle, which is worth knowing if you paste in your own.
Start with the ten-word starter for a five to seven year old. The jump to fourteen is bigger than it looks, because the crossings rise faster than the words: the starter has nine crossings and the everyday sheet fourteen, and a child who breezed through the first sheet will slow down noticeably on the second. That is the sheet to give them next rather than the twenty-word one.
The four sheets share their words in a way that rewards working through them in order. Eighteen of the twenty words on the challenge have already appeared on the starter or the everyday sheet, and only WOLF and GOAT are new, so by the full page the spellings are familiar and the only new problem is the bigger interlock. The bigger grid is the odd one out, with fourteen words seen on no other sheet, from CAT and DOG to ANTELOPE.
Which words hold each animal criss-cross grid together
On every animal criss-cross sheet, one long word does most of the holding: GIRAFFE on the starter crosses RABBIT, ELEPHANT and MONKEY, HEDGEHOG on the everyday sheet crosses four words, ANTELOPE on the bigger grid crosses four, and SQUIRREL on the challenge crosses four as well. They manage it by being long and full of common letters, and HEDGEHOG has an extra advantage, since it repeats its H, its E and its G and so offers each of them twice. Its four crossings are with CHEETAH, SQUIRREL, LEOPARD and DONKEY. These are the words to place first, because each one fixes a letter in three or four other words at once.
The short words are the opposite. FOX, CAT, DOG, DEER and SEAL each cross a single word wherever they appear, which makes them the ones to leave until last. On the bigger grid CAT and DOG are the only three-letter words, so a solver has two three-square runs and two candidates, and the crossing letter decides it: CAT meets RABBIT at the T and DOG meets TIGER at the G. On the challenge, WOLF does something unusual for a four-letter word and crosses three others, OTTER at the O, SEAL at the L and FOX at the F, which makes it the anchor for the whole bottom-left corner of the grid.
How the animal criss-cross catches a missing double letter
An animal criss-cross catches a missing double letter by leaving a square empty, because every word on these sheets has exactly as many squares as letters: write girafe into the seven squares meant for GIRAFFE and one is left over at the end. The animal list is full of doubles, which makes it a good list for practicing them. The starter has four words with one (RABBIT, SHEEP, GIRAFFE and DEER), the everyday sheet four (OTTER, SQUIRREL, CHEETAH and GORILLA), the bigger grid four (HIPPO, MOOSE, FERRET and RABBIT) and the challenge six, the most of any sheet.
SQUIRREL is the word to point at on the challenge. Its Q is the only one on the sheet, so the Q can never be a crossing, but the U that follows it is exactly where MOUSE crosses, so a child who leaves out the U finds that MOUSE will not fit. Once that sheet is finished, a quick follow-up is to list the doubled letters on the answer grid and sort them into vowels and consonants: the EE in SHEEP, DEER and CHEETAH on one side, and the FF in GIRAFFE, the TT in OTTER and the RR in SQUIRREL on the other.
Common questions
Which sheet should a six-year-old start on?
The ten-word starter, because its animals are the familiar ones: BEAR, DEER, FOX, HORSE, SHEEP, ZEBRA, MONKEY, RABBIT, GIRAFFE and ELEPHANT. The everyday sheet brings in harder spellings such as SQUIRREL, CHEETAH, LEOPARD and HEDGEHOG, and the twenty-word challenge uses all four of those again, so it belongs after both.
Can I use my own spelling list instead?
Yes. Type your own list into the maker on the page and it will interlock four to twenty words of three to eighteen letters each, with an answer key you can include or leave off. A word that cannot be linked to the others is left off the grid and named in a warning rather than quietly dropped, and Fit them again tries another arrangement.
Does the animal criss-cross include cat and dog?
Yes, on the bigger grid only: CAT and DOG both sit on that eighteen-word sheet, each crossing one longer word, and neither appears on the other three. The shortest word on the starter is FOX, and its other nine run from four letters up to the eight of ELEPHANT.
Want to know when new printables go up?
New printables when they go up, mostly seasonal, a few times a year.