Thanksgiving criss-cross puzzle

This is the puzzle to put on the table before the meal rather than after it. A criss-cross can be done by two people at once from opposite sides of a sheet, it needs one pencil, and it does not require anyone to know anything, which makes it one of the few table activities that works across four generations without embarrassing anybody.

The word bank is what makes that possible. A crossword with clues sorts a family by general knowledge and reading age within about ninety seconds. A criss-cross gives everyone the same twenty words and asks only where they go, so a child and a grandparent are solving the same problem with the same information.

The vocabulary here is the harvest and the table rather than any particular history: PUMPKIN, GRATEFUL, HARVEST, FEAST. That keeps it usable in a classroom in the week before the holiday, where the subject matter has to stay on the food and the season, and it keeps it usable at a table where not everyone marks the day the same way.

Print the ten-word starter for younger children and the twenty-word challenge for whoever claims to be good at these. Both are two-page PDFs with the answer key on its own sheet, so you can hand out the puzzle without handing out the answers.