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Folk & Singer-Songwriters
Music & Film · Classic

The Old Ballad

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Use the arrow keys to move between letters. Press Enter or Space on the first letter of a word, then again on the last letter. Press Escape to cancel.

A few of the words

REFRAIN
The refrain is the line or lines that return after each verse, the heart of the song, and the part a listener finds themselves humming long after the music stops.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
LAMENT
Many of the oldest surviving folk ballads are laments, songs of mourning that gave communities a shared language for loss before the age of print.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
STANZA
The word stanza comes from the Italian for 'room,' and that's exactly what it feels like: a small, contained space where the story pauses before moving on.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
CADENCE
In music, a cadence is the resolution at the end of a phrase, that satisfying exhale that tells your ear the thought is complete.Find this word in the grid to read its note.

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the old ballad word search

The Old Ballad: a free online word search

the old ballad word search, a folk music puzzle that prints to a clean page, ready for a pen and wherever the afternoon takes you.

About The Old Ballad

A ballad is one of the oldest forms of sung storytelling, a way of keeping grief, love, and wonder alive long after the moment has passed. Carried on the lips of travelers and written down in parlors, ballads passed between generations the way heirlooms do: worn smooth by handling, yet still bright at the core. The acoustic guitar, the minor key, and a voice left bare are all it takes to make a listener feel the whole weight of a story they've never lived.

How to play

  1. 1
    Find a word.Tap its first letter, then tap along to its last. The trail fills in and finishes itself when it spells a word. Or press the first letter and drag.
  2. 2
    Words run in straight lines.Across and down, and on the harder difficulties diagonally and backwards.
  3. 3
    It marks itself.Each word you find takes on its own soft colour on the grid and is crossed off the list.
  4. 4
    Choose a difficulty.Relaxed, Classic or Challenging set those directions and how much the word list helps, never the grid size. Tap the A buttons at the top to enlarge the letters, or pinch the grid.
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