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
- GHOST
- A 'ghost sign' is the term collectors and historians use for a faded painted advertisement that survives on a wall long after the business it promoted has closed, some date back to the 1880s.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
- ENAMEL
- Many outdoor wall signs were finished with enamel-based paint, prized for its hard, glassy surface that could resist rain and sun far longer than ordinary oil paint.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
- WHITEWASH
- A fresh coat of whitewash was sometimes painted over an old sign before a new advertiser's message went up, which is exactly why so many ghost signs survive hidden beneath later layers.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
- ROOFTOP
- In cities like New York and Chicago, rooftop signs painted on parapet walls or water-tower boards were a premium placement, visible for blocks in every direction above the crowd.Find this word in the grid to read its note.
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painted wall sign word search
The Painted Wall Sign: a free large-print word search
Painted wall sign word search, free and large-print. Ghost signs for flour and tobacco, still fading on brick a century after the last coat.
About The Painted Wall Sign
Long before billboards crowded the skyline, merchants hired sign painters to climb scaffolding and letter their pitch straight onto brick, bold pigments mixed to last a decade or more under open sky. The best painters worked without a grid, freehand and sure, balancing color and shadow so the words read clearly from a moving streetcar below. Today those weathered murals peek through wherever the paint has been stripped away, a layered record of every hardware store, tonic, and dry-goods house that once called that corner home.
How to play
- 1Find 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.
- 2Words run in straight lines.Across and down, and on the harder difficulties diagonally and backwards.
- 3It marks itself.Each word you find takes on its own soft colour on the grid and is crossed off the list.
- 4Choose 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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