About this site

The First Word You See is a free tool for making the word-grid images you have seen all over social media, the ones that say “the first word you see is…” We built it because making one by hand is fiddly: you need a grid that fits your words, filler letters that do not spell anything unfortunate, and a design that still reads on a phone.

What we believe

• Free means free. All 60 templates, all 56 word packs and every export size are available without an account.
• Your work is yours. Puzzles are generated and stored in your browser. Share links contain the puzzle itself, so we never receive it.
• Fun, stated honestly. These puzzles are entertainment. We do not claim they measure personality, and our guides explain what actually decides which word you notice.

How the generator works

Your words are placed one at a time, longest first, in directions allowed by the difficulty you chose. For each word the generator tries many positions and prefers the one with the most breathing room, which keeps words from clumping. The remaining cells are filled with letters in roughly the proportions they appear in English.

Then the grid is checked in all eight directions. Any filler that spells a blocked word, or a second copy of one of your hidden words, is re-rolled. Every puzzle is built from a seed number, so the same settings always reproduce the same grid.

Word lists and fonts

The ready-made packs and their meanings are written by our team. The dictionary behind “random words” and the unexpected-word scan comes from the English Speller Database (SCOWL) by Kevin Atkinson, used under its permissive licence; the full notice is here. Definitions shown for bonus words come from Open English WordNet (CC BY 4.0) with a Simple English Wiktionary fallback (CC BY-SA 4.0), shortened to one line; see the dictionary licences. Template fonts are open-source typefaces from the Google Fonts catalogue, served from this site. Share buttons and QR codes are generated in your browser.

Who is behind it

The site is made by a small independent team that builds free browser tools for word-game fans and creators.