Social Media Image Sizes for First Word You See Puzzles

Export Portrait 1080×1350 for Instagram and Facebook feeds, Story 1080×1920 for Stories, Reels and TikTok, Pinterest 1000×1500 for pins, and Link preview 1200×630 when the image will sit on a shared link. Every one of those is a preset in the maker, so the real work is choosing the right one and keeping the grid readable at phone size.

Platforms adjust their specs from time to time. The numbers below are long-established values, but check each platform’s current help page before a big campaign.

Quick reference: which export for which platform

Where it will appear	Export preset	Pixels	Ratio
Instagram feed, Facebook feed	Portrait	1080×1350	4:5
Instagram or Facebook feed, safe everywhere	Square	1080×1080	1:1
Instagram Stories, Reels, TikTok, Facebook Stories	Story	1080×1920	9:16
Pinterest standard pin	Pinterest	1000×1500	2:3
Facebook or LinkedIn link preview, blog share image	Link preview	1200×630	about 1.91:1
X post image, YouTube thumbnail, slides, TV screens	Landscape	1920×1080	16:9
Classroom handouts, party games	US Letter or A4	print	page

Two notes on the landscape row. X displays 16:9 images well, and 1600×900 is the size usually quoted, so a 1920×1080 export has the right shape with pixels to spare. YouTube thumbnails are 1280×720, also 16:9, so the same export works once you scale it down and confirm it is under YouTube’s file-size limit.

Why portrait usually beats square in the feed

A feed post competes for vertical space. A 1080×1350 image is 25 percent taller than a 1080×1080 one at the same width, and a letter grid benefits from every extra row of pixels: there is room for a two-line headline above the grid without shrinking the letters.

Square still has a place. It is the format least likely to be cropped in grids, profile views, group posts and message previews. If you only want to make one file, make the square. If you can make two, make portrait for the feed and story for vertical placements.

One caution for Instagram: profile grids crop posts to a preview shape that differs from the full post. Keep the headline and the grid inside the central area of a portrait export so the preview still reads as a puzzle, not as a slice of random letters.

Safe zones for Stories, Reels and TikTok

A 1080×1920 canvas is not all yours. The app draws its own interface on top of it: profile name and progress bar at the top, reply box or caption and buttons at the bottom, and on Reels and TikTok a column of icons down the right side.

Practical rules for a puzzle:

• Leave the top and bottom clear. A common rule of thumb is to keep roughly 250 pixels free at the top and at the bottom of a story. For Reels and TikTok, leave more at the bottom, because captions and audio labels take extra room there.
• Keep the grid off the right edge on Reels and TikTok. A letter hidden under the like button is a letter nobody can read, and it may be part of one of your words.
• Put the headline directly above the grid, not at the very top. The headline tells people what to do. If the progress bar sits over it, the post makes no sense.
• Fill the dead zones with background, not content. A solid color, gradient or texture from one of the templates is fine there. Text is not.

A useful test: export, send the file to your own phone, and open it in the story composer without posting. You will see at once whether anything collides.

Legibility: grid size versus letter size

The most common mistake with puzzle posts is a grid with too many columns. Every column you add makes each letter smaller, and on a phone the whole image is only a few centimetres wide.

The arithmetic is simple. In a 1080-pixel-wide export, the grid usually spans around 920 pixels once you allow for margins. Divide that by the number of columns to get the width of one cell.

Columns	Approx. cell width	How it reads on a phone
10	92 px	Large, instant, good for 4 to 6 short words
12	77 px	Comfortable default for feed posts
14	66 px	Still fine with a bold, simple font
16	58 px	Upper limit for feeds; avoid thin fonts
20	46 px	Needs zooming; better for print or the interactive link

These are estimates, since margins differ between templates, but the pattern holds. For a “first word you see” post the goal is a fast, effortless glance, which is the opposite of a hard puzzle. Smaller grids with fewer, shorter words get a quicker reaction.

Other things that protect legibility:

• Pick a sturdy font for the grid. Thin, condensed or script faces fall apart at small sizes. Save decorative fonts for the headline. The design tips guide covers this in detail.
• Be careful with shaped grids. A heart, star or tree leaves fewer usable cells than a rectangle of the same width, so the letters must be smaller to fit the same words. Use shapes with short word lists.
• Keep contrast high. Pale letters on a pastel background look pretty on a large monitor and vanish on a phone in daylight.
• Use Easy difficulty for social posts. Across and down words are what people spot at a glance. Diagonal and backwards words suit print, where solving is the point.

Sizes for print

For handouts, choose US Letter or A4 to match the paper you will print on, and print at 100 percent scale rather than “fit to page” so margins stay even. Print is where larger grids and longer word lists work, because paper has far more resolution than a phone held at arm’s length. If you want a traditional worksheet with the word list under the grid, use the classic word search mode and export the answer-key image for yourself.

File-format tips

• Start from PNG. The maker downloads PNG, which keeps text edges crisp. Every platform recompresses what you upload, so the cleaner the source, the better the result.
• Do not resize in another app. Export at the preset you need. Stretching a square into a story, or enlarging a small image, softens every letter.
• Do not screenshot your own export. Screenshots pick up your screen’s resolution and sometimes its color settings. Upload the downloaded file.
• Flat colors compress best. Solid backgrounds survive recompression with almost no visible damage. Busy textures and heavy gradients behind small letters can turn muddy.
• Name files by size. Something like personality-portrait.png and personality-story.png saves a wrong upload later.
• Keep the answer key separate. Export it, store it, and post it later as a follow-up if you like. It should never go out by mistake as the main image.

One puzzle, several sizes

You do not need to rebuild anything to cover several platforms. A workable routine:

1. Build the puzzle once: words, meanings, template, difficulty.
2. Export Portrait for Instagram and Facebook feeds.
3. Switch to Story, check the safe zones, export again.
4. Switch to Pinterest for a pin, and Link preview if the puzzle will headline a blog post or newsletter.
5. Copy the interactive link for your bio, story link sticker or email, so people can tap the word they saw and read its meaning.

The grid re-flows for each canvas, so look at every export before you post it. If you are still planning the puzzle itself, the step-by-step making guide comes first, and the marketing ideas guide covers what to do with the finished images.