Words From Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven

Edgar Allan Poe published The Raven in 1845, and it made him famous almost overnight. This word search is built from the poem itself: a midnight dreary in bleak December, a tapping and rapping at the chamber door, the velvet cushion, the lost Lenore and the bird perched on a bust of Pallas.

Find all twelve words, then read the leftover letters for the line the raven repeats. Pallas is Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. Nepenthe was a drink from Greek myth that made you forget your sorrow, and the Plutonian shore refers to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld.

How the hidden message works

In this puzzle, every letter that is not part of a word belongs to a secret message of 22 letters. Find all 12 words first. Then read the letters that are left over, starting at the top left and going row by row from left to right, and write them down in order. Online, the message lights up on the grid the moment you find the last word. On the printable PDF there is a blank space for each letter, and the answer key shows the full message.

The Raven Vocabulary: 12 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down, and diagonally; 6 of the 12 read backwards. The longest word is Plutonian, with 9 letters.

Midnight: The poem opens "Once upon a midnight dreary", as the speaker reads alone late at night.
Dreary: Dull, gloomy and sad, like a long, cold night with nothing to do.
Chamber: The speaker's room. The raven taps at his "chamber door" and then flies in.
Lenore: The lost love the speaker mourns in Edgar Allan Poe's poem The Raven.
Tapping: Light knocking. In The Raven, the tapping at the chamber door is the bird.
Rapping: Knocking sharply. "Suddenly there came a tapping, as of some one gently rapping" (The Raven).
December: The last month of the year, when the poem The Raven takes place.
Pallas: Pallas Athena, Greek goddess of wisdom. The raven in Poe's poem perches on a bust of her.
Shadow: The poem ends with the speaker's soul trapped in the raven's shadow on the floor, "nevermore".
Velvet: A soft, thick fabric. In The Raven, the speaker sinks into a velvet cushion.
Nepenthe: A drink of forgetting from Greek myth. The speaker in The Raven wishes he could drink it.
Plutonian: Belonging to Pluto, the Roman god of the underworld. Poe calls the night "Plutonian".

How to Solve the The Raven Hidden Message Word Search

"Tapping" and "rapping" differ only in their first letter, and both have a double P, so do not confuse them. "Plutonian" is the longest word. The grid is only 10x10, so the words cross a lot.

The Raven Lesson Ideas for High School

Read the first two stanzas of the poem aloud, then hunt for the words you just heard.
Ask students to find the rhymes Poe repeats (Lenore, nevermore, door).
Use it as an introduction to Gothic literature in a high school English unit.