Fruit word search

From the everyday apple and banana to lychee, persimmon and dragon fruit, this theme fills the grid with the produce aisle. Berries get a whole family of their own, and a few words describe the parts of a fruit: seed, pit, peel, rind, core and stem.

Botanists and cooks do not always agree about what a fruit is. To a botanist, a fruit is the part of a plant that holds the seeds, so tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers count, and a banana is technically a berry while a strawberry is not. The strawberry is also unusual for wearing its seeds on the outside. In this puzzle we follow the kitchen meaning, so the tomato is in the vegetables theme. The kiwi shares its name with a flightless bird from New Zealand, which also appears in the birds theme.

Fruit names are short, colorful and easy to picture, so the theme works well with young readers. A simple follow-up: sort the words by color, or by where the fruit grows.

Play tip: look out for doubled letters, which stand out against random filler: the RR in STRAWBERRY and CHERRY, the PP in APPLE and PINEAPPLE, and the OO in GOOSEBERRY.