Mystery word searches: Quebec grids to play and print

The mystery word is a classic of the French-language puzzle books sold in Quebec, and it turns the last few letters of a grid into a small reward. Every grid on this page is built so that the listed words cover the whole board except a handful of cells. Those cells, read in order, spell a word from the same theme that is not in the list: SYRUP at the sugar shack, a Christmas Eve dish, a Quebec town or a local expression.

Mystery grids come at the easy level, in 8×8 and 10×10: a list of about twenty words cannot fill a larger board without leaving too many letters. As with all our grids, a program checks before display that each word appears exactly once and that no unwanted word hides in the letters. On screen, the word is revealed when the grid is done; on paper, the sheet shows blanks to fill in and the answer key gives the word.