An intervention cum action research was undertaken for acquiring new vocabulary with intent and mental effort on environment and health topics through the teacher constructed three types of word puzzles. The ten word puzzles created were the word-search, word-fare and word criss-cross types. These puzzles were used by the practitioner during a half an hour daily zero-session for a fortnight. The puzzles were used at grade level five and also, the process of creating puzzles was demystified to enable children to create and share their own puzzles on different lessons the environmental studies text book. The intervention was favoured by the students (N=20, bridge school rural girls, age: 9-14) at 0,05 levels of significance