Word Search

Find every hidden word in the letter grid — across, down and diagonal. Race the clock for your best time.

The grid puzzle was popularised by Norman Gibat in Oklahoma in 1968, printed in a free classifieds paper, and picked up by teachers almost immediately — which is still where most people meet it.

The interesting part is how people actually solve it, which is not reading. Efficient solvers scan for the first letter of a target and then check eight directions, or scan for unusual letters — a Q or a Z is far faster to find than a word starting with S. That is a visual search task, not a linguistic one, which is why word searches are easy to do while distracted and crosswords are not.