Scan the letter grid, spot the themed words tucked among the noise, and drag a line through each one.
Find every word on the list hidden inside a seeded grid of letters. Words can run horizontally, vertically or diagonally, forwards or backwards, eight directions in all. Drag from the first letter to the last to mark a word as found.
The word search is younger than almost anyone assumes. Norman E. Gibat designed and published one in the Selenby Digest, a giveaway classified paper in Norman, Oklahoma, on 1 March 1968.
Priority is not entirely his, though. The Spanish puzzle setter Pedro Ocón de Oro was already publishing sopas de letras — "letter soups" — before that date, and other claims to an earlier invention circulate without documentation firm enough to settle the question.
What is well recorded is how it spread. The Selenby puzzle was popular enough locally that teachers in Norman's schools asked for reprints to use in class, and the classroom is what carried the format worldwide — which is why the word search is the puzzle almost everyone meets first.
Word Search is the classic hidden-word puzzle, rebuilt as an original free browser game with seeded grids, themed word lists and a daily challenge.