Word Search

Rules

Locate the list of words in the grid. Words always appear in a line in one of the eight standard directions.

(Rules and example from PGP IB)

Rule variations

• Some words may not be found in the grid.
• Some letters in the middle of the grid are missing and solvers must discover what they are.

History of the Puzzle

This puzzle was independently invented by Norman E. Gibat (USA) and Pedro Ocón de Oro (Spain).

Norman E. Gibat was a printing business owner in Norman, Oklahoma. In March 1968, he published his first Word Search puzzle in "Selenby Digest", an ad digest. It used names of cities in Oklahoma.

Exactly when Pedro Ocón de Oro published his first Word Search is unknown, but the Spanish Wikipedia claims him to be the inventor. He directed a biweekly publication of Word Searches, "Sopa de Letras" ("Alphabet Soup"), first published in 1976.

Variants

Snaky Search

First appeared on WPC 2017/Round 9. Author of the puzzle was Rohan Rao (India). See also Snake. This is quite different from normal Word Search, as this incorporates logic from object placement quite heavily.

Find the given list of words in the grid. Each word is in the form of a Snake. A snake cannot touch/cross itself or other Snakes, even diagonally. The letters in the Snake must follow the same order as the word. Black cells cannot be visited by Snakes.

Ignore any punctuation, numbers or special characters in the words.

(Rules and example from WPC 2017 IB)

Appearances in the past WPCs

• WPC 2019/Round 1 by Roland Voigt
• WPC 2017/Round 9 (Snaky Search) by Rohan Rao
• WPC 2017/Round 23 by Amit Sowani
• WPC 2016/Round 7 by Michal Forišek