Find hidden words in a letter grid, in all eight directions
Word Search hides words in a letter grid — horizontally, vertically and diagonally, forwards and backwards — and gives you a list to find. It is a pure visual search task wearing a word-game costume: the words are given to you, so nothing is being recalled.
Read the list of words to find.
Scan the grid for each one.
Words run in any direction, including backwards.
Select a word to mark it found.
Find every word to complete the grid.
Visual search and letter-pattern recognition. It is a search task rather than a vocabulary one, since the words are supplied. Another word game to try next: Letter Hunt.
Search for the first letter of the target word rather than scanning for the whole word.
Pick the rarest letter in the word instead — Q, X, Z and J appear far less often and narrow the search enormously.
Scan the grid in rows first, then columns, then diagonals. Random scanning misses systematically.
Cross off each word as you find it so you never search for the same one twice.
Yes, in all eight directions. That is a large part of the difficulty.
Search for the rarest letter in each target word, not the first. It cuts the number of candidate positions dramatically.
Not really — the words are given to you, so nothing is recalled or learned. It is a search exercise.
Because reading habits train horizontal scanning. Diagonals need a deliberate separate pass.