A Utah man was left stumped by a seemingly “impossible” word search puzzle for kids that was shared with him by an equally baffled friend.
Word searches and other cognitively stimulating activities have been found to provide a boost to brain health, particularly as we get older. In 2021, a study published in the journal Neurology saw researchers ask 1,903 older individuals without dementia to report on how often they engaged in cognitively stimulating activities.
These activities included things like reading books, writing letters, visiting the library and playing games like puzzles or board games. The study, which spanned seven years, found individuals with high levels of cognitive activity developed Alzheimer’s at a later age – five years after those with lower levels of cognitive activity.
Tom, a puzzle enthusiast from Millcreek, Utah, has been enjoying plenty of cognitive activity of late, though “enjoying” might not actually be the right word.
Reddit/u/The_Portals
A week or so ago, he was sent a seemingly innocuous children’s word search by one of his friends. He remembers being a little confused because, firstly, it was for kids, and secondly, his friend told him they were having real trouble solving it.
“The puzzle was in a little local newsletter that gets sent out about once a month,” Tom told Newsweek. “My friend started working on it, and got stuck at some point and asked me for help.”
Though he’s not usually one for kids’ puzzles, there was something about the way his friend described the word search that made him intrigued. “They phrased it in a ‘am I crazy or is this puzzle impossible?’ kind of way.”
The festive-themed puzzle, which came as part of “Milo’s Kid Corner,” listed 11 different words to find, including “snow,” “icicle” and “skating.”
“Help Milo find some of his holiday favorites,” the sheet read. “Circle the words in the puzzle and have fun.” While Tom’s friend had achieved the first of those two calls to action, they were not having a great deal of “fun” for reasons Tom eventually discovered.
“This word search is missing several words,” he said. “It took me like three attempts at scanning through letter by letter before I thought something was up.”
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The apparent lack of words left Tom scratching his head. “It seems like such an easy thing to avoid, you know?” he said. Eager to get some second opinions, he posted a screenshot of the word search to Reddit under the handle u/the_portals.
It sparked a healthy discussion.
“We started coming up with theories for how this could’ve happened,” he said. Eventually, a couple of interesting theories emerged.
“Some of the commenters on the original post pointed out that the puzzle only asks you to find ‘some’ of the words, so technically it isn’t broken,” Tom said.
“We also thought that they could’ve asked ChatGPT to generate the puzzle, and just copy-pasted it into the newsletter without double-checking.”
Tom has his own ideas about what led to this though. “Personally, I choose to believe it’s intentionally missing words, so you set it in front of your kid to keep them busy for a while,” he said.
If that is the case, then credit to whoever came up with the word search. It hasn’t only kept the kids busy, but a fair few adults as well.
