How to play Word Search

Word Search is the puzzle magazine classic: a grid of letters with words hidden in it, straight and diagonally. Here the grid hides the words of a theme, and the game tells you how many there are, never which: finding them is the game.

How a round goes

1. A grid appears with its theme, the kitchen or the sea say, and how many words it hides, each four letters or more. Only those count: another word the letters spell by chance is the grid's little joke. A game has one to three rounds, each its own grid; a mixed game draws a theme for each.
2. When you spot a word, drag from its first letter to its last, or tap the first and then the last. A mark is drawn only along a straight line the grid's directions allow, from either end. Draw it again, or press its ×, to take it back.
3. You have 3 marks more than the grid has words: enough for a wrong turn or two, never enough to mark every line. A mark that is no word takes the place of one that might have been.
4. Press Done when you have found what you can. The round ends when the time is up, or sooner once everyone is done.
5. Then the grid shows every hidden word, who found it, and the ones nobody saw. Press Ready once you've looked: the next round opens when everyone is ready.

Grids and directions

A grid is 10 × 10 with 5 to 15 words, 15 × 15 with 10 to 20, or 20 × 20 with 20 to 50, as chosen when the game was opened. The easy directions hide words left to right and top to bottom; the normal ones add the diagonals; the hard ones hide them in every direction, backwards too.

Peaceful or competitive

In the peaceful mode the table hunts together on one grid: everyone sees everyone's marks, each in its player's colour. There is no score: at the end, how much of the grids the table found, and a badge for everyone.

In the competitive mode everyone hunts the same grid alone, and nobody sees your marks until the round is over. A word you found earns a point a letter, and twice that when nobody else found it. The standings show as each round opens, and the podium at the end.

Badges

Eagle Eye for the most words found, The Long Haul for the longest, One of a Kind for the most words nobody else found, Diagonal Hunter and Backwards Reader for the most diagonal and backward words on the grids that hide them. In the peaceful mode, Quick Eye goes to the first to be done, and a player still without a badge gets the Good Sport; in the competitive one, Sharpshooter goes to the best aim, the fewest marks off target.

After the last round

The final page keeps every grid with its words and who found them. Share a grid as an image, or the results with every badge, then press Clone for the rematch.