Word Search

Word searches feel like they have been around forever, but the modern puzzle is actually relatively young.

The word search as we know it is generally credited to Norman E. Gibat, who published one in the Selenby Digest in Norman, Oklahoma, on March 1, 1968. The Selenby Digest was a small, free local advertising publication, and Gibat was looking for something entertaining that readers could do while waiting in places such as grocery store lines. His first puzzle used the names of Oklahoma towns and cities hidden among a grid of letters.

The idea soon attracted attention beyond the publication itself. Local teachers asked Gibat for copies they could use with their students, and copies were shared with teachers elsewhere. Word searches eventually spread into newspapers, puzzle magazines and activity books, becoming one of the most familiar types of pencil and paper puzzle.

There is, however, some uncertainty over who actually created the very first word search.

Spanish puzzle creator Pedro Ocón de Oro was also producing a similar puzzle known as Sopa de Letras, which translates literally to “Soup of Letters”, during the 1960s, and some accounts place his version before Gibat’s. Here is a cartoon version of Pedro himself.

The exact chronology isn’t firmly established, which is why Gibat is better described as the creator generally credited with the first well documented American word search rather than unquestionably the first person ever to think of the idea.

What is striking is how little the basic idea has needed to change. More than half a century later, we’re still doing essentially the same thing: searching through a seemingly random ocean of letters until a familiar word suddenly appears. It’s all about searching for patterns within a matrix of letters. Not unlike real life, when you’re searching for something, sometimes it appears right before you, and you can’t comprehend how you hadn’t noticed it before.