“You are part of a puzzle in someone’s life. You may never know where you fit. But someone’s life may never be complete without you in it.” (LiveLifeHappy.com)
My absolute favorite puzzle
(that can be done electronically or manually) is the Word Search. The creator of this
puzzle is accredited to Norman E. Gibat, an American from Norman, OK, in 1968. The Word Search came to him as a simple game that could be played when waiting anywhere.
The Word Search was an incredible success that everyone loved while teachers understood
its learning potential.
The Spanish claim for Word Searches is given to Pedro Ocón de Oro in the 1960s.
He invented over 125 types of Word Searches in Spanish.
Ocón de Oro created Sopa de Letras (Soup of Letters), which was were Word
Searches. As
neither Gibat nor Ocón de Oro patented the creation of Word Searches, they
quickly became syndicated, appearing in several publications throughout the
world. Word Search, Word Find, Seek and Circle, Search a Word, Word Seek,
Mystery Word, or Word Sleuth are among the most common names used today.
Gibat
created the classical game version that provides a list of words grouped around
a theme for the player to find in a grid of letters. The size of the grid has
always been subject to changes to match the difficulty of the puzzles. As the
years went by, the history of Word Search puzzles has also been marked by the
emergence of different game variants.
The three most popular variants follow: On the first one, no word list is provided. The player only knows the topic and the total number of words to be found. On the next one, a list is given with clues. This change is similar to Crosswords. To know which words to find, the player needs to decipher a list of clues or simple definitions. A Snake Search is where the words hidden in the grid can twist and turn in any direction. If you don’t have a method for solving Word Searches, here are some tips:
·
Cross off the words in the list as you find them.
·
Do a circle-type search around letters to see whether
they lead on to the next letter in the word you’re looking for.
·
If you see a Q in the grid with no adjacent U, you probably don’t need to follow it any further.
·
Look for circular letters, especially O, D, and Q.
·
Scan back and forth along each row of the letter grid,
looking for the first letter in a word. Also scan up and down each column of
the grid.
·
Search for less-common letters in a word, such as J, B, K, Q, X, Y, or Z. This strategy makes the
rest of the word easier to find.
·
Search the grid for the double letters in a list word.
·
Use a finger or the (capped) end of your pen or pencil
to help guide your search.
·
Use a highlighter pen or light-colored pencil if you
want to mark on top of the words you find. Otherwise, use a pen or pencil to
draw loops around the words.
Word Searches offer
these advantages:
·
A great way to learn English (or practice other
languages)
·
A social media
cleanse
·
An appealing learning method for a range of
learning styles
·
An easy, fun activity for all ages to do together
·
An enjoyable, low-stress puzzle option for people
with dyslexia
·
Improved word power and vocabulary
·
Improves the
mood you’re in
·
Keeps you mentally active and fit prevent, and delays the onset of neurological
disorders (like dementia and Alzheimer’s)
·
Painless spelling practice
·
Portable and inexpensive entertainment (no
batteries required)
·
Practice for your pattern recognition skills
·
The appeal of a solvable problem in a complicated
life
“My new favorite word is ‘awkward’…The reason we need to
be in search of awkward is that awkward is the barrier between us and
excellence, between where we are and the remarkable. If it were easy, everyone
would have done it already, and it wouldn’t be worth the effort.” (Seth Godin)[i]
[i] Adapted from:
·
“Five health
benefits of word searches” by Drum
·
“The origin and history of Word Search puzzles” by
Word Search 365
·
“Word
Searches for Dummies Cheat Sheet” by dummies
No comments:
Post a Comment