Crypto Word Search

The puzzle below can be defined as a Crypto Word Search. Guess what needs to be done in this puzzle. The answer is a word.

Crypto Word Search

The hidden words are: DUKE, EYES, RUSE, WORD, WUSS.

The idea of a crypto word search came to me from a beautiful, but devilishly difficult, puzzle In the Details, designed by Derek Kisman. In the Details can be described as a fractal word search; it contains a crypto word search as one of the simpler steps.

Share:Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedinmail

6 Comments

  1. George R.:

    Τάνυα, can you spare some hint(s)? I don’t really grasp what is being asked…(but I am stupid ,ok,ok!) 🙂

  2. tanyakh:

    Hint 1. Count how many letters are used in the grid.

  3. Zet:

    SURE?

  4. tanyakh:

    Zet,

    Sure.

  5. Tanya Khovanova's Math Blog » Blog Archive » Crypto Word Search II:

    […] « Crypto Word Search […]

  6. hub:

    Let’s step back and think about the next step in the puzzle. Usually in word search puzzles, after you cross out the letters in all the words you find, the remaining letters spell out a message. What would be the analogous procedure in the new setting of the fractal word search? In which of our grids should we cross out letters? I vote for grid number one. First, it is number one, and, second, we can assume that the author is not cruel and put the message into the simplest grid. We can cross-out the letters from words that we find in level one grid. But we also find words in other levels. Which letters in the level one grid should we cross out for the words that we find in other levels? There is a natural way to do this: each letter in a grid came from a letter in the previous level. So we can trace any letter on any level to its parent letter in the level one grid.

Leave a comment