Word Search Round-Up - August 2022
First published: Thursday September 1st, 2022
Summary of Changes
Following July's hidden code, we had our second-ever user-created Word Search - an unthemed Sunday grid by Abby for puzzle #195 on 14th August.
On Friday August 19th, puzzle #200, we saw the introduction of Rectangular grids! After 6 months and 199 puzzles, it was about time we finished with squares and moved onto something slightly different :)
Since then, we've had 9 grids be rectangular.
We also had a theme change on Thursday 4th August - Picture quizzes! Now, every Thursday has picture clues leading to the words needing to be found.
Themes This Month
Below is a list of all the custom themes this month, outside of the normal expected ones (e.g. generic Geography and Saturday countries etc...)
| # | Day | Theme |
|---|---|---|
| 182 | Monday | Summer |
| 185 | Thursday | Logos |
| 186 | Friday | Scotland |
| 188 | Sunday | Anagrams |
| 189 | Monday | Animal Sounds |
| 190 | Tuesday | Countries (large 15x15) |
| 191 | Wednesday | 'R' Adjectives |
| 192 | Thursday | Musical Instruments |
| 193 | Friday | New York City |
| 195 | Sunday | Unthemed (by Abby though) |
| 196 | Monday | Apple |
| 197 | Tuesday | World Cities |
| 199 | Thursday | Fish |
| 200 | Friday | Rectangle |
| 202 | Sunday | Missing Letters |
| 206 | Thursday | Rock Bands |
| 207 | Friday | Puzzles |
| 209 | Sunday | 'Fish' Languages |
| 210 | Monday | Red Things |
| 211 | Tuesday | U.S. States |
| 212 | Wednesday | B _ _ _ _ R |
During August we had 21 custom themes. This included the custom puzzle from Abby and also another iteration of the popular 'Languages' theme for Sunday.
My personal favourites this month were Rectangle (of course) as well as Logos. Scotland was also fun to research.
Quickfire Stats
- All 31 word searches were played over 84,000 times in total.
- Logged-in users represent 59.3% of those takes.
- 84.6% of takes were submitted before the end of the day.
- 82.6% of takes achieved 100% status.
- The easiest grid was Summer on August 1st, with 99.0% of people completing the grid.
- Similarly the hardest grid was Saturday August 6th with 22.5% completion rate.
- Over 17,500 unique people played a single word search this month.
- 323 people attempted the word search every single day in August!
- Over 3,300 people played at least 7 of the word searches.
- The first person to complete the word search each day was not particularly dominated by anybody this month. In fact there were 21 different winners this month, with Liam in first with 5 wins, and Ethaboo in second with 4 wins.
- The fastest word search completed was Zazzamotaz with just over 90 seconds on August 5th! (Scotland).
- 53 users achieved 100% in every grid of August.
- The most-taken word search this month was #211 on August 30th (U.S. States) with over 3,300 takes!
Community's Choice - How It Works
Now comes to the Community's Choice for Word Search, which will work exactly the same as before. I have copied the introduction again for those that missed it before:
The idea is to allow the community some involvement in the minigames, with the choice of a theme for one word search each month. Here's how it'll work.
At the end of every month, inside the monthly round-up blog I will include a vote for a theme on the next month's word search. Specifically, you will be voting on the theme for the second Friday of each month, in this case that's September 16th (3rd week this month only). I will present 4 different options, with some ideas for each option, you will be able to vote on these ideas in the comments (by liking the relevant comment) and then after 3 days of the blog being live, I will close voting and announce (in this blog) the winning theme.
Note: Once chosen, the theme cannot be changed, and the other Friday themes are discarded, never to be seen again (for at least 6 months)! So choose wisely! :)
Community's Choice - September 2022
Note that September's will take place on the 3rd Friday not the 2nd, due to time constraints.
Below are the 4 choices this month. Choices 1 and 4 were suggested by specific members of the community. Please don't spam suggestions to me, I will ask 2 people of my choosing on JetPunk to suggest a theme each month. (Which also means don't ask to be selected - then I will definitely not pick you).
You can vote for these themes by "liking" the relevant comment pinned below.
(1) The Arctic
Thanks to Penguinish for this suggestion!
Endure the cold as you battle your way through Svalbard and Greenland through the Ice and Polar Bears of the Arctic!
(2) UK Prime Ministers
Top up your legal historical knowledge with the help of Churchill and Blair, or wish you could forget Boris and Cameron instead.
(3) Cricket
Prevent the wicket by scoring runs, or just miss a curveball with an LBW. Good luck in this sporting theme.
(4) Fast Food
Thanks to muskox for suggesting this one.
Clobber your way through a pizza, or devour a greasy burger as you venture through the fatty goodness of fast food!
Voting has now closed.
The winner was "The Arctic" with 25 votes! That will be the puzzle on Friday 16th September.
Also I'm pretty sure 53 users did not get 100% on every word search in July.
It's such a nice game, don't you agree Stewart? Everyone needs to know about it!
I am impartial to the game itself.
Cricket >>> Baseball = Football (and all its variants)
You can't even fathom the hype created when there's an India vs Pakistan match (it's us who win all the time 😉). There's one going on right now!