Word Search Round-Up - February 2022

In this monthly round-up, I'll be outlining any changes that have happened to the minigame, some feedback on how the month went, my favourite themes and any comments on the month. And we'll finish with the Community's Choice for a theme for the next month!

Note that for this blog I'll skip over the feedback and favourites part, since much of this was done in the previous blog released a few days ago.

Following last blog's productive discussions (see here: Word Search Feedback Blog), a few changes have happened to word search, which I hope you will enjoy.

We have changed some themes based on your feedback, you can now see the new schedule below:

The reasons for these changes were simple, having such restrictive categories for Tuesday and Thursday meant that it became repetitive over time, especially since Countries is already incorporated into Saturday's grid. Therefore, we combined Tuesday and Thursday into Geography Tuesday, whilst allowing for greater variance, including U.S. States, Subdivisions, Rivers, Mountains, Lakes etc...

History Thursday came about because History is a very popular quiz topic on JetPunk, and it's not something that was currently represented in the Word Search.

The other benefit, is that Friday theme's now don't have to use anything geographical or historical, giving more flexibility and variance over the week, hopefully making everything more enjoyable for you :)

Another change suggested in the previous blog was the addition of a "hide list" button, that adds extra challenge to your gameplay.

So, you will now have the option to hide / show the word list. An example can be seen below:

This option is stored the same way as Dark Mode, and so it is only stored per browser (not per user account). However, the option is remembered, so once you activate it you won't be spoiled on any other day's puzzle!

Some notes on what this doesn't do:

Another suggestion was to add starting letters to Saturday's puzzle. The intent was to make Saturday a little easier, without ruining the sanctity of it.

This change will now show the unique starting letters of words in the grid. This change will only appear when Challenge Mode is deactivated, so classics can continue to play the game the "old" way, without the starting letters.

Note that this only shows unique starting letters, and not every instance of them. For example, in the fake puzzle above Myanmar and Moldova are there, but only one M is present in the list. This means you cannot infer the word count from the list, but it may help to discover missing words towards the end.

Also note that the starting letters never get "crossed out" at all, so you'll never know whether you've found all the words for a starting letter.

You can now view your all-time stats here, or by clicking the "friends" icon on the Word Search page. This will show your 30 most recent days in the graph, as well as all your previous scores down below in a table. You can also select one of your JetPunk friends to compare to, so you can make sure your friends are playing along as well!

Now comes to the Community's Choice for Word Search. 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 March 11th. 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 themes are discarded, never to be seen again (for at least 6 months)! So choose wisely! :)

Below are the 4 choices this month. Choices 2 and 3 were suggested by specific members of the community. Please don't spam suggestions to me, I will ask 2 people on JetPunk of my choosing 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.

Voting will close March 2nd at 5pm UTC, when I will announce the winning theme in the comments of this blog.

Voting is now closed, after many votes the winning theme for Friday 11th March is... Flying Objects!