First
of all, because it involves a finite search space, effort—
particularly if undertaken in a systematic way— is bound to be
rewarded (Seek and ye shall find).
If
you want to be systematic, it raises the strategic question: what
might an efficient searching procedure be?(In this case, as you need
to find LEOPARD you might, for example, first locate the Ls).
Now
you might consider that such tasks have little intrinsic merit. In
fact they teach focus, tenacity and reframing. Children enjoy them,
and they also can find their uses in cognitive rehabilitation. It is
more a question of finding what sort of puzzle is of use to whom.
In
everyday life most problems are difficult or partially insoluble, and
involve stress because they have consequences. Doing simple kinds of
puzzle and tasks without consequences in the external world can
return one for a while the feeling of being in control. Even the
illusion of control, can be recreative and de-stressing.
Finally
notice that the square contains all the information required, but it
is not immediately perceivable. (You can't see the wood for the
trees.) In fact if you hadn't been told that there was a word hidden
there you might not stumble across it.
This
tells us something about our perceptual system, that we do not merely
see what is there, unmediated, but only that which is perceived
(ultimately from Latin percipio: meaning I seize upon,
or I take in, and hence I observe). This is because,
although the image falls upon the eye, and is therefore in that sense
not invisible, it is not immediately construable as the word LEOPARD
on a background of irrelevant dross. That is the task the brain must
perform in turning some of what enters the eye into what we see. That
is the puzzle the brain must solve in enabling us to understand what
we are seeing.
The
fact that this task can be harder or easier to perform is the
essential ingredient of camouflage in animals, where the game is to
fool the perceptual system of the predator.
But
revenons à
nos moutons. There are 12 animals in all (the leopard being one
of them). Do any of the words in the word search be diagonal? Might
some go up and some down? That's for you to find out.
B
Q M H H G M O Q P S M
C
R F Q P Y T N T M Y M
Z
S R T P I Y P E L X T
G
T V G T H D L E M A C
S
F Y O R P M O O Y I A
R
U Y H Z F P N F B A T
M
T J E W A K H N O I L
S
C M G R E H D O G F L
G
W I D Y G E L E R G C
A
M I E F F A R I G S W
E
R C H T N A H P E L E
V
E T T L Y A U T R K C
