Man Struggles With Simple Word Search, Then Has Infuriating Realization

A man found himself struggling to complete a seemingly simple word-search puzzle, until he was hit with an infuriating realization.

Dante, who preferred not to share any personal information, took to Reddit, posting under the handle u/BEASTBOY-2004 to share a screenshot of the puzzle he "searched a dozen times" for to no avail. "I found it at a small kiosk at a mall, and I had searched through the page multiple times without finding the solution," Dante told Newsweek. "I sent a picture to my friend, and neither of us could find it; that’s when I posted to the subreddit."

At the time of writing, Dante’s post has earned over 6,100 upvotes, with fellow social-media users similarly perplexed at where the missing word could be. Solving an especially difficult puzzle can be a source of significant satisfaction. A 2018 study published in the journal Human Brain Mapping found that when someone experiences the "aha" moment that comes with a breakthrough on a particularly tricky puzzle, the brain’s main reward center—the nucleus accumbens—becomes highly active and releases dopamine. 

That reaction goes some way to explaining the underlying appeal of puzzles for many. These moments feel exciting, memorable and emotionally powerful. Conversely, it also explains why the puzzle Dante discovered was such a source of frustration. Despite his best efforts, the dopamine hit that comes from finding the correct answer never came.

As the post shared to Reddit shows, Dante was tasked with finding the names of 10 different films hidden within the word search: Annie, Born Free, Bridge Too Far, French Connection, Oliver, Revolution, Scarface, Tahiti, Tess and The Hand.

Try as he might, however, Dante could find no trace of French Connection in the word search. It was only later that he realized why: it was too long a title to even fit in the word search.

French Connection is a total of 16 characters, without the space between the two words. The word search Dante was doing was a 12 x 12 character grid. Little wonder then that he was unable to locate the title of the film at all.

Dante isn’t sure what caused the issue with his word search. "It could be human error, could be the computer unable to generate the word as it’s too long," he said.

When Dante shared this discovery, he never predicted it would go viral. "I decided to screenshot my word search and put it on r/mildlyinfuriating to share my frustrations of not finding the word," he said. "As for why it went viral, I am unsure; the internet is simply a strange place."

A strange place but a place where fellow users would have undoubtedly relished being the ones to crack the puzzle. Frustratingly for all involved, that was impossible.