Like various other things in history, the background story around word search puzzles is wrapped in mystery. Even though there have been various word retrieval games and puzzles since your childhood, they are still quite new. You might believe that the word search puzzles have been around for centuries due to the simple nature of the game, but they are only around 50 years old.
The Word Search puzzle games can be credited to Norman E. Gibat, an American native from the state of Oklahoma. In the late sixties (1968), Norman was exploring methods on how to get readers to engage with his small publication house - Selenby Digest. Little did he know, he was going to invent a revolutionary game which will be played for centuries with new variations.
The thought behind Word Search was to gain competitive advantage and stand out amongst his competitors. He wanted to create a word finding problem simple and direct to be played while people were waiting for their haircut or standing in queue for their bus.
The word finding puzzles developed by Norman Gibat started gaining popularity in the early 1970s. Educational institutions started understanding the educational opportunities behind these word search puzzles and started identifying ways on how to adopt them in the classroom.
Slowly, news of these word search problems multiplied like wildfire, and schools from different states began investigating the use of word finding puzzles that Gibat created. Even though the Selenby Digest publication was discontinued in 1970, the word search puzzles went on to become one of the most popular games in the world. The Mela app has identified the love for this game and developed a new Word Search game.
