Fucking Stupid

Diversions

The Total-Coverage Word Search

Every letter in the grid belongs to a word. There is no filler, in any direction. You may circle the entire thing.

By The Editor Unsigned 2026-08-17

An ordinary word search is mostly filler. The setter places the words, then pours random letters into the gaps, and those random letters are the puzzle: they are the haystack, and the whole exercise is separating them from the needles.

We have always found that wasteful. A grid of a hundred and forty-four squares in which twenty-odd words are hiding is a grid in which most of the ink is doing nothing.

So this week there is no filler.

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12 × 12 · 27 words · horizontal, vertical, diagonal, any direction

The list

  • BIBB
  • BOLT
  • BRINE
  • DRAIN
  • DUCT
  • FAUCET
  • FILTER
  • FLUE
  • GASKET
  • KETTLE
  • NIPPLE
  • PEELER
  • PLUMB
  • PRIMER
  • SANDER
  • SCREW
  • SHIM
  • SPACER
  • SPIGOT
  • SQUARE
  • STOCK
  • TRAP
  • VALVE
  • VARNISH
  • VENT
  • WHISK
  • WRENCH

Every letter above forms part of at least one word from the list — horizontally, vertically or diagonally, forwards or backwards. Nothing has been added to pad the grid out. Nothing is there to mislead you.

This has an agreeable consequence for the solver. Since no letter is wasted, any letter you cannot immediately place must belong to a word you have not found yet, and a letter you have already circled may well belong to a second word running through it at an angle. There is no such thing here as a letter that means nothing.

Circle them all. They all count.

A note on construction. This grid was built by placing the words first and then, where any square remained unclaimed, running a further word through it — repeatedly, until the grid was exhausted. We are told this is an unusual amount of trouble to go to for a word search. We take the view that a puzzle asking the reader to be thorough should be thorough itself, and that filler is a setter’s convenience dressed up as a challenge. Should a letter appear to belong to nothing, we would ask you to look again at the diagonals, which is where the hasty solver stops looking.