I really resonated with the link to the MacUser article on word searches. > Word Search will generate and print the sort of word puzzles where you have to look

I really resonated with the link to the MacUser article on word searches. > Word Search will generate and print the sort of word puzzles where you have to look forwards, backwards and diagonally to Find a given set of words. Even though you can only dis¬ play and solve a puzzle of 32 X 16 on your screen, larger puzzles can be created for printing. To give you an example of what can be done with the program, a set of 10 puzzles including states, mouths and composers are on the disk. It later goes on to describe something I've personally experienced. > And printing seems to take a while, but when others sit and fuss over your creation, you’ll say the wail was worth it. Over the last couple of years I've been working on a side project involving mazes and also... word searches! Last Christmas I printed off a bunch of Christmas themed word searches I generated for the family to play on Christmas day. Seeing real people have real fun with something I created felt like remembering what programming was supposed to be about – bringing actual joy to people, instead of adding another forgettable feature to some product manager's roadmap. I posted it to HN at the time, but I have a small writeup of it here. https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2024/year-in-review/#-word-search-generation https://www.lloydatkinson.net/posts/2024/year-in-review/#-wo...