Can You Find the Hidden Word KITE in This Letter Grid?

Your eyes are keener than you think. However, this letter grid is meant to slow you down. One word, KITE, is concealed within the words of the rows and columns. It may be from left to right, from top to bottom or diagonal. You have to guess before reaching to the answer.

Look carefully before reading on. The majority of people read the grid too quickly and don't get it the first time.

The Challenge: Find the Word KITE

Here is your grid. The word KITE is concealed somewhere in these 49 letters. It is not divided into lines and is read in one continuous line.

Source: Razzle Puzzles

For an additional challenge, set a timer. 

Can you locate it in less than 30 seconds?

Take your time. Slowly read through each row before moving on.

Tips to Solve the Word Puzzle

Need some help locating KITE? These tips will help you complete any hidden word puzzle faster.

Search for the first letter. Locate all the letter K on the grid before you scan the entire grid.

When you see a K, look for the letters that follow it to the right, down or diagonally.

Go row by row. The eye movement should begin at the top left and go to the right on each line. This is the most popular location as it is the natural reading direction.

Identify rare letter combinations. In a random grid, the combination KI is not very frequent. Learning to search for KI as a pair can reduce the search time by 50%.

Cover solved rows. If you have marked a row and KITE is not there, in your mind block it out and move on. This prevents your eyes from going over the same letters.

A study in the journal Perception shows that the more you practise a visual search task, the better you get at it. Solving puzzles on a regular basis can help improve the brain's capacity to ignore irrelevant information and focus more quickly on a target.

Have you spotted the word KITE?

If not, check out the answer below.

The Answer: Where Is KITE Hiding?

The word KITE is starting from the 6th row of the first column.

Why are Hidden Word Puzzles so Confusing?

The brain doesn't read every letter, one by one. Instead it takes shortcuts. It clusters together familiar letter patterns and progresses rapidly. This is known as parallel visual processing and it is how fluent readers can read so quickly.

However, this same shortcut is bad in a puzzle grid. Your brain processes rows and quickly snaps on to familiar-looking patterns that are distracting.

Dr. Jeremy Wolfe, a cognitive scientist at Harvard Medical School, found that the performance of visual search decreases when the target has a lot of the same features as the distractors that surround it. 

The good news is that slowing down and scanning row-by-row, breaks that trap almost immediately.

Also, check out other interesting puzzle challenges in the Puzzles and IQ test section. Stay connected with Jagran Josh for more such informative and interesting articles.

Disclaimer: Cognitive benefits referenced in this article are based on general research findings and do not constitute medical advice.