...
By Jack Beresford
Senior Reporter
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
A man in Tennessee is convinced he’s discovered a word search that is impossible to compete.
Greer, from Memphis, took to Reddit, posting under the handle u/AFKJourneyMann to share a screenshot of the baffling word puzzle. “Cannot complete word search,” he wrote alongside the post, which has already been upvoted over 8,000 times. Greer told Newsweek the word search came from “a Mexican restaurant called Taco Nganas.”
“I shared it to a subreddit about stuff that isn’t interesting [r/notinteresting]. The mistake was likely intentional,” he said. Newsweek has contacted Taco Nganas for comment.
Read More on Food & Drink
The word search is supposed to feature eight different phrases: taco, amigo, fiesta, Mexico, salsa, cinco, pinata and celebrate. However, Greer was struggling to find the word “taco” in among the maze of letters—and he wasn’t alone.
...
Word puzzles are popular among millions of people all over the world. To some, the process of completing puzzles of this kind can be relaxing and restorative.
“Completing patterns and solving problems generally makes people feel good and more grounded,” Vera Tobin, associate professor, Department of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University, said. “Putting a jigsaw together, for instance, is an activity that most people don’t find over-stimulating. It’s quiet and you can sit quietly while you do it. At the same time, it gives you lots of little satisfying experiences in which your actions contribute to visible progress.”
Greer's post is likely to be a source of some frustration to the online community, but also interest. The fact the puzzle appears to be impossible to complete has likely prompted many users to attempt to solve it nonetheless, eager to dispel the notion and get some sense of satisfaction from the situation.
Unfortunately it would appear Greer’s claims are correct: the puzzle appears impossible to complete with the word Taco not visible in the image shared. “I actually spent time looking at it even though I knew it wasn’t there,” one fellow Redditor commented. Another concurred with Greer’s theory that the missing taco was a deliberate ploy. “This is how they keep kids occupied until it’s time for them to eat,” they said.
Elsewhere, one Redditor suggested the missing word may have been the result of a misprint. “There's a TAAO—probably where the c should've been,” they said. “Yeah there's a weird amount of lined up As in this word search,” a fellow user agreed.
Others, meanwhile, remained intent on finding the non-existent taco or words similar to that. “Find every T and search outwards from them, I couldn't find any tacos so I assume it's nonexistent, found 'TALK' though that's fun,” one such user said.
This isn’t the first time a seemingly impossible word search has piqued the interest of the internet. In December 2025, a dad took to Reddit to vent about his first grade son’s seemingly “impossible” word puzzle.
A holiday-themed word search from November 2024 proved similarly taxing to people online. Then there was the man who challenged the internet to find the missing word from his five-year-old son’s word search.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines