{"id":22211,"date":"2013-07-18T11:21:36","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T17:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=22211"},"modified":"2023-11-25T17:11:07","modified_gmt":"2023-11-25T23:11:07","slug":"mel-crows-wordsearch-record","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/mel-crows-wordsearch-record\/","title":{"rendered":"Mel Crow’s Wordsearch Record"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mel<\/a>

Mel Crow, third from right, with family in front of his world-record wordsearch puzzle.<\/p><\/div>\n

Breaking records becomes an act of spare-time madness when Mel Crow steps up to the plate. \u201cThe largest word search puzzle,\u201d was his thought, and a decade later became so by his own vision.<\/p>\n

Crow\u2019s lack of stimulation after finishing a lousy 20 by 20 word search brought him to the question, \u201cWhat if? What if there was a wordsearch so big you couldn\u2019t even see the whole thing at one time?\u201d This led to a casual beginning of building. The graphic design and advertising instructor placed word after word into a square structure. Letters grew from hundreds to thousands to create the ultimate search.<\/p>\n

Breaking a world record didn\u2019t cross Crow\u2019s mind until he realized his own puzzle might be big enough to actually achieve that status. After research, a glorious statistic brought his hazy journey to a path with a clear destination. \u00a0His initial puzzle, just over a thousand words, had already broken the record when the tenacious Provo resident thought, \u201cI don\u2019t want to just break the record, I want to obliterate it!\u201d A new goal of 5000 words began pushing his project towards a finish line.<\/p>\n

His free time consisted of brainstorming categories and skimming the dictionary for the largest words he could find. Everything from World Religions to flowers to famous celebrities can be found in his sea of letters. \u201cI kept adding section after section, it became a little addiction of mine. I would think I would be done but then think of another category to add. My wife was the one who convinced me to finally stop.\u201d To make it his own, Crow says, \u201cThere are about 200+ words and phrases in there that only I know about,\u201d including his own name, his wife\u2019s name, and his son\u2019s name.<\/p>\n

Along the way, Crow got married, had a kid, and even worked on his masters in film from the Academy of Art in San Francisco. This would cause up to six months of delay at a time for his addiction, but the idea of \u201cdoing something that no one in the entire world has ever done\u201d kept the project alive. \u00a0After finishing his master\u2019s thesis project, a zombie movie titled CZ-918, nothing necessarily stood in his way anymore and he thought, \u201cI really need to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

After ten years, on January 26th<\/sup> of this year Mel Crow made it into the Guinness Book of World Records with his 51,000 letter and 5,500 word wordsearch that was printed on a 10\u2019 by 15\u2019 banner at Eagle Gate College, where he teaches Graphic Design. As family gathered around to celebrate this moment, squinting eyes scanned the huge banner for words that would appear and suddenly disappear as they moved from one foot to the next.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one will ever finish it,\u201d laughs Crow, \u201cIt\u2019s really just too big, plus if someone did I would have to check it, and I think I\u2019m done checking wordsearches for a long time.\u201d Despite his skepticism, online and print versions can be ordered on his website, not only in English but in American Sign Language as well.<\/p>\n

Although Crow thinks his record won\u2019t last for long, as people have already called him for advice on how to surpass his achievement, his name on the Guinness Book of World Records is satisfying enough. His nostalgic thoughts surface into a simple smile. Mel walked out the door of his home that day of accomplishment with the banner in hand and a happy 18-month-old son impressively squeaking out \u201cwordsearch!\u201d while pointing to his Dad.<\/p>\n

More information can be found on his website, melthecrow.wix.com\/giantwordsearch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Breaking records becomes an act of spare-time madness when Mel Crow steps up to the plate. \u201cThe largest word search puzzle,\u201d was his thought, and a decade later became so by his own vision. Crow\u2019s lack of stimulation after finishing a lousy 20 by 20 word search brought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":859,"featured_media":22212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69,27],"tags":[1582],"class_list":["post-22211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-bytes","category-recognized","tag-mel-crow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/051.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-02 13:23:59","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/859"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22211"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72307,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22211\/revisions\/72307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}