Now printing: the Endangered Alphabets Word Search Puzzle Book

Everyone likes a puzzle book for Christmas. How about one nobody has ever seen before–or even imagined?

Endangered Alphabets Word Search Puzzles offers 20 puzzles in 11 languages that at first glance look like standard word searches: a grid with a mass of letters, out of which you have to find specific hidden words (listed beside the puzzle) that run horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
With our book, though, you may need to blink again. Because the letters are in a slew of unfamiliar scripts: Cherokee? Coptic? Vai? The thicket of letters is far more challenging when familiar letters or letter-combinations don’t automatically jump out at you! You pick up a pencil and narrow your eyes.
That’s the serious point hidden among the fun. The fact you find it unexpectedly challenging shows you what it is like as a minority or a refugee to have to undertake all of your most critical encounters–with medicine, banking, education, the law–in an unfamiliar script you have to work out shape by shape. You feel off-balance, slow, awkward. That’s the issue the Endangered Alphabets Project is trying to explain, and to address, all over the world.
Each puzzle comes with a short profile of the script and the (probably unfamiliar) culture that uses it, so there’s something here for the hardcore linguist, too. Why does Adlam look a bit like Arabic? Why does Coptic look Greek? Every puzzle comes with different challenges, and offers new insights–about language, about culture, about writing itself.
Suitable for ages 10-adult, the book is ready for pre-ordering for Christmas HERE. Or, if you’d like to include a contribution to our current Kickstarter campaign, you can choose it as a reward by clicking HERE.
The first ten copies ordered will come with a free Endangered Alphabets pen to inspire you as you dive into the fray.
Happy puzzling!