Last updated on December 17th, 2025 at 04:08 am
Topics: Hidden Word Search! – Word Game Review
Topics: Hidden Word Search! is a Word/Education/Board game from Neil McGrogan, first launched in 22nd May 2024.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 4,456+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Topics: Hidden Word Search! Stand Out
Fill the board with words related to the topic.
Tap or drag letters to create words.
All words and topic fill the board without overlapping.
This Word game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Topics: Hidden Word Search! is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 23rd June 2025
Recent improvements include:
- You can now skip levels that are too difficult
- Refreshed puzzles
Download & Availability
Topics: Hidden Word Search! is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Topics: Hidden Word Search! on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
We played a game and did pretty well. We love the strands game on New York Times but we have to pay a subscription to play multiple games. This is a nice simple game with only a ad or two at the bottom and is completely free. This game is very similar to nyt so that is why we enjoyed it very much.
Love the game but its been repeating a lot lately.
Yay. We love this game but only get to play once so now that theres an app we can play daily.
We love this game but we are stuck on #83, Drive Carefully.
We were very happy to discover that we could play the New York Times game as much as we wanted. However, it is very frustrating as its impossible to not hit incorrect letters, even when using a stylus or our pinky.
Sometimes you have to click letters multiple times for it to select. And for some reason, its always difficult to select a W.
Fun game like NYT strands but sooooo slow and lags alot. Please fix it.
Nice assortment of topics. Not too challenging for middle school age to high school but not challenging enough for college and adults.
Fun game but very slow response time which is frustrating.
We love this game, but playing it is frustrating to us. Its sometimes difficult to keep the letters highlighted and it can be hard to tap the letter you want without tapping a different one. We use a pencil on our tablet, but this game only lets us use our finger. We like playing, but Im aggravated by the glitches.
Like many others, we really enjoy the game, but as soon as we paid for the ad free version, the UX fell off a cliff. The screen lags when trying to connect letters make the game unplayable to us. Sometimes it takes 4 tries of retracing the same letters very slowly to get them to register. Id much rather tolerate the ads than this experience.
After paying to remove ads, Ive found that the touch sensitivity is poor and/or the game is very unresponsive. We have to move our finger very slowly and deliberately or it will skip letters.
Just one of the annoying games where ads automatically play sound and have to be individually muted each time.
App is like streams in play, but thats it. Too hard to get letters to connect to each other so Im constantly restarting words. Good try we guess, but too frustrating.
Awesome and fun also does not give your kids brain rot.
There are a lot of repeat games which is our main problem. Sometimes the topic names are a bit obtuse. OK for now until we get bored. Change to two stars. The repetition is over the top. Constant repeats after a couple of month and now way to slip to a different puzzle. Dont other paying for this to go ad free unless they fix this. Just laziness.
The letters are out of order on the final word so we cant finish it Otherwise good game with a couple of glitches that Im sure are already mentioned in other reviews.
We really like this game, but it lags quite a bit, we feel like the further we get on levels, the slower the game gets. Other than that its really fun, and theres not too many ads like a lot of games these days, which we really appreciate. Would love to see the small issues fixed.
It lags. And it repeats puzzles. Deleting it.
Great game but problems: 1) Topics #94 – NORTH DRAWN TO SOUTH, after finding Pole and Attraction, selecting CLUE brings up a hint string that crosses Attraction. We think this is an error; 2) Trying to report the error goes to the website doc-hosting.flycricket.io which also seems to be an error.
We like the game but our Apple Pencil will not work with it.
Our phone works great and we don't experience any lag with any other app. It's a fun game but the lag is unbearable.
It helps end a stressful day by soothing your mind. And makes your mind stronger.
Love the game. Butits hard to swipe on the correct letters without your finger touching adjacent letters. Frustrating to play with this issue.
Its really fun, and challenges our brain. We like that theres an archive, so we arent limited to one game per day.
Give it a try. Read the instructions.
Hello ! This topic rating title is incorrect: labeled as Its Shocking (same as #118) but its definitely just shades of blue, thought yall should know.
Sometimes you have to press a lot of times to get it to register.
We paid for this to be ad free but the same topics keep repeating. New puzzles are needed.
Love this game but once you get into the games in the 100s, lots of duplicate games, a little disappointing.
We enjoy the game but it seems that the puzzles are repeating or at the least almost identical to previous ones.
There doesnt seem to be a way to give up when you just dont get it. Also in the NYT version the highlighted word you get as a clue kind of lights up each letter so you can at least know which to start with. Im stuck so how do we skip to next clue or understand the clue. That kinda stinks cuz now we cant move forward.
We love the game. We downloaded after we started playing strands. The titles are a little different but same words Tuna fish themes have been more then one as has car body types , car manufacturers, outdoors. May have to delete if they dont get some unique. Thank you.
Im playing Topic #101, Chemically Proven, and its just miserable. Even looking up famous chemists is not helping. Since Im not the least bit interested in the topic, we would appreciate having the option of skipping this level. Overall, we really like the game.
The game was great to start. The themes can be a bit broad or even a bit of a stretch. But thats fine for the most part. Our biggest issues are: -Levels start to repeat after about 100 puzzles or so. We double-checked the archive to make sure this was true. -Sometimes the level words change but the theme from the previous level remains. This seems to be an issue that happens after ads. Still, dont pay to remove ads. -The actual motion of connecting the letters is choppy at times. We would have given it 3 stars but we think its pretty absurd to only provide 100 or so levels and then have them repeat. Especially when there is a pay to remove ads option. People might pay for that at 30 or 50 puzzles in.
Once you reach a certain level, they just use the same topics.
Morning, noon, and night, this game rubs us the right way :).
If you like NYT strands youll love this.
We love this game so much, we have been playing it daily but we guess we loved it too much because it seems there are only so many puzzles before it resets back to the start. Developer: Any chance you will be adding new puzzles to the game? And if so: Will we be allowed to jump ahead? Or do we have to replay our way to the new ones.
Easy to get hints and no ads!! We love this game.
Maybe a bit less challenging than NYT Strands, but still quite fun.
We really enjoy playing the daily Strands Game in the New York Times. This game is just like it, but you can play in multiple times. Everything seems to work the same. Give it a try.
We love Strands by NYT, but we hate that you only get one a day and that there are no archives. This scratches that itch! Great game.
The title of any given puzzle can be somewhat arcane. We previously reported that the Clue button was malfunctioning, but we were probably mistaken.
Very fun but once we got to level 250ish it started repeating the old levels. We may have played them months ago but we do remember them lol.
We enjoy playing this game, but once you get into the 100s levels, it begins to repeat the same puzzles, but in different order.
We do enjoy the game, but there is only 100 or less puzzles before the repeat indefinitely. We think even if you asked the community to help make some of the levels we can get a lot more for all of us to play.
They start to get repetitive very quickly. Theyre also not nearly as challenging as the NYT strands which makes sense, but we still wish there was more variety.
Needs more polish. Using on iPad, occasionally the clue and word count displays leave screen in portrait, reappear in landscape but then letter matrix overlays the display info for guess entries. This occurs randomly. App does not keep track of where we left off on a puzzle sometimes, causing a puzzle restart. But the game is enjoyable, just fix a few minor screen bugs.
Fun, but the puzzles repeat after number 259, and the puzzles are lower quality than the similar NTY spangrams puzzles.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.15
- Size: 6.17 MB
- iOS: 17.0 or later
- Languages: EN
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Neil McGrogan
Last updated: 23rd June 2025 | Genre: Word, Education | Developer: Neil McGrogan