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Doesn't this only work if the word is west-to-east? Seems like it'd fail for any other orientation (there are 7 others).

(Well, for a palindrome, it works for east-to-west too - so I guess you missed 6).

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You are correct. However, it is stated that 'KAYAK' appears only once and it seems to me that CTRL+Fing should be the first thing to do when searching for a string in a relatively small text. The next step, had the CTRL+F failed, would have been to search for "KAYAK" vertically/diagonally programmatically.

(on a sidenote, you're counting is incorrect, as it is a palindrome there really is only 4 directions for the word to appear: W-E, N-S, NW-SE, NE-SW)

for vertical, you could transpose the crossword then Ctrl+F, just being aware that the result has its columns and rows switched.

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