A seemingly simple children’s word search toy has left netizens scratching their heads as they try to find an elusive word.

Dan (u/F1Hybrid), 35, who preferred not to reveal his full name, shared an image of the completed word search on the “slightly infuriating” subreddit, where his post garnered 12,000 upvotes. He expressed frustration at the confusing omission of the word “chocolate” from the word list, despite the image of a chocolate bar in the puzzle.

“I bought this toy for long car trips with my 7-year-old daughter at a local discounter at a low price,” Dan said. News week. “I know how quickly these toys can break. The most infuriating thing is that we are both German, and she asked me to translate the words for her, but I couldn’t because the bar chocolate just wasn’t there.”

The puzzle seemed simple enough: each word corresponded to a symbol illustrated in the word list. However, Dan found himself stumped as the “chocolate” was nowhere to be found. That wasn’t the only problem either: “Lollipop” was missing its last “P” in the puzzle.

“I thought it would be perfect to /r/ slightly exasperate because I spent maybe 30 minutes looking for it,” Dan explained.

“I never thought it would gain so much popularity and I was hoping someone would call me an idiot and say ‘it’s just there’, but no. Some said it probably did. purposely to keep kids occupied longer; others blame AI or pointed out that the rows aren’t lined up correctly. We even found another version of the toy that spelled “CANDY” correctly, but not “LOLLIPOP.”

Reddit reacts

The editors were equally irritated as they tried – and failed – to solve the unsolvable riddle. Many pointed out the oddities in the placement of words.

“Five of the five words go left to right,” one user commented.

“There’s also ‘Snacdk’ if you read around the corners – maybe it’s not even supposed to be chocolate?” speculated another.

One determined puzzler admitted, “It’s funny how you specifically described the problem, but something in me still spent an extra 15 minutes determining that I would find it.”

Another insightful user noted: “Chocolate has nine letters and it’s an 8×8 puzzle. I don’t know why you would search for it.”

Despite the design flaws, Dan was happy to have sparked a bit of fun and discussion online.

“Diving deep into such a small everyday thing was very enjoyable for me. A perfect distraction, and now I’m glad I bought it. I teach elementary school; I work a lot with puzzles like this one here,” he said.