A challenging puzzle from FMWC – Financial Modeling World Cup. How to solve a Word Maze or a Word Search using Excel. This maze includes 20000 letters! You have 30 minutes to score 1000 points using Excel formulas or VBA.

If you have any solution for finding words diagonally, leave a comment.

If this looks like something you would be good at solving, consider joining the competition. Excel as esports: sign-up for an FMWC Open – a competition where every Excel user gets a chance to show off their skills and compete for $10,000 prize fund. Sign up here: https://www.fmworldcup.com/excel-as-esports/fmwc-open/

Save $25 on your registration by answering three questions: https://forms.office.com/r/SD8bPtr04Y

Table of Contents
(0:00) Welcome
(1:19) Strategy
(3:38) Skip the easy ones first
(4:07) How to search in Excel for a question mark
(7:00) Using VBA for the snaking words
(7:32) Dealing with the merged cells
(8:12) 300 points using the VBA
(9:30) Using CONCAT and a Data Table for Left to Right search
(13:00) Solving the Top to Bottom
(14:20) Reversing Text in Excel using VBA
(16:15) Time is up – 730 points