The answer to (and winner of) our September word search competition

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The answer to (and winner of) our September word search competition
A short blog giving the answer to our September 2025 animal word search and the name of the winner of the £50 voucher prize.

Posted by Andy Brown on 24 September 2025

Congratulations to the 19 people who correctly identified the missing phrase in last month's word search competition:

After filling in the 29 animals, unused letters spelt out ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL.

The two words requried to complete the famous quotation from Animal Farm by George Orwell are THAN OTHERS. Congratulations to Jill Renwick of Improveasy: her name was the first out of the 19 entrants' pulled out of our randomised Excel sorting hat, so she wins this month's £50 voucher and this virtual round of applause!

An AI attempt to solve the puzzle

Suzanne Fisher of Oxford Health solved the puzzle correctly, but also tried running the puzzle through Copilot. This elicited the following answer:

Here are all 29 land-based animals with at least 7 letters found in the wordsearch:

ALLIGATOR
BUFFALO
KANGAROO
TORTOISE
CHAMELEON
ELEPHANT
FLAMINGO
GIRAFFE
HEDGEHOG
IGUANA
JAGUARUNDI
KOALA
LEOPARD
MANDRILL
NIGHTINGALE
OSTRICH
PANGOLIN
QUOKKA
RHINOCEROS
SQUIRREL
TAPIR
UMBRELLABIRD
VULTURE
WALLABY
XENOPUS
YAK
ZEBRA
ANTELOPE
ARMADILLO

And the remaining unused letters in the grid spell out the hidden message:

THE HIDDEN MESSAGE IS ANIMAL KINGDOM

It's hard to know where to start with this answer. Apparently the Xenopus is a genus of highly aquatic frogs native to sub-Saharan Africa - I should have included one of these!

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