Like in the children's activity puzzle, the hidden words may be found running up, down, or diagonally; forward or backward in the text, when the text is organized into a two-dimensional array. When looking for a word, the first occurrence of the word found using the least amount of separation between the letters was used. For example, the place where the word was found by looking at every other letter would be used over the place where the word could also be found by looking at every 5th letter.

In a sense, the fact that these patterns are found is in keeping with the character of God. There are many instances of patterns being found in the natural world, and pattern recognition is regarded as a sign of intelligence.