The word search is another type of puzzle you will commonly encounter during puzzle hunts. The first step should be easy - look for words in the word search. The words will usually have a common property that is critical to solving the puzzle. In this case, you should realise that these are words with diacritics in them, as hinted by the puzzle title.

After marking the diacritics in the word search (see image below), you may realise that they comprise only accents (dashes), rings and umlauts (pairs of dots). Experienced solvers should recognise this cipher quickly - Morse Code. Decoding the alternate rows of dashes and dots into the corresponding Morse letters gives the thematic answer MOUTHY (someone who is mouthy tends to be critical of other people, and “mouthy” is also a reference to changes in pronunciation caused by the addition of diacritics).

Author’s tips

Ciphers are commonly used in puzzle hunts, particularly as an extraction mechanism. The common codes with which you should be familiar include: Morse Code, Braille, Semaphore and ASCII.