Let's place some letters of the alphabet (the standard 26 English one) in a three by three grid. Start with A on the top left, then fill it in order of rows one, two and three. The result is this.
A B C
D E F
G H I
Then let's look for English words in the grid. The rules are that you can use each letter only once and you have to make a continuous path with adjacent letters (straight or diagonal steps). You can step to any of the eight adjacent letters from the middle one, or the fewer than eight adjacent letters from edge or corner spots. No wrapping around is allowed, but the path can intersect itself as long as it doesn't use the same letter more than once.
You'll find the past tense of
feed there: FED. BEAD and HEAD should be easy to see too. Are there any words of five letters though?
Spoilers:
Click here to view the secret text
×There is at least one. BADGE lurks on the left side.
How many English words of five letters or more can you find if you can choose any starting letter for filling the grid? You can fill the whole grid by wrapping around to A if necessary, so you can choose from 26 different grids. For example, starting with Y gives you this grid.
Y Z A
B C D
E F G
I don't see any five-letter English words in it at all. Maybe you can find some better starting letters and corresponding words, five letters or longer. If so, post them in a spoiler tag please. I have a good reason to believe there is something to find.
I won't specify which dictionary decides if a word is allowed. This isn't a competition. Just a bit of fun if you like this sort of fun.