"Looks like the Chief's not here. Next!" One of The Historians pulls out a device and pushes the only button on it. After a brief flash, you recognize the interior of the [Ceres monitoring station](/2019/day/10)!

As the search for the Chief continues, a small Elf who lives on the station tugs on your shirt; she'd like to know if you could help her with her *word search* (your puzzle input). She only has to find one word: `XMAS`.

This word search allows words to be horizontal, vertical, diagonal, written backwards, or even overlapping other words. It's a little unusual, though, as you don't merely need to find one instance of `XMAS` - you need to find *all of them*. Here are a few ways `XMAS` might appear, where irrelevant characters have been replaced with `.`:

```
..X...
.SAMX.
.A..A.
XMAS.S
.X....

```

The actual word search will be full of letters instead. For example:

```
MMMSXXMASM
MSAMXMSMSA
AMXSXMAAMM
MSAMASMSMX
XMASAMXAMM
XXAMMXXAMA
SMSMSASXSS
SAXAMASAAA
MAMMMXMMMM
MXMXAXMASX

```

In this word search, `XMAS` occurs a total of `*18*` times; here's the same word search again, but where letters not involved in any `XMAS` have been replaced with `.`:

```
....XXMAS.
.SAMXMS...
...S..A...
..A.A.MS.X
XMASAMX.MM
X.....XA.A
S.S.S.S.SS
.A.A.A.A.A
..M.M.M.MM
.X.X.XMASX

```

Take a look at the little Elf's word search. *How many times does `XMAS` appear?*

Your puzzle answer was `2530`.

\--- Part Two ---
----------

The Elf looks quizzically at you. Did you misunderstand the assignment?

Looking for the instructions, you flip over the word search to find that this isn't actually an `*XMAS*` puzzle; it's an `*X-MAS*` puzzle in which you're supposed to find two `MAS` in the shape of an `X`. One way to achieve that is like this:

```
M.S
.A.
M.S

```

Irrelevant characters have again been replaced with `.` in the above diagram. Within the `X`, each `MAS` can be written forwards or backwards.

Here's the same example from before, but this time all of the `X-MAS`es have been kept instead:

```
.M.S......
..A..MSMS.
.M.S.MAA..
..A.ASMSM.
.M.S.M....
..........
S.S.S.S.S.
.A.A.A.A..
M.M.M.M.M.
..........

```

In this example, an `X-MAS` appears `*9*` times.

Flip the word search from the instructions back over to the word search side and try again. *How many times does an `X-MAS` appear?*

Your puzzle answer was `1921`.

Both parts of this puzzle are complete! They provide two gold stars: \*\*

At this point, you should [return to your Advent calendar](/2024) and try another puzzle.

If you still want to see it, you can [get your puzzle input](4/input).