It’s time to stop pussyfooting over any link between puzzles and dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and all the rest
t’s easy to understand why the question is often asked: might Wordle – or the crossword, or the sudoku – be a shield against forgetfulness, senescence, even dementia? After all, puzzles sit right there, new ones appearing among the news every day. And in fiction we’ve seen the very smartest people – the people superspy George Smiley turns to for advice – knocking off wordplay while cracking espionage rings.When it comes to detail, though, the answer has one of two flavours.
The second kind of answer is heavy on metaphor: your brain is a muscle and will atrophy without a daily workout. This is the kind of answer you hear only from people who have a product named something like Your Daily Brain Workout App . Enlightenment comes from asking smaller questions. For example, probability theorist John McSweeney has asked why …
a solver, presented with two puzzles of ostensibly equal difficulty, may solve one readily and be stumped by the othercan be used to describe the moment when the grid contains enough written-in answers that the rest seem to start solving themselves. The utter delight that accompanies that moment is the answer to a much more sensible question than “are crosswords a kind of Alzheimer’s prophylactic?” The question: is it a good thing to solve puzzles? The answer: yes, they bring delight to our lives. In a world seemingly intent on pathologising and medicalising the things we try to do, a puzzle can surely be left alone and understood as something we’re allowed to do purely because it’s fun.
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