Everyday Canvas

Puzzles and Games

Prompt: What's your favorite type of puzzle to do? Word Search? Suduko? Crossword? Rubic's cube? Jigsaw? Do you do one I didn't name ? Why? Relaxation or mind stimulation.

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None of the above, at the moment; however, I tried all of them at one time or another. Among them, I am most partial to crossword puzzles, but I like doing those on actual paper, when and if we buy a newspaper, since I don’t like the ones in books. The newspapers we’re getting are online, so there’s very little I can do about that.

At this time, for relaxation, I prefer to read a book. If not, for variety, I sometimes play with Mahjong that came with Windows 8. Once in a blue moon, I play Hangman on freedictionary.com. I don’t do these for mind stimulation, but for doing something different, so my mind rests a bit.

Several years ago, I became involved with, or should I say addicted to, FB games. This lasted for about a year and a half. I enjoyed them greatly, but they took so much of my time that I ended up neither reading nor writing as much as I’d like to. With the idea that too much of anything can become poison, I stopped FB games cold turkey.

Puzzles and games are meant to support the brain activities and empower thinking, but in my case, their overuse didn’t make me any smarter. Quite the contrary.

At this point in my life, their only benefit to me is through their ability to reduce stress. On the other hand, I can’t deny that I love puzzles and playing games, but their addiction quotient has proven too high for me.

So far, I have only talked about my relationship to games and puzzles and their effects on me. I am not denying that they may be beneficial to other people in some ways, since huge numbers of people deal with them, and the people in brain research support puzzles and games for mind stimulation and evading Dementia and Alzheimer’s.