Puzzles such as word searches, crosswords and Sudoku are highly recommended by doctors to keep your stress levels at bay, thereby improving your mental health. One key reason is that it allows you to focus on only one thing. While multi-tasking puts the frontal lobe of your brain under stress, single-tasking through good and engaging puzzles eliminates that stress. Additionally, if you find puzzles fun, here’s the science behind it:

Why do we love crossword puzzles and why are people addicted to sudoku? That’s what a huge bit of the cortex is primed to do — to spot [patterns] — and once we spot them we can assimilate them into our pyramid of knowledge and build more layers of strategy, and knowing how to do that makes us incredibly successful at controlling the world. – Daniel Bor, Neuroscientist PhD in cognitive neuroscience 

Riddle Me This

Let your brain try this one on:

Nurse Julie Feldmann was working the night shift at a large urban hospital.  One morning, as Julie was finishing her rounds, the head nurse told her, “I’m going to a medical conference in Canada tomorrow.  My flight leaves at noon.  Nurse Julie spoke up with a warning to forget flying and take a train.  The head nurse asked “Why?”.  Nurse Julie explained “Last night I had a terrible nightmare that a plane crashed just as it was landing in Canada!”  The head nurse decided to err on the safe side and take a train.  Upon disembarking the train, the head nurse learned that a plane HAD crashed upon landing in Canada.  Once the head nurse returned from the conference  she thanked and hugged Nurse Julie and handed her a monetary reward.  She then, promptly fired her.  Why? (See Answers)

Let’s Get Puzzled

Study each puzzle carefully, paying close attention to the arrangement of the letters.  For example, if the phrase “easy pieces” occurred five times, the answer would be Five Easy Pieces (one of Jack Nicholson’s award winning movies from 1970).

PLAY ON WORDS

1.  What part of the newspaper do angry people like best?
2. If yesterday had been Wednesday’s tomorrow, and tomorrow is Sunday’s yesterday, what day would today be.
3. What asks no questions but gets lots of answers?
4. This is the only type of cheese that is made backward.  What kind is it?
5. What seven letter word becomes longer when the third letter is removed?
6. Besides living and breathing, what is everyone doing at the same time?

Answers

Riddle Me This:  Nurse Julie worked the night shift and should not have been sleeping, let alone dreaming!

Let’s Get Puzzled: 

I’m in 7th heaven

Long Underwear

3-Part Harmony

Six of one; half dozen of the other

Play on Words:

1. Crossword Puzzle
2. Friday
3. The telephone
4. Edam
5. Lounger
6. Getting older

So how did your brain do??

Credits for Riddle Me This, Let’s Get Puzzled, and Play on Words:

399 Games, Puzzles & Trivia Challenges Specially Designed to Keep Your Brain Young; author Nancy Linde, Copyright 2012; Published by Workman Publishing Company

For more games, go to:

Never2Old4Games.com

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