Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Puzzled by brain games
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
I had thought today that I wanted to share a passage from a slim book that I received as a Christmas gift from my daughter. Inside the cover of "Cruciverbalism," by Stanley Newman, she wrote, "Mom, I hope this helps you solve The New York Times puzzle everyday! Love, Jeni." As if.
It will take more than Newsday crossword editor Newman's delightful behind-the-grid story of how he took up puzzling, became a champion puzzle solver and then found his calling as a puzzlemaker. Newman never had an "as if" hesitation in mastering the crossword.
To say he became obsessed with absorbing information about anything and everything would be an understatement. He amazed himself with all that he learned and retained in just his first year of trying.
What he discovered upon winning a national championship is this: "Once most of us get out of high school and college, we too easily slip into thinking that our mental abilities are pretty well fixed. Oh, you might acquire new skills on various jobs over the course of your life, and you might pick up odds and ends of additional learning about history and language from television or books or magazines, but the general assumption is that the capacities we've developed in school are the intellectual cards we're dealt and the ones we'll be playing for the rest of our lives. ... There was something hugely satisfying, then, about finding out that, with a little diligence and direction, I had been able not only to vastly expand my vocabulary and build a mental store of facts that I was able to tap readily, but also make myself a better thinker."
A better thinker, hmmm. Although I enjoy working daily puzzles and am secretly pleased when I am able to decipher a difficult clue or solve a particularly hard Sudoku, I must admit that I have always thought of puzzles more as diversions than as a means to nurture thinking skills.
Newman, though, makes a good case. So, too, do the numerous articles of late expounding on the virtues of puzzle solving in keeping our minds sharp as we advance toward old age. Science hasn't quite backed up this claim, although dozens of studies are under way. But that hasn't stopped everyone from AARP to insurance companies from offering brain health tips. According to a recent New York Times story, MetLIFE commissioned a book called "Love Your Brain;" Humana is providing brain fitness software and brain fitness camps; Nintendo's Brain Age game "gives your prefrontal cortex a workout," and the Alzheimer's Association conducts Maintain Your Brain workshops.
This might be simply the latest health fad, or it could turn out that exercising your brain is every bit as important as exercising your heart. Better still, physical activity is believed to expand the mind.
There is a danger, though, in thinking that as stimulating and fun as puzzles may be that they can prevent Alzheimer's. As I said at the beginning of this column, I had thought that I wanted today to share a more upbeat look at this trend, but then I opened to my inbox and found an e-mail titled "sad news" from a very dear friend. Her mother has died. The terrible cruelty of Alzheimer's is that the disease claimed her mother's mind many years ago. It just now took her body as well.
My heart aches for my friend. For all the wrenching decisions that accompanied the progression of this disease, for all the daily visits with a mother who long since stopped really knowing her children, for the terrible pain of enduring years of combativeness, for the hurt in being wrongly blamed for every real and imagined problem. She was a faithful, loyal and loving daughter to an increasingly difficult mother who couldn't recognize or acknowledge that. As a mother and as a daughter I can't say which role is worse.
It is somehow obscene to suggest that brain fitness camps or daily puzzles could prevent this suffering. Crosswords are probably no more effective than crossed fingers in preventing what appears to be a genetic disease. Medicine isn't a grid with a tidy solution.
Instead, I take solace in working puzzles, not to be a better thinker, but, especially on days like this, at least for a few moments, to forget.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times' editorial board.
