Four Of Six

(This is the Fourth of six interesting/quirky/random things about myself.)

I love to do crossword puzzles.   I think I inherited it from my grandmother, who would always sit in her beauty shop between customers and do the puzzle in the back of Star magazine, back when it looked like a newspaper insert.  When she finished that one, she'd always have a whole book full of them ready to be solved with help from her handy Crossword Puzzle Dictionary.  I am pickier about my choice of puzzles, and my favorites are the huge New York Times Sunday crosswords. They are challenging enough to keep me interested over a long period of time and usually not that frustrating, unlike the NYT Saturday puzzles which are tiny and impossible.

Oh, this is funny: I once recorded a PBS special about crossword puzzles, their makers & their solvers, and it was so interesting.  However, I was only able to watch it half-way through because it made me want to go do some puzzles.  I still have the recording but have been unable to finish it for the same reason!

I usually do a puzzle (or two) in bed to help me fall asleep.  The reason it works is because it helps my mind focus on one thing instead of going off into millions of other thoughts that keep me awake like analyzing Lost theories or worrying that there are 27 million people or so RIGHT NOW enslaved around the globe or wondering what will happen to the Kenyan children when 50% of the adult population of Kenya is expected to die from AIDS in the next 5 years.  You can see why having only one puzzle to solve would relax me, hm?  And the ones on paper are at least solvable.

Also, did you know that crossword puzzles help delay or prevent (or something like that) the occurrence of Alzheimer's disease? And you can work up to doing difficult puzzles; just start with the easy ones (like The Tennessean or The City Paper) until they bore you to tears because they only take 4 minutes to do and then move up to harder ones.  I've found that sometimes if you put the puzzle down and come back to it later, some of the answers that eluded you for so long in one sitting just pop right out at you in the next sitting.