Puzzles: A perplexing and enjoyable pastime
Listen, I get it—puzzles aren’t necessarily the peak of entertainment for many college students. In the age of TikTok, Candy Crush, and Netflix reality TV shows, who needs a cardboard box of weird-looking pieces that seem to aim only to frustrate their user?
It is absolutely true that embarking on a 1,000-piece puzzle is more time and brain-consuming than endlessly scrolling through your Twitter feed; but it should come as no surprise that one might be better for enriching your brain than the other.
My personal journey with puzzles only became fully realized a few months ago when I listened to a podcast on enigmatology, the study of word puzzles, on one of my favorite podcasts, “Ologies with Alie Ward.” Prior to listening to this episode, I had an affinity for fairly simple puzzles, such as the Wordle and New York Times Daily Crossword (though I have yet to commit another $40 to renew the full crossword subscription). This podcast, however, revealed to me the true magic of word puzzles and the many wonderful impacts that they have on the human mind, which is what I would like to share with you today!
One of the main reasons that we turn to activities like scrolling through social media for entertainment is because they give us something to occupy our minds, but wouldn’t you rather occupy your mind with something that is evolutionarily proven to stimulate your brain and better your mental health? A 2018 German study posted in the Journal of Human Brain Mappings’ verified that solving puzzles releases dopamine—the chemical in your brain that makes you feel good—mostly due to the satisfaction of a primal urge experienced by our early ancestors.
Problem-solving has always been a part of human lives, from having to escape saber-toothed tigers to learning algebra and crying at the kitchen table while your dad yells about how “they can’t change math!” Puzzles present a fairly one-dimensional problem to their challenger and thus have a fairly one-dimensional solution that is relatively attainable (especially when you compare it to learning algebra). Personally, I would much rather do a jigsaw puzzle than have to work through yet another interpersonal conflict while living in close proximity with so many other miserable college students, wouldn’t you?
Of course, there are many benefits of puzzles beyond the scope of reaffirming our ancestral efforts toward survival—puzzles enrich your cognitive abilities, improve your concentration and memory, and increase both your creativity and productivity. Puzzle me this, Geneseo—when was the last time TikTok did any of those things for you?
According to Geneseo graduate student and self-described “sorter” Abby Wendler, puzzles can strengthen your relationships as much as they strengthen your brain:
“There are sorters, and there are pickers. When you’re a sorter, you dump out the box, you flip them all right-side up, and you sort by color or shape or hard pieces, like the edge. Pickers just open the box, and they pick through and then they pick a piece up and they figure out, ‘Where should this piece go?’ and then they put it there. Pickers are crazy. I don’t know how they can do it!”
Wendler went on to describe the benefits of working with others when it comes to problem-solving tasks like puzzles, which can frequently divide their users.
“A lot of pickers get frustrated with sorters—they see their friend sorter over here…supposedly ‘wasting time.’ But sorters need to do that; sorters can’t comprehend the idea of just picking a piece and figuring out where it’s supposed to go. It’s so overwhelming and impossible for a sorter to comprehend picking.”
Wendler continued, “I think very few people in the world are pickers. Most of us are sorters. But pickers have an innate intelligence.”
While Wendler has been an avid puzzler for years, I, like many other Americans, only became a more intense puzzler during the COVID-19 lockdown. Enigmatologist David Kwong has described this period of time as “a golden age of puzzles”—so, I implore you, what better time than now to jump headfirst into this wonderful hobby?
Thumbnail photo via Pexels