brain exercise...PO Day 282

For complicated reasons I am unable to correct the typos in today's post. Please forgive the errors.

Not too long ago I was looking for some small entertainment for Dear Husband and me to do together. Card games were boring with just two participants, ditto board games. Scrabble was too competitive and had too many rules.By chance California daughter sent us a puzzle for Christmas and it was a hit. We can wile away an entire afternoon sorting through colorful pieces of perplexing puzzles.

At first the puzzles were well behaved and followed the rules, restricting themselves to the library/breakfast table. But, as the number of puzzzle pieces grew from 500 to 1000 to 1500, they began to take over every flat horizontal surface. Laminated place mats were no longer for plates and glasses, colorful puzzle pieces competed with flower and bird patterns. We learned to turn them over and let the puzzle pieces stand out on the plain cork background. But the puzzle demanded more room. A trip to the home improvemnt store produced thin plywood sheets cut to puzzle size dimensions, felt backing had to be ordered and glued in place. Finally the puzzle found a home on  a litttle used tea caart that can be rolled about. That's the puzzle in process of being assembled...the pieces awating selection are still spread out on breakfast table, placemats and plywood sheets. 

A vintage floor lamp was recruited to illuminate the "work" surface. With an extension cord connected the lamp can be moved about as the need arises with only minimal danger of tripping someone intent on locating a puzzle piece with "two innies, two outies and a red line on a yellowbackground.

There's got to be a name for the semi-hunched over stance of a person looking for a particular puzzle piece. Something like the Sanabel crawl performed by shell seekers on the west coast of Florida. Whatever one calls it, it is a back killer. Maybe rolling chairs were the solution! First one Ethan Allen General Bradford maple chair was replaced with a modern leather office desk chair that rolls. It was so popular with the puzzle piecers that a second such chair became a necessity. The old boring wood chairs had to be stored away to make room for the new mobile, pseudo-bumper car conveyances, that let you roll and spin and search. The only thing they lack is a motor.

Quickly an assortment of magnifying tools appeared. A lighted Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass equipped with a built in light was a gift. A vintage Bausch and Lomb leather cased magnfier like your dad used to have showed up. The ultimate tool, the jeweler's loop, made child's play of picking out that little detail that ruled in or out a particular puzzle piece. A couple flashlights joined the armementatium and a hunt ensued for old bifocal glasses that might have the right Rx for the
distance.

So, is all of this just to entertain us? Are we wasting quiet afternnons hunting puzzle pieces when we could be expanding out brains in some other more worthwhile activity? Not Necessarily.

Research shows that there is some good mental stimulation going on when one is working a jigsaw puzzle. Heaven knows, we can use some of that!

1. Memory Development: Doing jigsaw puzzles greases the synapess of the brain and is especially conducive to improving short term memory as you try to remember the details of the particular piece
for which you search.

2. Thought Development: You literally have to "think outside the (puzzle) box."  Your mind has to experiment, make choices, correct errors and reconsider. This is the kind of thought process that leads to invention and discovery.

3. Whole Brain Activity. Doing puzzles encourages whole brain acitvity, the combination of logic and creativity which is so useful in problem solving.

4. Dopamine production. in releases dopamine in response to small and large breakthroughs. Benefits of dopamine include a positive mood, better concentration, improved memory, and good motor skills.

5. Meditation. Working a puzzzle is a little like meditating. While it challengges the brain, it also relaxes the mind and reduces stress.

So, we are not wasting an afternoon. We are exercising our brains. And the total mess of puzzle pieces taking over the house is justifiable when you consider what it is doing for our intellect.

That's my story and I am sticking to it.