World of Word(le)
As an adult while visiting my Mother one weekend I noted that she had a copy of the Sunday edition of the Chicago Tribune laying by the front door.* I was impressed that she was expanding her world and reading about the bigger issues of the day via the Tribune. To be clear, she was an inquisitive and well informed person, making sure she watched the national and local news every night (usually twice, at suppertime and before bed).
Upon retrieval, she pulled out the crossword puzzle found in the Tribune Magazine and pulled out her pencil and started in. The rest if the paper was put to the side , unread. She would call from time to time and ask for answers to clues throughout the week. She always had her puzzle in a basket by her chair in the living room along with a beat-up dictionary and other reference material to help her with her clues. She loved her crossword puzzle for the week and spent most of the week working on it. Not bad for someone whose original language wasn’t English.
I suppose this is where my love for language, learning and words comes from. To her, I owe my daily compulsion to complete the New York Times mini-crossword and the Wordle puzzle each day.
The New York Times mini-crossword is free online and most days I don’t need more than two to three minutes to complete it. My record time is about 40 seconds. Wordle is also free.
Wordle can be somewhat more challenging and I have often been stumped. It’s the newest craze and actually has a romantic story behind it. Completing it provides a hit of dopamine for those who are into those things.
Takeaway: Like my immigrant mother whose mastery of the English language was quite complete at the end of her life, I take time to do word puzzles and games. The NY Times mini-crossword and Wordle will occupy no more than 10–15 minutes a day but provide huge payoffs in cognitive neuroplasticity for me personally.
Here is an article on how to achieve Wordle success.
*A paper laying by the front door requires some explanation for those of you who have only known on-line news and information. For years newspapers were delivered to the doorstep of subscribers by mostly young adolescent boys. Those boys would wake up early in the morning and find a pile of newspapers at their curb or home whereupon they would neatly fold them, place a rubber band around them and deliver them to subscribers. Kinda quaint isn’t it?
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