I started really getting into crosswords a few years ago when I was on a really laid-back work assignment; in fact, my workdays were so laid-back that I started missing using my brain. So I bought a book of NYT crosswords and spent the next 6 months going through a puzzle or two a day.
What I found really interesting is working on the crosswords actually changed the way my mind worked or maybe I should say how it thought about things. I would find myself trying to find connections between disparate concepts and paying more attention to alternative meanings just like I had done while doing the crosswords puzzles. It was really a pretty cool experience.
This NYT article talks about the creative out-of-the-box insight that occurs when solving crosswords. An interesting notion is that people who are in a good mood can solve puzzles better than if they are in a bad one.
'“What we think is happening,” said Mark Beeman, a neuroscientist who conducted the study with Karuna Subramaniam, a graduate student, “is that the humor, this positive mood, is lowering the brain’s threshold for detecting weaker or more remote connections” to solve puzzles.'
Neat stuff, and all the more reason to continue doing crosswords!
2 comments:
I'm sold - I think I'll sneak in a crossword puzzle on my lunch break. Did you play the NYT image-recognition game? I was pretty bad at it. :)
What's the NYT image-recognition game?? Sounds neat..
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