I find these quite a good way to occupy short lengths of time and also keep the brain going a bit. I mostly go for sudoku and codewords but I heard on the radio the other day that to really keep the brain active one should change the type of puzzle that one does. I don’t do this, perhaps I should?
In fact I get the same type of book each time so I can be sure that I can do them! The codewords book has cryptograms in, and I do like those.
I am not good at crosswords, but I do have a giant book of word searches which are quite hard.
How does one learn how to do crosswords? By trying and then cheating and looking up the answer? There are all sorts of other puzzles and I know some of the papers have them, as a friend does some of those from the Telegraph, I think. But again, how do I know how to do the puzzles without instructions or some starting help? Other people must manage, so perhaps I should be more adventurous and try some others.
So are these a good thing to do? Probably, if you enjoy them but I find that too many can get a bit boring. They are good for a short time. Perhaps I should try different types to stretch the brain a bit?