Are Puzzles Good for Aging Puzzlers?

Some say doing crossword puzzles will fight off dementia. Others say that doing crossword puzzles makes you better at crossword puzzles but has no lasting effect on one's aging brain.In any case, Jim and I have done the NYT crossword puzzles together for years and now we are doing the Spelling Bee also. We used to share one puzzle with one of us wielding the pen. But our eyes worsened and we had to go to printing up two puzzles. It was not as cozy or romantic, but at least we could see the clues. 

 Now we do the puzzles on our laptops. We say that the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday puzzles are too easy for us as a team.  Jim does the Sunday ones on his own using the printed one in the magazine.

 We make a good team. Jim knows answers to more sports clues and I know more art and music answers. I take pride however in recognizing the answer "Essenes" when it comes up and it does come up often with all those "e"s and "s"es. I tend to figure out the trick in the Thursday puzzles. Jim is better at the multi-word answers. Sometimes we do google a word or two and we both have problems with popular culture. Rap artists? Not our thing nor are movies or today's TV shows. 

 Jim in particular takes great delight in the little musical riff one gets at the completion of a puzzle and has asked that it be played at his memorial service someday--the end for Jim, I guess. 

 We have started to do the daily Spelling Bee also. Jim is definitely better at this puzzle and even though I think I am not all that competitive of a person, I have been sad when he has found more words than I have. Besides seeing more words, he is definitely more persistent of a solver. So now I tell him how many words I have found and then he stops at that point and we compare our lists. We strive for "genius" but have yet to reach "queen bee" which means that you find all possible words.

 So maybe doing these puzzles will not fend off dementia. But they give us a good activity to do together and our minds are definitely challenged by them.