Let me begin by saying I am not a genius.
The illustration that begins this post is from the New York Times’ Spelling Bee game, one of the mre challenging and fascinating word games I have found on the Internet.
One of the first things I do every day is Spelling Bee. It serves to get the cobwebs out of my mind and forces me to use what remaining intellect I have to successfully solve it.
The puzzle gives you seven letters — the picture above is today’s game — and asks you to make as many words of four or more letters as you can with them. You must use the center letter in all your words, and any of the seven letters can be used as many times as you want. No proper nouns and English language words only.
For example, WIN is not a word because it is too short, but WINNING is a fine word.
The thing I really enjoy is that often, a first glance at the puzzle leaves me seeing nothing but short, one-point words like WING and KNOW. But as I get into it, I see more and more and wind up with words as long as nine letters like UNKNOWING.
The different levels are BEGINNER, GOOD START, MOVING UP, GOOD, SOLID, NICE, GREAT, AMAZING and GENIUS. They require different numbers of points depending on how difficult it is to find words. Reaching the top level today took 89 points, but one day last week it was 317 points.
The first time I reached GENIUS level was earlier this month, and it definitely brought a smile to my face. Since then I’ve discovered that I can get there once or twice a week. I can get to AMAZING more than half the time, and I’m very disappointed if I can’t at least make it to GREAT.
What’s the point of all this?
To put it bluntly, the point is to stave off Alzheimer’s.
As I tee off on the 17th hole in the golf course of lifespan, one of my real priorities as to hold onto my marbles for as long as I can.
How’s that for a mixed metaphor?
Both my mother and her father suffered from cognition problems at the end of their lives, although to be fair, she lived to be 93 and he came up five months short of 90.
I’m not sure what my grandfather did other than read, but my mother did puzzles of different types for as long as she could.
My wife, who is a few months younger than I am, plays a lot of Sudoku. That’s a terrific game to keep cognition strong, although I’m more into word games than number games.
I do the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle every day and about 90 percent of the time I can complete it without going to the websites that give answers. Between that and Spelling Bee, I think I’m doing pretty well to challenge myself every day.
I’ll keep fighting the good fight because I know one thing.
The alternative is scary.