Puzzles, games, memory and more puzzles!

Have you seen the Science section of the New York Times today? Holy moley! There's an incredible array of articles, interviews, videos and interactive games that are just begging to be squeezed into a unit on cognition or memory, or at the very least as filler for 15 minutes. Among the highlights:

• Tracing the spark of creative problem-solving (features insight, with interactive puzzles)
• An unbelievably speedy champion crossword puzzle solver (and a special crossword to boot)
• A great article on famed memory patient H.M. and how he continued to solve crosswords
• Students at Brown show how crossword constructing is done*

And there is so much more, on topics like jigsaw puzzles, mind-bending puzzles (which came first, the chicken or the egg?), and a great essay on puzzles by the usually mute magician Teller of Penn & Teller. Enjoy solving!

  --posted by Steve


*In a future post I'll discuss one of my claims to fame: I've had five crossword puzzles published in the New York Times! If you have questions about how puzzles are made (or why anyone would even attempt to do it) let me know and I'll address them in my post.