I enjoy doing puzzles. But I must confess I don’t do enough of them. While there is so much information that tells us that keeping our brains active in this way is a great way to keep dementia away, puzzles are very good for improving creativity too.
Puzzles are a lot of fun to solve and to boost your creativity at the same time. Brain-stimulating games like sudoko, anagrams, crossword puzzles, Rubik’s cube and even jigsaw puzzles, help you to look for solutions from various perspectives. Exercising your mind in this way, helps you to approach situations from different angles, and you become open to new ideas and concepts. This naturally, improves your creativity.
Some resources and puzzles
I love Edward de Bono’s work. I found his whole concept of lateral thinking so fascinating.
He describes lateral thinking as
- seeking to solve problems by apparently illogical means
- a process and willingness to look at things in a different way
- a relatively new type of thinking that complements analytical and critical thinking not part of our mainstream education – yet
- a fast, effective tool used to help individuals, companies and teams solve tough problems and create new ideas, new products, new processes and new services.
- a term that is used interchangeably with creativity.
You’ll find plenty of lateral thinking puzzles here.
A while ago I shared with you information about Ruth Curran’s book ‘Being Brain Healthy‘. Ruth has some great puzzles on her blog – try out this word puzzle.
I love working puzzles like this out. Let’s see how many of the six you get right.
1.
KNEE
____________
LIGHT
2.
W
O
R
H
T
3.
MAN
____________
BOARD
4.
OATH
_____________
UR
5.
CRAZY
________
YOU
6.
0
__________________
PhD
M.A
B.Sc.
I hope you enjoyed giving your mind a workout and increasing your creativity too.
While I would encourage comments, if you get these puzzles right you might spoil the experience for someone else. So comment – but send me your responses via the contact form.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I saw it just now. I do not think i am correct in most of this. I am just assuming.
1. neon light
2.
3. Man over board
4. you are under oath
5. crazy over you.
6. 3 degrees below 0
You are right. The second one is throw up. Alan
I’m not wild about puzzles but I do love crosswords, scrabble and the like!
Thanks for the share. I am so tempted to try my hands at them.
I love solving puzzles. You are right. Like the body needs exercise our brain needs too. De bono’s concept is awesome. It’s important to think from other perspectives and be open to ideas. What a fun post! Enjoyed reading it.
I love a good puzzle! I got a few of them…but not all.
I’ve loved Ruth for awhile now and she is a genius about puzzles and brain health. Now I see you love puzzles and brain health too so I’m thrilled to be getting to know you. This was a marvelous post, Corinne. Thank you so much for writing it!
I love puzzles too–everything from jigsaws to word puzzles to Sudoku to logic puzzles. Such fun. I think they help coax the mind to ponder things in new ways.
I love puzzles too, but I love Maths puzzles more than Rubik’s cube and jigsaw. I like solving sudoku, word cross puzzles and maths puzzles like the ones from Shakuntala Devi’s book.
I love puzzles of all kinds! And I love Ruth’s book. The lateral thinking concept intrigues me, and I have to follow up now with research, as I have always heard that the brain hemisphere connector, the corpus callosum, that allows cross hemisphere or lateral cross-talk, is thicker in women.
Thank you for the shout out and the challenge! I have to admit, I did not get most!!! YIKES! It is the process and the brain work that counts, right :)!
I love puzzles too. MOre the Jigsaw puzzle kinds. I recently attempted a 1000 piece Jigsaw puzzle. I did manage to complete it… though it took me almost 3 months… 🙂