Mens sana in corpore sano.
Well, those of you who know me know that I was forced to give up on the corpore sano part quite some time ago . . . but I am doing my best to maintain a sound mind. Believe it or not!
How do I do that? I like to do the NY Times Sunday crossword puzzle--in ink. My goal is not just to finish it, but to finish it without making any errors. I have even achieved that goal more than once. I would have achieved it even more than I have if I were more careful about making sure I was entering answers in the right boxes.
I recently got hooked on the new puzzle craze, Sudoku. I completely wrecked 2 of the first 5 puzzles I tried, but I think I have the hang of it now. The goal is to enter each of the numbers 1 through 9 into a grid of 81 squares (subdivided into 9 three by three mini grids) so that each number appears once and only once across each row of 9, down each column of 9, and in each mini grid of 9. A few numbers are already filled in to get one started.
It's really a process of elimination. My approach is to figure out what numbers can possibly fit in each open square. This is done by seeing what numbers cannot be entered because they are already in the intersecting column, row, or mini grid. Then, looking at each available possibility, one will find at least one open square that has only one possible entry. Enter that, then remove it as a possibility from each other open square in its column, row, or mini grid, and so on and so forth.
If you get stuck, look at a row or column that has most of its numbers entered, and figure out what numbers must be used to complete the 1 through 9 sequence. That will eliminate certain other possibilities (which still must be used in the appropriate mini grid), and allow you to enter another number or two.
And you proceed, thinking outside the box while working within the boxes, until you get to a point where there's only one possible number left for each open square, and then complete the puzzle.
But my real passion of late has become the three dimensional jigsaw puzzles known as Puzz 3-D.
Alas, my kitties like them too. The foam on the back of each piece, which is what makes it suitable for 3-D construction, is wonderfully firm yet chewy. So I must be very careful about when and where I construct, and I have to keep my finished products in a room closed off from the "kids."
I've done the Cologne Cathedral, Notre Dame de Paris, Neuschwanstein (that was close to being irritating: just how many subtle variations in the color white are there, anyway?), the Sistine Chapel--which is neat because many of the pieces have pictures on both sides, so that you can open the roof and see Michangelo's famous ceiling and his Last Judgment--a Bavarian wall clock, with working clockworks, a mini (33" tall) grandfather clock, also with working clockworks, the Eiffel Tower, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the London clocktower we Americans mistakenly call Big Ben, and la piece de la resistance, "New York, New York."
That's the largest and most complicated Puzz 3-D of all, with over 3100 pieces, and it includes not only the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, but the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.
It took me the better part of two weeks. It was worth every second.
I wonder if I'll live long enough to be able to transplant my brain into a working body.
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