Crossword puzzles became so popular that books full of different puzzles have become best sellers. The more complex the puzzle, the more difficult it is for the person just looking for a piece of relaxation occasionally picking up the paper to do the cryptic clues. The short word crosswords are more straightforward but the cryptic need regular study, and even an attempt to identify the style of the presenter before regular success can be expected.
Jigsaw puzzles are as old as time and have given hours of fun and pleasure to young and old. The simple child's puzzle might have just a few pieces that can fit together to produce a simple picture of a scene from the farmyard or the beach, with the box holding the pieces giving the child the finished picture as a guide.
Some jigsaws are far more complex with subtle colour changes providing a severe test of eye and imagination. Imagine an image of a gathering of ladies, matching coloured clothes and gabor shoes, gabor coloured to match the skin and the surrounding setting.
At first glance, it seems that most of the pieces are just slight changes to the core colour. It certainly takes some patience to go through the individual pieces, looking for colour and the shape of the piece, before real progress can be made.
Fashions come and go and some new ideas can dominate life when they are first invented. One such invention was the Rubik's Cube which was produced by a Hungarian architect who also dabbled in sculpture.
A cube with six different sides, each sub divided into nine separate pieces, and six different colours. It requires the person trying to solve it to move the individual yet interlocked pieces around until each face is a single colour.
While it is described as a toy, and is arguably the biggest selling toy of all time, it is much more than a toy, testing the most logical of minds to see the move that needs to be made to achieve the solution.
The intention of the inventor was to solve the problem of independently movable parts within a whole but it effectively also provided an insight into 3D.
The inventor obtained a patent within Hungary but it was a much more contentious issue to obtain an international one, and a series of disputes arose which took some solving.
Number games have been the fashion of late with logic and numeracy the main ingredients for the participant. With the housework done, the kids at school, the fashion and entertainment pages are the most popular with the housewife, Feet up in gabor shoes, gabor style, a cup of coffee nearby, it is time to stimulate the mind before worrying about what's for dinner.
We entertain ourselves in many different ways, with simple crosswords and jigsaws one source of relaxation, the rubik's cube at the frustrating end of the scale.
