Do crosswords stave off mental decline? It’s the wrong question

It’s time to stop pussyfooting over any link between puzzles and dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and all the rest

It’s easy to understand why the question is often asked: might Wordle – or the crossword, or the sudoku – be a shield against forgetfulness, senescence, even dementia? After all, puzzles sit right there, new ones appearing among the news every day. And in fiction we’ve seen the very smartest people – the people superspy George Smiley turns to for advice – knocking off wordplay while cracking espionage rings.

When it comes to detail, though, the answer has one of two flavours. The first, the responsible flavour, is a gentle letdown: dedicated solvers may be intellectually active, but perhaps that’s why they’re dedicated solvers. Or: doing puzzles might make you better at something, but that something could be limited to the doing of puzzles.

a solver, presented with two puzzles of ostensibly equal difficulty, may solve one readily and be stumped by the other