Chess Puzzles

For as long as I remember, I have always loved puzzles, long before I even knew what a chess puzzle was. I loved simple wooden puzzles as a young girl and later, as an adolescent, cardboard interlocking puzzles revealing wonderful scenic pictures. I could wile away the hours on a rainy afternoon working through puzzles with as many as 2000 pieces. As an adult, my puzzle-making has almost come full circle with some of the popular wooden jigsaw puzzles now on the market. Being a teacher in a school has many benefits, as I have the perfect excuse to buy puzzles for students to play with when the weather is not good enough to enjoy the outdoors at recess. It is fun to watch the young mind work out a strategy to solve these pictorial problems. I studied Child Development for many years, and there is ample research showing that jigsaw puzzles can help children enhance their short-term memory and improve spatial memory if the puzzles are in the zone of proximal development and are neither too difficult nor too easy. Puzzles can also be relaxing and relieve stress.

Chess puzzles also have many of the same benefits as jigsaw puzzles in that they train spatial memory and visualization skills as well. Also, we know chess puzzles help us train our calculations. I believe puzzles, any puzzles, help keep your mind sharp. Whether it is a jigsaw puzzle or a word or number puzzle, thinking through a problem helps sharpen the mind. We can all agree that we need to be clever to be able to play the game of chess. So whatever puzzles you fancy, I encourage you to continue to develop your mind in this way. You might be familiar with the phrase use it or lose it and I prefer to maintain my mind for as long as possible. ;-)

So keep on "puzzling," my friends!
Cheers!