6 Ways That Crosswords Help Build Strategic Thinking

Solving crossword puzzles is a great way to stimulate the mind and invoke countless benefits for the brain and body. Working out crossword puzzles regularly helps build strategic thinking due to many factors. They support our brains, mental processing, and overall biology acting as a neuroprotective exercise and more. Here we’ll be taking you through a look at the science of how this time-old pastime supports the development of our cognition and mental acuity.

Neuroprotective Effects of Crosswords

Puzzles are very good for the health of your brain. Researcher Ann Lukits published in the Wall Street Journal how regular crossword puzzle solving improves memory and brain function as we age. This, in turn, lowers the risk of early-onset dementia and neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s. Solving at least one crossword a week vastly raises verbal skills and causes you to think deeply. The stimulation is essential to retaining healthy neural pathways, which improve the overall health of your brain and your mental function. This effect reaches all new highs when two or more people solve a crossword puzzle together. Strategic thinking is all about forming multiple connections to a point of focus in a very similar way to the manner that brain cells set up new links to augment the process of memory improving mental processing speed and recall.

Collaborative Cruciverbalism

Crossword puzzles solved together by two or more people develop collaborative cruciverbalism. It is a fantastic tool for improving creative thinking, and even a part of the applied syllabus for creative thought. Did you know that the person who builds a crossword puzzle is called a cruciverbalist? As a word artist, this person’s ability to develop creative tactics by employing shifting perception to show the peaks of our ability to analyze things. As we work together to solve a puzzle, we are improving our analytical skills. Before we can even start to think about thinking strategically, we first have to hone our ability to analyze multiple possibilities and perceptions. Collaborative crosswords are one of the best ways to fine-tune this difficult-to-train skill.

Crosswords Create Dopamine

Crossword puzzles stimulate the brain using various mechanisms. As we solve each riddle, our brains release the neurotransmitter dopamine. Dopamine creates the sensations of well-being that we experience when we're feeling good. Its release is enhanced by things which bring us joy. It acts upon brain centers and the nervous system responsible for movement, memory, sleep, mood, pleasurable reward, and clear-functioning cognition. The goal of completing a crossword puzzle is naturally subdivided as we progress. Our brains then steadily release a flow of dopamine, which increases the acuity of our cognition while gradually lifting our mood. This is why it is especially important to pick a puzzle which is stimulating enough, as low levels of dopamine over a continuous period will leave you with no excitement or stimulation. Similarly, your crosswords need to be solvable so that you sidestep stress completely.

Improve Attention and Focus

Analytical thinking is all about being able to tune into a single point of focus where every prevailing distraction blurs into a tool to help you think. Certain crosswords bring the solver to a point where it takes nothing less than complete focus to place the answer to a cryptic clue or particularly taxing riddle. As we practice our ability to solve crosswords we are subtly honing our concentration and focus. A focused point of attention seems much easier to sustain in the mind’s eye than it actually is. Yet, the more of a habit it becomes to revert to this state when posed with problems, which require strategic thinking and thus analytics, we become better and better at it as a matter of consequence. Make crosswords a habit and you'll handle all types of other situations much better. Start reading more articles about crossword hacks and tips.

Solving Crosswords Mimics Strategizing

Strategic decision making and the formulation of tactics are a part of planning using multiple mechanisms within the brain. In the same way that we break a crossword down into sections, reasoning according to our own logic, such as difficulty and the probability of when a riddle will be easier to solve, we strategize plans. Objectives are created, and multiple scenarios are contemplated when strategizing. When we solve crossword puzzles, we do the same thing. Strategic decisions involve the prefrontal cortex and limbic system. To act strategically, we have to suppress binary reactions by holding a purposeful focus on multiple perspectives. The same action triggers while working puzzles, especially the group solving of crosswords.

Puzzle Solving - A Self-Learning Tool

Strategic thinking, and in a manner all thought, balances upon a point of focus with yourself and your idea of self is the direct relative. Everything hinges upon you and the way that you perceive yourself. From this place of perception, ideas form and we make choices, but if we exhibit a low level of mindfulness and self-understanding, then our conclusions are rife with chaos. Yet, this chaos is nothing but decisions made out of a perspective, which doesn’t fully understand all of the factors involved. Leadership and decision making need confidence borne out of deep knowledge of self. Solving crossword puzzles regularly is a proven self-learning tool. It is so powerful that the body even exhibits measurable pharmacological changes while stimulated by regular puzzle solving. When we learn to know ourselves at a deep level, our decisions are automatically more ‘inspired’ fruiting greater reward due to matching precisely what we, strategically, want.

Solve One Crossword Per Week

Crossword puzzles have been with us for a long time. They’ve come a long way since first published on December 21st, 1913, but they remain inherently the same. The core benefits of crossword solving to language, learning skills, and strategic thinking are so profound that everyone needs to be doing at least one crossword a week. Remember to put your mind to the test but don’t allow yourself to become frustrated. Crossword Buzz has all the solutions to our favourite puzzles daily just in case you get too stuck. They’ve got the Mirror quick crossword answers, the solution to the New York Times puzzle, The Celebrity answers, and everything else you could hope for. You can find many crosswords and there answers on Crossword Answers 911.

Author Bio:

Ross is a blogger who loves to write especially in the kids Vertical vertical. He has written many informative Blogs. He has also written blogs in other verticals too like personal development, unique gifting blogs.