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Why we love puzzles

Sent as aNewsletter
3 min readJun 3, 2025

Puzzles aren’t just a way to pass time for

; they’re her livelihood. As a senior game designer at The New York Times, she creates the weekly Brain Tickler: a visual riddle or word game that invites lateral thinking.

Inspiration might come from something small or random. One puzzle began when Erwin started noticing bike racks around Queens. Each had a distinct geometric shape, which she transformed into a visual riddle: What item might be seen with all five? The answer — “a bicycle” — only lands if the clues are clear and the connections click. A good puzzle, she suggests, starts with curiosity but succeeds through clarity. When it clicks, it feels both earned and a little magical.

While Erwin describes creating puzzles, visual artist

writes about solving them. She and her husband started doing jigsaws after reading about their potential to stave off cognitive decline. What began as a practical brain-health strategy quickly became a shared ritual, a new rhythm to their days. The TV stayed off. The room got quieter. Their attention changed. They began to remember not just the puzzles they finished, but how they worked through them — who did what, where they got stuck, which pieces landed with a little thrill.

Whether analog or digital, puzzles require patience and focus. They ask you to notice more, make new connections, and tolerate uncertainty longer than most tasks allow. The pleasure comes from staying with a problem until something clicks.

I love crossword puzzles even though I’m bad at them. I rarely finish without help. But I keep going because there’s something satisfying about watching a blank grid take shape. What stays with me isn’t the solution; it’s the feeling of being absorbed, even for a moment, in the act of figuring something out.

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