Puzzles not only make you smarter — they help bridge the political divide, new book says

Whether you think puzzles are a colossal waste of time or an excellent way to give your brain a workout, author A.J. Jacobs says there can be no doubt about the unifying nature of cracking a head-scratcher.

"This drive to solve problems comes from deep within us, and we get such joy from the struggle and from solving problems. And puzzles almost present a platonic ideal of that experience," Jacobs told The Sunday Magazine host Piya Chattopadhyay.

Jacobs is the author of the new book, The Puzzler: One Man's Quest to Solve the Most Baffling Puzzles Ever, from Crosswords to Jigsaws to the Meaning of Life. He says some people have misconceptions about puzzles, believing they are a trivial pursuit. But he argues that if you stop and look closer, puzzles can go far beyond cubes, words and numbers.

"I do think even if you hate a particular type of puzzle — I'm not a huge Sudoku fan, for instance — there's always going to be a puzzle for you, and there's going to be the puzzle of life," Jacobs said. 

"So approach life as a puzzle. And I think that it certainly has made my life better and happier and less stressful."

Puzzle unity

Jacobs believes puzzles bring together more than just jigsaw pieces.

"My Twitter feed is usually filled with vitriol and uninformed opinion, but when the Wordle craze hit, it was filled with these cute little yellow and green squares, so puzzles can be a unifying force," he said.

Wordle, a puzzle app requiring people to guess a five-letter word once per day, launched in October 2021 and then skyrocketed in popularity. In January, the New York Times purchased it from former Reddit software engineer Josh Wardle.

As part of his research, Jacobs analyzed a study in the book Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter by Cass R. Sunstein and Reid Hastie, which examined how groups are able to work together.

"They took liberals and conservatives and tried to figure out, 'How can you bring them together?'" he said. "And one of the only ways was to have them collaborate on a crossword puzzle."

Puzzles also helped Jacobs's parents keep in touch in 1964, during the time his father was stationed in Korea as a lawyer for the military and his mother was still in the U.S.

The couple would mail a single crossword puzzle back and forth, each filling in one word in at a time and taking several months to do the crossword. 

"[It was] the least efficient way, I think, of ever doing a crossword puzzle — but certainly romantic," said Jacobs. 

But not everyone agrees that puzzles are an ultimate connecting force.

Stacy Costa says that while puzzles do bring people together, they can also cause some quarrels. Costa is what's called an enigmatologist, which is someone who studies puzzles, and works at the University of Toronto.

"If people are into the same genre of puzzles, 100 per cent, they find qualities to connect with," said Costa. 

"Where division comes into play is when people like different types of puzzles … some are more math focused or more logic focused and some are more word-based."

'The puzzler mindset'

Like Jacobs, Costa believes that there is a puzzle for everyone, and if you think you're not a puzzle person, you may just need to try something different. 

Besides being entertaining, Costa believes there are benefits to doing puzzles, such as helping your brain figure out new ways to solve other kinds of problems. But to get those benefits, you have to tackle puzzles that challenge you, instead of choosing something you can quickly figure out. 

"If you engage yourself in a puzzle that's a bit more difficult … then the mind is going to become stronger," she said. "I think that's the key: finding the difficulty level for every single person."

Depending on the puzzle, it can also rewire the brain as it uses new pathways to tackle difficult problems — something that can help with critical thinking, she said. 

But neuroscientist Daniel Levitin has challenged the notion that doing puzzles improves neuroplasticity, the technical term for rewiring the brain. 

"There's no evidence that these brain-training games actually make you smarter or improve your memory or stave off Alzheimer's," he said in an interview with CBC in 2020

"If you do Sudoku puzzles or crosswords, all that you get better at is Sudoku puzzles and crosswords."

Instead, it's learning a new skill that prevents cognitive decline, said the author of Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives. So for people who have never done puzzles, challenging themselves with something unfamiliar can improve brain health, Levitin said.

"That oils the neural circuits; it creates new synaptic connections, and that exercise of your brain getting out of your comfort zone is very important to successful aging."

For Jacobs, he said he's seen clear evidence that the benefits extend past the pencil and paper. In doing research for his book, he explored all sides of the Rubik's cube that is the world of puzzles. He visited an unsolved puzzle at CIA headquarters, attended a world jigsaw competition in Spain and saw people across the world united in the love of puzzles.

"They encourage curiosity. They encourage what I call the puzzler mindset, which is one of curiosity about everything — about life, family, politics, you name it," Jacobs said.  

He plans on applying that puzzler mindset to all aspects of his life. 

"There's a motto that's used in the puzzle community: don't get furious, get curious," he said. "For instance, if I'm talking to someone from the other side of the political spectrum, that is a puzzle .… So instead of getting angry and debating them and trying to win a war of words, I say, 'Let's figure it out together, why do we disagree?'"

Written by Philip Drost. Produced by Sarah-Joyce Battersby.