Picture Puzzles

So maybe it seems odd that a middle-aged professional would engage in pastimes that were once relegated to the kids’ world of picture puzzles and simple games. Maybe it is questioned whether time for such an oldster would be better spent reading or knitting or complaining about aches and pains. Bah, Humbug, I say to those who look down on what they consider mindless games.

Picture puzzles, among other games, are some of the best tools for well-being you could partake of. They are said to stave off early degeneration and even some mentally-situated illness as Alzheimer’s. They are fantastic relaxation devices, and they are now as online picture puzzles and games, great pastimes that encourage healthy competition and necessary socialization.

Start with the most common of picture puzzles—the jigsaws. Used to be that you would set up the card table (in a place where it could stay undisturbed for weeks if necessary), and dump a box of cardboard interlocking pieces out and go at it. You still can, but you can also go to a site like Big Fish Games (my favorite—though I am NOT affiliated, so this aint a plug) and download picture puzzles that are moveable, interactive, three-dimensional, and even video! Yes, there is a jigsaw puzzle line that as you solve it, as you fit the pieces together successfully, turns into a moving picture! For instance, one game features the pieces of an undersea scene. As you fill in the dolphins and the angel fish and the diver, the diver and the sea mammals swim about your screen. Very engaging. There are always the newer and more challenging and beautiful jigsaw puzzles to play. My favorite is an art theme picture puzzle that requires you make mini completions of replicas of Munsch’s “Scream,” Da Vinci’s Sistine Chapel art, and Andy Warhol’s pop art pieces. As the random pieces fly in from the left side onto your work space, you have to make them fit by sliding them around. As the game progresses, of course, the board gets more and more packed, making maneuvering more challenging than matching. (Remember those slide puzzles that had nine squares, all but one filled, and you had to slide the squares until the picture made sense? That’s what this last puzzle is like, only you do it using your mouse and under a time limit. Argh!!!

Another kind of game in the picture puzzles category is the mystery/seek-and-find type. You can search for the differences in two pictures, winning points and moving to the next level. You can find the hidden images and items that are clues that you must collect to move on. You can try your lateral thinking skills with a picture that appears, gets blocks of the image removed and requires you to find and replace the missing blocks in a very short frame of time. And you can, of course, enjoy the simple but addicting games like Mahjong that are now also 3-D and animated as well as themed for holidays, symbols, flags of countries and states, and many more possibilities.

So I don’t care how old you are. You can play picture puzzles online to go down memory lane—playing the technologically enhanced version; to keep and increase your health and well-being, or to compete with others or establish goals to meet your own personal best. Now if you’ll excuse me, I am aching for a game.

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