I do at least two crossword puzzles a day and the daily Jumble in the Daily News. I attempt to do the New York Times crossword puzzle on Sundays.
This post was edited by SpunkySenior at December 1, 2020 10:56 AM MST
My hobbies mainly though of course their more social sides are blocked at present. I make engineering models and that takes a fair bit of brain-exercising to work out the best way to tackle each step and set up the lathe or milling-machine accordingly.
Other than, that I listen to the radio a lot, but selectively - by no means all just background music. I buy my local newspaper on most days and try the cryptic cross-word puzzle, usually managing to complete around two-thirds of it but sometimes lucky to solve more than three or four clues.
Lately I have pondered on actually trying to learn at least some of the school maths I found so hard I decided years ago I am basically innumerate. I have several text-books, both school ones and higher-education / professional level. I no longer need anything beyond basic arithmetic, geometry and trigonometry but thought of approaching it as "puzzles".
' If I really want a puzzle book though, I have a copy of a book of past 11-Plus Examination questions, compiled from real exam papers by a teacher purely as mind-stretching fun for adults.
It is divided into sections: Arithmetic, English language, etc. I looked through it the other day, and thought, those questions were for school-children but many are by no means as easy as you might imagine they'd need be.
Maybe the compilation is aimed at grown-ups wondering if despite years of life experiences since, they are still as intelligent, clever and broadly-educated as they were when they took the exam aged 11-12, at the end of their Primary School years!
'
Some 20-odd years ago I took a school-exam maths course in adult-education evening-classes, as a refresher for work reasons - and paid for by the employers' training scheme. I still have the text-book. Its title is, A Complete GCSE Mathematics - Higher Course.
(The GCSE qualifications are those of the UK's upper-school leaving examinations, for entry directly to employment or to higher education to gain university entry. British schools do not divide maths into separate curriculum subjects by field (algebra, geometry, etc.), as the US system seems to do, but teaches its topics within a single, cohesive syllabus that forms the "Mathematics" subject in the entire curriculum of subjects.)
To me, that book has no Mathematics for the first 12 chapters - those are all Arithmetic and though differing in some topics, to a level comparable with some of the harder material we were taught in Primary School, Arithmetic, lessons*! Chapter 13 is on the Algebra I consider the vital starting-point for mathematics, in the way simple number sums is the starting-point for arithmetic.
' *A mind exercise?
Try for example, Compound Arithmetic, to calculate the cost of a given quantity of a commodity from given bulk price... in pre-decimal, pre-metric, £.s.d. prices and Tons, cwt, qr. "weights".
Or finding the cube-root of 4913, without a calculator or slide-rule. (Hint: the simplest and really the only practicable way does involve artificial aids; but in just three steps including a simple division "sum".)
Compound Arithmetic was standard Primary-school level, and I think nearly 60 years later, 2nd or 3rd-Year (so ages 9-11, long before the UK started counting the whole school career in one go).
Randy D 