Puzzling

I am a big fan of Sudoku.  I do many puzzles a day.  Right now I'm using a book with single puzzles per page and I tear them out when I'm done and leave a litter of pages in my wake.  Grandma has taken note of my puzzle obsession, every time I triumphantly rip another puzzle out of the book she clucks her tongue and says something like "You're so smart! How did you get so smart? Goll-ee!" It's kinda nice.  Grandma is an excellent cheerleader.

She's also completely transparent.

Yesterday Grandma announced that she is going to take up crossword puzzles.  Her father was a big crossword fiend ("Every morning, with his coffee, it was a ritual!") Her first husband did them regularly, and her second husband, and my sister... Combine that influence with somebody in the house who does puzzles on paper all the time, it's irresistible!  She needs to be in the "In" Crowd at any cost, so now she's a devoted crossword novice.

Her first attempts at this crossword business, however, are, in my book, a bit questionable.  Reading the prompts and number of letters out loud, musing for a few seconds, asking me for help occasionally, and then transcribing directly from the solution!  She called this "practice" and felt completely justified.

I didn't bring up the fact that the supposed neurological benefit of all this puzzling is next to nothing if you're not actually doing the puzzles.  No doubt she'll have a significant placebo effect and a wildly successful experience.  She'll feel herself getting smarter the faster she copies the answers.  Her memory will improve (as if it needed to!) and she'll get sharper and sharper and sharper.