It’s time to stop pussyfooting over any link between puzzles and dementia, Alzheimer’s disease and all the rest

It’s easy to understand why the question is often asked: might Wordle – or the crossword, or the sudoku – be a shield against forgetfulness, senescence, even dementia? After all, puzzles sit right there, new ones appearing among the news every day. And in fiction we’ve seen the very smartest people – the people superspy George Smiley turns to for advice – knocking off wordplay while cracking espionage rings.

When it comes to detail, though, the answer has one of two flavours. The first, the responsible flavour, is a gentle letdown: dedicated solvers may be intellectually active, but perhaps that’s why they’re dedicated solvers. Or: doing puzzles might make you better at something, but that something could be limited to the doing of puzzles.

a solver, presented with two puzzles of ostensibly equal difficulty, may solve one readily and be stumped by the other