BRAIN TRICKS

A special garden

As I get older, I receive more and more suggestions about keeping my memory or my body active. I've found some ideas to be intriguing. Whether they help me age better is another question, but each day, I now stretch my fingers apart. Not just spread-eagled. My left hand starts with my pinky and fourth finger together and my index and middle finger together. My right hand has the index finger separated, the middle and fourth finger together, and the pinky by itself.

Without looking at my hands, I try to switch the positions back and forth, keeping the two different patterns moving so that each hand has a different pattern. Not so easy as you would think. 

Bill and I play Wordle from the NYTimes and other games from the SF Chronicle. I guessed the correct word on Wordle for my first 100 attempts. Since then, I have only reached 70 days. Today it was 19 days before I succumbed to "Next Time."

I've also looked for memory games and found some online though I think they provide a disadvantage to left-handers because I have to use the arrow keys on the right side of the key pad. Well, that's my excuse for never passing more than 76 percent on the different quizzes except the one time I reached 98% for memories. No wonder I remember so much about moments in my life.

I also play a Poker Hands game (I learned to play poker with one of my grandmothers) where I choose sets of poker hands. The first few times I played, I came up with winning combinations and the score included how much money I had earned. I surprised myself when I started thinking that I ought to go to Vegas to try my luck. I'm not, or didn't think I was, a gambler. 

Now as I play both Wordle and poker, my abilities are slipping. With Wordle I think that any common word such as SMILE has already been used long before I started playing and I guess wrong. With poker, the more I play the fewer good hands I seem to create. I wonder if the less I play, the more wins I accumulate or if there really isn't any difference in my luck.

Try Italic, a hand that has been around for centuries.
Remember no one else will see your penmanship. Relax.

Being creative is also on the list of things to do as you get older. Even practicing handwriting is a good way to test my brain. Making a contour drawing of an object is also another way to keep my brain active. Even better, drawing with both hands at the same time is not only tricky, but using all those brain cells we leave fallow too often.

Words themselves can be a good brain exercise. Word Genius suddenly appeared in my email inbox. Each day it offers a little used or little known word such as 

Firth, an inlet or estuary

Someone who is breviloquent is someone who uses few words. 

A word that is monosyllabic or a one syllable word.

or woodshed, which means to practice a musical instrument

or obstreperous: rude, rambunctious, rowdy

or Agelast: someone without a sense of humor

Now the question is write a sentence with one of the words and not make it awkward.

"Each word here is monosyllabic, but not the fifth one though."

or    "Does anyone come to mind when you think of an agelast?"

You can find more at Word Genius:

https://www.wordgenius.com/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=blog&utm_campaign=3373431755

try your luck at BrainBashers:

https://www.brainbashers.com/showpuzzles.asp?page=2

Luminosity (annual fee to join):

https://app.lumosity.com/login

A walk down memory lane. Take a tour of David Lance Goines' artwork which is now housed at the UC Berkeley library. His work will remind you of life in 1960s and 1970s as well as the food revolution started by Alice Waters.

David Lance Goines:

https://www.lib.berkeley.edu/about/news/goines

Window View  May 2026