upworthy

new york times

Health

NYT games like Wordle and Connections are good for cognitive health, with one big caveat

How you feel about doing them matters more than you might think.

Photo credit: Canva (left) Screenshot of completed Wordle game via NYT app (right)

Millions of people enjoy NYT Games puzzles like Wordle.

Every morning, I sit down with my cup of coffee, open up the New York Times Games app on my phone, and do the Wordle, Connections, Strands, and Mini-Crossword, in that order. As I complete each game, I send my results to the "Puzzle Pals Gang" group chat I have with some friends and family. We compare. We gloat. We trash talk. We congratulate. It's a delightful routine.

And we're not the only ones. According to the New York Times, there were 4.8 billion plays of Wordle, 2.3 billion plays of Connections, and 8 billion game and puzzle plays total in 2023. A whole lot of people love their brain games.

I like to think I'm benefiting from a nice little brain workout when I do those puzzles, but am I really? According to Mark Alberts, MD, chief of neurology at Hartford Hospital and co-physician-in-chief at the Ayer Neuroscience Institute, I probably am—but that doesn't mean everyone else is.

"These sorts of brain exercises can be very helpful for improving your ability to think and remember,” Alberts says, but that's only true if you're someone who actually likes and enjoys doing them. People who find the games fun can enjoy a boost in memory, attention and other cognitive functions. But for those who just find them stressful or frustrating, the cognitive benefit doesn't outweigh the negative impacts.

“Sure, crossword puzzles and Sudoku could be fun for some people. But if they’re distressing to you—or just not fun—they won’t be beneficial,” says Dr. Alberts.

puzzle write GIFGiphy

As someone who loves games and puzzles, I'm surely reaping the cognitive benefits. Someone who gets super stressed out by them would not, but that doesn't mean there aren't other ways for people who don't enjoy games to give their own brains a boost.

“Emotional well-being has a huge impact on cognition, so it’s important to choose activities that give you joy,” says Dr. Alberts. “Find a different hobby. Take a class. Teach a class! Keep learning in other ways.”

And, of course, there's not widespread agreement on the degree to which these games are helpful to brain health, either. Susanne Jaeggi, a professor with the Center for Cognitive and Brain Health at Northeastern University, says that the games being good for brains question isn't that simple.

“There are a lot of different things that contribute to our brain health," Jaeggi says. "As long as you’re doing something that keeps your brain engaged and fit, that could potentially be helpful to prevent age-related cognitive decline. Whether it’s exactly these games, that’s an open question, because a lot of these are new and there’s not a lot of (research) out there.”

A big question people have is whether games can help ward off age-related cognitive issues and dementia diseases. While Alberts says there’s no evidence for brain games preventing or delaying the onset of dementia, certain games do utilize cognitive functions that tend to diminish with age. “Fluid functions” like problem-solving, processing speed, and working memory tend to wane as we age, and some of the NTY Games puzzles force your brain to perform those functions.

A study published in NEJM EvidenceNEJM Evidence found some evidence that crossword puzzles can have a positive impact on aging brains. The study found that people age 62 to 80 with mild memory problems who played web-based crossword puzzles showed improved cognition and less brain shrinkage than to those who played web-based cognitive games.

However, crossword puzzles largely draw on things we already know, which is different than making our brains do something new or solve problems. “All your knowledge that you accumulate as a result of expertise and education, these are skills that remain as we age,” Jaeggi said. “Things like crossword puzzles that have you retrieve this accumulated knowledge, that’s not typically something that declines with age.”

One way to keep our brains sharp as we age is to try new things, and games can be a part of that. “What seems to be the case is that if you learn new skills and they’re challenging at whatever level of challenge is appropriate for you, then you see benefits,” said Art Kramer, psychology professor and director for Northeastern University's Center for Cognitive and Brain Health. “So if you’ve never done crossword puzzles or you’ve never played (Sudoku), that might be of benefit to you.”

Novel and enjoyable seem to be the key, so if games are your thing and you want to reap the benefits, enjoy the puzzles you love but also try some new ones once in a while.

Jimmy Carter at the Commonwealth Club in California, 2013.

It’s been a year since the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol Building and it’s clear that America has failed to learn the lessons of the uprising. The attack on the Capitol left five dead and defaced a monument to the greatest gift that humankind has bestowed upon itself, democracy.

It was a prime example of the damage that has been done to this country by opportunists on the right who promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.

The riot showed what people in power put at risk when they spread misinformation and cast doubt on the democratic process. Surely, this horrific example would have caused people in power—whether in Washington, the media, or America’s religious institutions—to cool down the rhetoric and restore faith in democracy.

But sadly, it hasn’t.

A new NRR Ipsos poll found that two-thirds of GOP voters, and just over one-third of all voters, still believe the “Big Lie.”


via Wikimedia Commons

On the one-year anniversary of the attack, former president Jimmy Carter wrote an op-ed for The New York Times to warn America of the danger of promoting the “Big Lie” and how it can lead to the downfall of our “precious democracy.” But he didn’t just sound the alarm, he also provided four practical steps on which Americans of all political stripes can reverse course and improve our collective faith in vital institutions.

Carter opens “I Fear for Our Democracy” by lamenting the fact the uprising hasn’t been taken seriously enough.

“There followed a brief hope that the insurrection would shock the nation into addressing the toxic polarization that threatens our democracy,” Carter writes. “However, one year on, promoters of the lie that the election was stolen have taken over one political party and stoked distrust in our electoral systems.”

Carter has a real fear that Americans may lose democracy altogether.

“I now fear that what we have fought so hard to achieve globally—the right to free, fair elections, unhindered by strongman politicians who seek nothing more than to grow their own power—has become dangerously fragile at home,” Carter writes.

via Wikimedia Commons

The former president has a long history of promoting democracy abroad and understands its power to transform a nation.

“After I left the White House and founded the Carter Center, we worked to promote free, fair and orderly elections across the globe,” Carter writes. “I led dozens of election observation missions in Africa, Latin America and Asia, starting with Panama in 1989, where I put a simple question to administrators: ‘Are you honest officials or thieves?’”

Ever the pragmatic politician, Carter laid out four ways that Americans can work together, regardless of party, to undo the damage done to the democratic process over the last few years.

1. Gather around common values.

“First, while citizens can disagree on policies, people of all political stripes must agree on fundamental constitutional principles and norms of fairness, civility, and respect for the rule of law.”

2. Reform the election system.

"Second, we must push for reforms that ensure the security and accessibility of our elections and ensure public confidence in the accuracy of results.”

3. Be about more than politics.

"Third, we must resist the polarization that is reshaping our identities around politics. We must focus on a few core truths: that we are all human, we are all Americans and we have common hopes for our communities and our country to thrive.”

4. Fight disinformation.

"Lastly, the spread of disinformation, especially on social media, must be addressed.”

via Wikimedia Commons

In the op-ed, Carter refrains from speculating on what would happen in America if its citizens completely lost all faith in the democratic process. But it's not hard to imagine it would quickly lead to the decay of every institution that upholds the fragile framework for freedom and civility.

“Our great nation now teeters on the brink of a widening abyss,” Carter warns in his final paragraph. “Without immediate action, we are at genuine risk of civil conflict and losing our precious democracy. Americans must set aside differences and work together before it is too late.”

You can read the entire op-ed at The New York Times.


Wikiimages by Pixabay, Dr. Jacqueline Antonovich/Twitter

The 1776 Report isn't just bad, it's historically bad, in every way possible.

When journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones published her Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project for The New York Times, some backlash was inevitable. Instead of telling the story of America's creation through the eyes of the colonial architects of our system of government, Hannah-Jones retold it through the eyes of the enslaved Africans who were forced to help build the nation without reaping the benefits of democracy. Though a couple of historical inaccuracies have had to be clarified and corrected, the 1619 Project is groundbreaking, in that it helps give voice to a history that has long been overlooked and underrepresented in our education system.

The 1776 Report, in turn, is a blaring call to return to the whitewashed curriculums that silence that voice.

In September of last year, President Trump blasted the 1619 Project, which he called "toxic propaganda" and "ideological poison" that "will destroy our country." He subsequently created a commission to tell the story of America's founding the way he wanted it told—in the form of a "patriotic education" with all of the dog whistles that that phrase entails.

Mission accomplished, sort of.


The 1776 Report from the commission was released yesterday, and historians have near-universally panned it as an ahistorical piece of political propaganda—and a poorly constructed one at that. (You can read the report here.)

Even just a cursory glance at the table of contents is a clue to the what-the-what foolishness we're going to find within it.

The introduction to the report states that the 1776 Commission is "comprised of some of America's most distinguished scholars and historians" and calls the report "a definitive chronicle of the American founding, a powerful description of the effect the principles of the Declaration of Independence have had on this Nation's history, and a dispositive rebuttal of reckless 're-education' attempts that seek to reframe American history around the idea that the United States is not an exceptional country but an evil one."

The first problem is that these "distinguished scholars and historians" don't include a single actual American historian among them. There are a couple of people whose scholarship fields—namely political science and classicism—are somewhat tangentially related to the topic, but if you're really trying to write a "definitive chronicle of the American founding," it would probably be good to include some actual experts in American history.

Of course, there's a good reason that they didn't include American historians—because finding an actual American historian to sign onto such a distorted representation of history is darn near impossible. It might also be because actual historians generally do their research work through universities, which the report criticizes as "hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country."

David W. Blight, Professor of History, of African American Studies, and American Studies at Yale, calls the report "beliefs devoid of history," a "puerile, politically reactionary document," and "the final desperate act of MAGA functionaries" which "needs a janitor's broom."



He also wrote that the report "may end up anthologized someday in a collection of fascist and authoritarian propaganda," a sentiment shared by Stanford PhD student Austin Clements, whose studies focus on fascism and the Far Right.

Heather Cox Richardson, an American historian from Boston College who has grown a huge following for her daily documentation of American history in real-time, wrote of the report: "Made up of astonishingly bad history, this document will not stand as anything other than an artifact of Trump's hatred of today's progressives and his desperate attempt to wrench American history into the mythology he and his supporters promote so fervently."

Even Steven Wilentz, a Yale historian who has criticized the 1619 Project, told the Washington Post that the 1776 Project is nothing more than political commentary. "It reduces history to hero worship," he wrote in an email. "It's the flip side of those polemics, presented as history, that charge the nation was founded as a slavocracy, and that slavery and white supremacy are the essential themes of American history. It's basically a political document, not history."

Professor Jacqueline Antonovich asked historians on Twitter to share their "favorite" part of the report and kicked off the parade by pointing out that there are no citations—no footnote, endnotes, or bibliography—to be found. A high school history paper would be flunked for such an omission.

Columbia history professor, Dr. Karl Jacoby, pointed out that the document lavishes praise on the Declaration of Independence (indeed, it's a primary focus of the report) but totally ignores the fact that it calls Indigenous people "merciless Indian savages." As a matter of fact, Indigenous people basically don't exist in this telling of America's founding.

Eric Rauchway, history professor at the University of California at Davis, told the Washington Post, "It's very hard to find anything in here that stands as a historical claim, or as the work of a historian. Almost everything in it is wrong, just as a matter of fact. I may sound a little incoherent when trying to speak of this, because the report itself is not coherent. It's like historical whack-a-mole."

One of the criticisms of progressivism in the report is what it refers to as a post-Civil Rights Movement focus on "group rights." However, Rauchway recalls the formation of the Senate as an example of group rights that long predates modern sensibilities. "Group rights is not anathema to American principles," he told the Post. "Why do Wyomingers have 80 times the representation that Californians have if not for group rights?"

The way both slavery and the post-Civil Rights Movement era are treated is mind-bogglingly distorted, as Ibram X. Kendi points out.

He also points out the inherent problem with the "Black people have been given preferential treatment for decades" argument, which logically leads to the racist idea that since disparities still exist, Black people must just be inferior.

One of the worst aspects of the report is that it was released on MLK Day,

The problem is that this report will undoubtedly be used by some as the foundation for American education, ignoring the irony that it's a blatantly biased propaganda document that decries teaching "one-sided," "activist propaganda."

Nikole Hanna-Jones has said that she wanted to write the 1619 Project and its accompanying curriculum to get kids to ask questions. Historian Kevin Levin points out that the 1776 Report appears to have the opposite focus, viewing "students as sponges who are expected to absorb a narrative of the American past without question. It views history as set in stone rather than something that needs to be analyzed and interpreted by students."

And as writer Michael Harriot pointed out, the report is merely a return to the whitewashed history students were taught for generations, putting the founding fathers up on a pedestal from which they could do no real wrong and glossing over the problematic elements of our history that still have lingering effects today.

A nuanced approach to American history is vital, as is acknowledging that two things can be true at the same time. The democratic principles laid out in the founding documents of our nation are exceptional and deserving of praise and the U.S. has yet to truly live up to the ideals they espouse. It is in no way unAmerican or anti-American to be honest and forthright about America's past and current sins and to strive to form a more perfect union by working toward true liberty and justice for all. Equating a desire to better understand the vast, ongoing impact of historical injustices in our country with "hatred for America" is simplistic and untrue. It's not only possible to love America and want her to be better, it's actually a sign of loving America to examine her past fully, to assess her present truthfully, and to imagine her future hopefully.

To pretend that the U.S. is and has always been perfect is an insult to the millions who have suffered at her hands, and this report is an insult to the millions who understand that. Whitewashing history in the name of "patriotic education" is not virtuous. It never has been and it certainly never will be.

In the chaos of the attack on the Capitol two days ago, some important stories have gotten a bit buried. One story that's not getting the attention it should—ironically, because journalists usually do everything they can to not make themselves the story—is the violent attacks on the press that took place.

New York Times staff photographer Erin Schaff described her harrowing experience in a Twitter post shared by her colleague Emily Cochrane.

In Schaff's words:

"Grabbing my press pass, they saw that my ID said The New York Times and became really angry. They threw me to the floor, trying to take my cameras. I started screaming for help as loudly as I could. No one came. People just watched. At this point, I thought I could be killed and no one would stop them. They ripped one of my cameras away from me, broke a lens on the other and ran away.


But then the police found me. I told them that I was a photojournalist and that my pass had been stolen, but they didn't believe me. They drew their guns, pointed them and yelled at me to get down on my hands and knees. As I lay on the ground, two other photojournalists came into the hall and started shouting "She's a journalist!"

Another photographer, John Minchillo from the Associated Press, was physically assaulted, with the attack being caught on video. Some in the crowd seemed to think he's part of ANTIFA, despite him clearly and repeatedly pointing out his press credentials. At one point, he is violently thrown over a wall and you can hear someone yelling that they were going to kill him, but he thankfully was escorted away without injury.

The AP, which is known for being one of the least biased, most factual news outlets, had a bunch of their equipment destroyed by the mob, who chanted "CNN sucks" while destroying it. You'd think the big "AP" stickers on some of the equipment would have offered a clue that it was not CNN's, but no one is accusing these folks of being the sharpest pencils in the pack.

Here's another video of media equipment being smashed by people in the crowd to a chilling chorus of "F*ck you!"

And just to add to these disturbing and disgusting attacks, someone scrawled the words "Murder the Media" on a door of the U.S. Capitol. Lovely.

It should be crystal clear to anyone who values democracy that an attack on the free press is never okay. The freedom of the press is enshrined in the first amendment of the Constitution, and since the people who stormed the Capitol building were attempting to put themselves in the place of our duly elected government, their attacks on the press were an attack not just on the individuals and media outlets involved, but on the Constitution itself.

It shouldn't be surprising that people who have been told pretty much daily that the news media is the "enemy of the people" would eventually take that rhetoric seriously. This is exactly what people who criticized the president's extreme language warned would eventually happen.

People can have legitimate criticisms of media companies while still recognizing that the journalists working on the ground are heroes of democracy who put themselves into harm's way to keep us informed about what's happening in the world. These are people who document history as it happens. They are the eyes and ears of the people, and without them we would truly be living in darkness.

Attacks on the free press are attacks on democracy itself and should be called out as such. And the fact that these attacks came not from some outside terrorist group, but from a group of American citizens violently attacking an entire branch of our federal government, should be a huge wake-up call about where we are and the extremist rhetoric that led us here.