I’m Hooked on NYTimes Games: Do I (and 10 million others) Need Therapy?

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It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner being sassy saucy.

OK, I’m going to admit it. I spend more time on line doing the NYTimes Games than reading the news. And evidently I’m not alone in that regard. Wikipedia indicates that the NYTimes Games section attracts 10 million players a day. A NYTimes staff member reportedly commented, “the half joke that is repeated internally is that The New York Times is now a gaming company that also happens to offer news.”

Some of the games offered by the NY Times that daily attract 10 million players.

I should mention that this is not the first time I’ve blogged about my obsession with puzzle games. Back in 2020 during the pandemic (remember that?) I shared my favorite linguistic equation puzzles to help while away the alone-time that we were all experiencing. Solving such puzzles purportedly triggers a sudden flush of pleasure and satisfaction, sometimes called the aha effect, from the release of the mood-enhancing chemical dopamine .

My non-NYTimes auxiliary emergency back-up app

Then a couple of years later I blogged about how my preoccupation with games like Wordle and Connections was a diversion from the constant drumbeat of news about a world that’s going to hell in a hand basket. However, at the time I felt pangs of guit for indulging in frivolous games (as I put it) when so much serious stuff was going on — sort of like Nero fiddling while Rome was burning. I wonder how many of those 10 million NYTimes game players feel similar twinges of guilt.

However, my dark cloud of guilt may have a silver lining. I say this because Joseph de Wek recently contributed an opinion essay to The Guardian that offers a convincing argument (at least convincing to me) that puzzle games are not frivolous and that we needn’t feel guilty for indulging in them.

De Wek begins by pointing to what I consider to be obvious: trying to keep abreast with today’s frenetic and disjointed world is anxiety-producing, to say the least. He claims that puzzles offer an escape from constantly bombarded with one after another bad-news rabbit holes. For de Wek this form of escape is a positive adaptive strategy rather than a retreat from reality: “Instead of Instagram-induced Fomo or doomscrolling the news, we focus on a single problem.”

[Editor’s note: I hate to admit it but I had to look up “Fomo” and “doom scrolling.” The UC Davis Health web site provides a good overview of the mental health hazards of “Fomo” (Fear of Missing Out). And a useful summary of the perils of “doomscrolling” (scanning one negative headline after another) can be found on the Harvard Medical School web site .]

Beyond being an escape, puzzle games offer what de Wek calls “productive rumination.” In the face of our increasing use of computerized technology for mental tasks (think spell check and AI web searches) de Wek says that puzzles may become the mental gym that keeps our brains fit by increasing its neuroplasticity (the ability to to adapt to change). I’m not sure how that all works, but I do know that I would prefer a mental gym any day over the pumping-iron kind.

I prefer a mental gym thank you.

It even gets better. In addition to exercising our brains, de Wek floats the idea that puzzles may be our new utopia. In contrast to the anarchy and ambiguity that we see around us, puzzles offer a “contained alternative universe” where a fact is a fact, a wrong letter is simply wrong, and a correct solution is clearly right. Additionally, in the puzzle world we can find closure which is something that’s rare in our uncertain world.

His closing words resonated with me:

For a few minutes, we get to live in a fair, orderly world. And for those few minutes, at least, we get to reassure ourselves that our brains can still deduce, recognise patterns and engage in linguistic play. We are thus reminded that we are still capable of comprehending the world – if only the world would let us.

With that I’m happy to conclude that being hooked on puzzle games is not a reason to feel guilty nor to seek therapy. In fact, having brains that can still “deduce, recognise patterns and engage in linguistic play” is in itself reason for celebration (especially at my age).

So, tomorrow morning, after having briefly glanced at the headlines, I’ll turn to my favorite NYTimes Games for a bout of productive rumination. Happily, I’ll be able to look at myself in the mirror without regret. Now we’ll have to get the good news out to the other 9,999,999 players.

The Yolk’s On You

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It’s Ann here today. Andy is in OurLittleCorner trying not to be a party pooper.

So it’s no yolk. I was going write this blog with the title “I’m in Love with the Pope and Bernie and Bruce.” But once again the bloggers’ gods have smiled sweetly upon me and reminded me that BigLittleMeals is mostly a food blog. Those gods must have also been behind the weird coincidence that resulted in my final choice for today’s blog…which is, thankfully, about food.

Andy and I eat lots of eggs (usually purchased from local folks and neighborhood friends); when I have a choice, I always covet the yolks and leave some of the whites. Consequently, I was delighted with a recent report which indicates yolks shouldn’t carry any health stigma.

Right after reading the article about the healthy quality of yolks, I was getting my daily update on the news and saw a headline fromThe Guardian entitled, “I’d smoke Biscoff if I could.” After reminding myself what Biscoff are, I remembered getting them on a Delta flight – and thinking how delicious they were. According to the article,”Biscoff is a modern version of the traditional Belgian speculoos, spiced biscuits that have been around since the middle ages, when they were eaten to celebrate December’s feast of Saint Nicholas.”The Guardian article reveals that Biscoffs are so trendy online and with GenZ that a recent TikTok video describing how to make a 2-ingredient cheesecake with Biscoff has received over 5 million views – and a video for 3-ingredient cookies using Biscoff Cookie Butter received over 4 million views!

I didn’t figure that we’d get even 1000 views if I posted a Biscoff recipe (surely because the majority of our readers aren’t Gen Z? :), so instead I started searching for a recipe for BigLittleMeals that has lots of egg yolks. About the second one that came up was from Serious Eats and was a yummy-sounding ice cream recipe …with multiple egg yolks and cookie crumbs. Biscoff cookie crumbs.

My blog was set.

If I can’t express adoration of the Pope and Bernie and Bruce in a blog, I will say I’m pretty much in love with this ice cream. And if you want to fall in love too but don’t happen to have an ice cream maker, try the Speculoos Cookie Butter Ice Cream from Trader Joes!

See a few comments from Reddit fans below:

Even though Speculoos Ice Cream from Trader Joe’s has an especially devoted following, Ben&Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs and others make it too.

If you do have an ice cream maker and love homemade ice cream as much as we do, try today’s recipe.

Biscoff Ice Cream
…

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Why Wynn Would Be a Great Shortstop (and Suck as a Goalie). It’s All How You Look at It.

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It’s Andy here today. Ann is in OurLittleCorner focusing on big white hats.

Wynn with one of her “baseballs” during a fetching session.

If you’ve followed our blog at all you’ve learned a few things about Wynn, our Cardigan Welsh Corgi.  We’ve blogged about her ”Jurassic bark,” her gluttonous eating style, her love of bully sticks, how her brain works, her political preferences, her food-theft capers, why she’s into butt-sniffing, and her opossum herding skills (to name just a few things).   For today’s blog I’m going to share my thoughts on why I am convinced that she would make a dynamite shortstop (and a not-so-dynamite goalie).

My assessment of her baseball potential is based on four years of observing her fetch balls. I did the math and calculated that four years of twice-a-day play sessions each with a minimum of ten ball throws per session adds up to 29,200 fetches — ample data for assessing her potential. Her speed, agility, and long, low-slung body (that is ideal for trapping fast grounders) are definitely shortstop-worthy attributes.

I’m not alone in imagining how a dog would fare on the baseball field. I found a number of references to dogs as either mascots or “bat dogs” (like “Rookie” the bat dog for the Trenton Thunder, an AA affiliate of the New York Yankees ). But given Wynn’s skill level, I’m sure she would find such froufrou jobs demeaning.

Rookie the “bat dog” of the Trenton Thunder, an AA affiliate of the New York Yankees. Wynn would be insulted if she were asked to do this job. ( Photo source: American Kennel Club)

I did come across one promising blog post title: “Batter Up,Pups! Matching Dog Breeds to Baseball Positions.” However, I was disappointed to find that Cardigan Corgis were nowhere in the lineup. Worse yet, Border Collies were designated “the shortstops of the dog world” because they are “agile, quick, and always on the move.” The blog failed to mention that border collies are high strung and have no sense of humor whatsoever. Who has ever heard of a good shortstop with no sense of humor?

So where’s the Cardigan Corgi? (source: Petsetc.com)

But to fully appreciate Wynn’s baseball potential you need to know how she visually processes fast-moving objects (think baseballs) relative to her ball-catching muzzle — what I will call “muzzle-eye coordination.” It’s important to note that dogs do not see movement like we do. According to PetMD.com

Dogs have more rods in the retina than humans do. Rods are sensitive to shape, movement, and dim light. Dogs can see moving objects much better than stationary objects, and they have 10-20 times greater motion sensitivity than humans. (emphasis added)


I’m not sure I understand how this all works, but a Scientific American article explains that the “flicker rate” (the speed which the nervous system processes sensory information) is higher in dogs than humans. This means that a line drive hit toward Wynn would approach in “slow motion” from her point of view. To help visualize this I have produced the following educational video:

A BigLittleMeals Educational Video: Why Wynn Would Be A Great Shortstop

If Wynn is so good at dealing with fast-moving balls, you must be wondering why I think that she would suck as a goalie . The reason has to do with another aspect of how she sees the world: Like all other dogs, she’s color blind.

Dogvision.com, a fascinating website devoted to canine vision, explains that dogs have “dichromatic vision.” This means that they see primarily blue and yellow shades and can’t distinguish between red and green. Wynn as a goalie may be able to field bullet shots on goal, but when putting the ball back in play would she be able to distinguish between the jerseys of her teammates and those worn by opponents? Very likely not.

Although I didn’t produce an educational video to illustrate how color blindness would affect her fitness to be a goalie, the Dogvision.com web site has a “dog vision simulator“which allows one to upload any photo and compare it to how a dog would see it. [Editor’s note: I found several sites that use this conversion technology and from what I can gather the conversion, although not perfect, is pretty accurate]. To give you an example of how this works I uploaded a photo of some of the balls Wynn plays with daily.

This is how Wynn sees the balls that she has chased 29,200 times.

I assume that if Wynn were on a soccer team it most likely would be on a women’s team, so I selected a couple of random photos of women in soccer matches to illustrate how Wynn would see the other players. It’s pretty clear how difficult it would be for her to pick out her teammates in the heat of a match. I see no soccer fame in Wynn’s future.

Comparative photos created with the “dog vision simulator” (at Dogvision.com).

I’m going to close with one more observation. If you think that how a dog sees things is interesting, consider that a common housefly’s vision is roughly 3 to 4 times faster than a dog’s, allowing it to perceive the world in even slower motion. Can you imagine what a line drive would look like to a fly? Or (I can’t help myself here) what a fly ball must look like?

Enough of this; it’s time for Wynn’s afternoon play session.

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