It is important to have a silly little morning brain thing. Aside from the studies attesting to how beneficial these puzzles and games can be for your cognitive abilities, I just think it's nice to have something fun to do to get your brain stretched out before you put it to work in the significantly less amusing ways that each day requires. We have done a full weeklong collaboration with the people behind my silly little morning brain thing of choice, and this week Drew and I spoke to the person behind Drew's favorite pick: Ian Livengood, editor at New York Times Games and the man who oversees Drew's beloved Pips.
We did talk about Pips, which Drew truly loves, but for the most part our conversation focused more on the broader mysteries surrounding puzzles and games and things of that nature. Where do these games come from? Why do they beta-test them in Canada? Is the term "Games Jam" better or worse than "Ideas Party?" We talked about how this business works and how the people who come up with these games think of them, what they're trying to do, what makes the brains of people who can Think In Puzzle different, and figuring out that you are that type of person. There's some silly stuff in there—the word "zarfs" gets said a bunch, the idea of a 28 Days Later disease setting on your phone is floated, and a digression about the Argentinian specialist who devises the hardest logic puzzles in the world was especially gratifying—but Drew is a pretty serious puzzle sicko, and I am interested in how different types of brains work. Ian, for his part, was great company, and very patient with my general questions and Drew's extremely specific Wordle gripes.
We talked a bit more about puzzle stuff after the break, with a special focus on the challenge of crafting new-feeling crosswords for a culture in which people generally know a lot less than they used to. But after Drew outlined his morning puzzle ritual and I shared the screenshot-heavy specifics of my wife's and my shared Spelling Bee habit, we finally got to what matters: sweeping predictions about the NBA playoffs based off one game of the Eastern and Western Conference Finals. Ian was as happy to pop off on this stuff as Drew or me, and this little pre-Funbag buffer was fun, as all considerations of The Wemby Experience tend to be. Credit to Ian for correctly and boldly predicting the outcome of Game 2 of the Western Conference Finals.
The Funbag arrived, as it always does, and we did our best to answer the question of what is the optimum way to kill a mosquito. Ian's dedication to going "locker room tormenter mode" was the most compelling, although our frank talk about flyswatter best practices/trigger discipline is probably the most useful. None of it will do as much for your brain as a Silly Little Morning Brain Thing, admittedly, but I still think it does enough.
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