Puzzling Language

I've rediscovered puzzles. I've always considered myself to be a puzzle fanatic, but I recently realized that I've been lax on that front, both solving them and designing them. And as that part of my brain awoke from its hibernation, I realize that I've missed it. Yes, I solve puzzles all day at work, but puzzles you must solve aren't as relaxing as those you choose to solve.

It started with a puzzle design that I'm doing for a magazine. Of which, more later. As I designed it, working through logical and programmatic problems, I realized that these skills were rusty. Thinking through what makes a "good" puzzle vs. a "hard" one vs. an "easy" one. Writing the computer programs that can generate candidate designs and solve them. I felt creaky and inefficient as I worked on the project.

It was also interesting to rediscover the idea that I'm more likely to think of puzzle designs as I'm working through one. In the course of the week that I spent working on this magazine's puzzle, I thought of another one for them, and then I thought of a mechanical puzzle idea that seems interesting (I'm more comfortable designing physical puzzles than paper ones, a quirk of habit). I'm already mentally working on them, and soon I'll put pen to paper and finger to keyboard.

More proof that my puzzle mind has been on hold for a while. Last night, for the first time in a long while, I decided to work on puzzles in GAMES Magazine before going to bed. It was like a revelation: I could work on some puzzles! I've been reading Honey From a Weed, but GAMES compelled me. Again, I find myself rusty. I filled in about half a cryptic crossword, and only made traction on the easiest logic puzzles. But it was fun. I'm eyeing the recent Enigma, the newsletter of the National Puzzlers League, thinking of difficult variety cryptics and puzzles based on obscure words.

Melissa suggests that maybe puzzling is like a language. Like my French, which is rusty and primitive until I get to France, at which point it simply becomes primitive. I think she's right, and for me it's like rediscovering a long lost love (though neither very long, really, or very lost).