As I approach my 89th birthday, my greatest concern is not my physical health (fingers crossed!) but whether or not I am slowly sinking into Alzheimers. Often I cannot remember a name or a word. Often I go from the kitchen to the living room and forget why I was making the trip. And now I cannot remember the word for general old age memory problems...geriatric something? Or is it senile something? Senility?

There is occasionally something you read that suggests that, to avoid Alzheimers, you should keep your brain active with crosswords and other puzzles. I am not sure that this does ward off Alzheimers. The fact that you can do puzzles may just indicate a certain level of intelligence--after all you are solving problems in which memory plays only a small role. (Sorry--I am not sure this paragraph makes any sense.)

But anyway---time has to be killed each day, and I do do a series of puzzles on a daily basis. First, the Spelling Bee from the NY Times. Then the two available Waffle puzzles. Then Wordle. Then KenKen, with a square of 6 by 6 and at the 'hard' or 'medium' level. My KenKen record time is 11 minutes. But occasionally it has taken me over 25 minutes.

And sometimes during the day, I access the Guardian Crosswords online, or work on a crossword from my book of 200 Crosswords from The Daily Telegraph: I am up to puzzle 107, having started last July.

Well--although I am sceptical of puzzling warding off the brain changes that lead to Alzheimers, if it is true, then I am doing my puzzling best.