Memory

Recently the YOU doctors informed readers that celery is an excellent boost for improving one’s memory. A rib a day added to one’s diet is easy to accomplish. If you don’t like the idea of just chomping on a stick of celery, you can cut it into little slices and add it, raw, at the last minute, to your soup, stew, salad, or even into your smoothie, but slice it before adding to the smoothie, to avoid getting the blender tied up in strings. I don’t think it will affect the taste of the smoothie so you would notice the difference. But eating it raw in whatever dish will give a nice crunch, without waking the neighborhood from sleep.

Here’s what I like to do: in a saucepan I heat a cup of chicken broth, add half a cup of a starchy vegetable (potatoes, corn, lima beans, or any of the bean category except green beans), and two ounces of chicken. Add a little water, if necessary. While that heats, I slice a rib of celery into my soup bowl and pour the hot mixture over the celery. If you’re a writer, you take this delicious and nutritious meal to your dining shelf beside your computer, and keep working. Well, now, if you have a family, no, you eat with them—unless they’re mad at you. In that case, you can’t write, so you might as well give in and eat with them anyway.

Here’s another boost for the memory. Click for the links under “Free Crossword Puzzles.” Down the list you will locate one called “American Hard.” Click on that. It isn’t hard, but is extremely easy. It’s the only Network puzzle I’ve found that you can move around freely in any direction with a grid larger than most. But here’s the winning point: after you have worked it, using the clues, bring it up again, and work it once or twice more WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE CLUES. That is where the fun starts. So, you see, it doesn’t make any difference how easy it is, if the aim is to work it without clues to improve your memory. When you finish the puzzle, a photo will come up. It’s worth waiting for that, for sometimes it is quite interesting. Workers of the puzzles send them in. You might opt to send in pictures of your darling child playing in mud. These often seem to come from foreign locations but no explanation is attached.

This same puzzle’s location does offer two more puzzles that are harder. To the left of the big grid mentioned above, you will find a list of three words, each saying “hard.” You’ve just worked the first hard. Try the second hard. It’s not really hard either. But the third one, now there’s the real challenge, like those in The London Times, such as Inspector Morse worked addictively in the mystery series that bore his name, and he even timed himself.

But one more thing. You may reach the point at which you wonder if the puzzle maker really understands English or if he merely lifts his clues and answers from other puzzles. For example, sometimes he offers a clue such as “Quip, part 2” when there isn’t a part 1. Sometimes he says, “Theme of this puzzle” while the answer is “detergents.” Go figure. Not only is this situation funny, yet acceptable, it gave me the idea for a plot for a short story that will soon go into competition where the opposition is keen, almost 150 eligible competitors.

I trust some of you will give your memory these boosts.

♥