M2M Day 252: Well, that was infinitely easier…
This post is part of Month to Master, a 12-month accelerated learning project. For July, my goal is to solve a Saturday New York Times crossword puzzle in one sitting without any aid.
Today was a weird day for my brain.
When my alarm went off this morning, I was already awake. Or, at least, mostly awake. My head was on my pillow and my eyes were closed, but my brain was definitely already on.
Some unknown amount of time early, in the middle of the night, I woke up to use the bathroom. On my walk to the bathroom, my brain decided it would be well-timed to come up with an exciting idea (about a project I’m working on). This excitement was joined with a wave of adrenaline.
For the rest of the night, I attempted and failed to get back into a deep sleep. As a result, my brain was less sharp today than normal, which became a problem quickly…
In the past few days, I’ve been able to fully solve Saturday puzzles if I allow myself to use checking but not revealing. Today, I couldn’t even come close to finishing a Saturday puzzle — even gradually revealing the answers didn’t really help me build momentum.
It seems a tired brain is just not-well-suited for wordplay, puns, and aggressive misdirection.
Of course, I knew this, but I didn’t realize quite how intense the difference would be between 100% brain and whatever my brain was at today.
At lunch time, I gave a Saturday puzzle another try, but my brain still wasn’t working and I decided it was best not to push too hard.
I still wanted to practice in some way though, so I figured that a Monday puzzle (the easiest puzzle of the week) might be a good way to relax while also keeping my momentum moving forward.
Since I’ve only been solving Saturday puzzles as part of my training, I was interested to see how I would do on a Monday. At the beginning of the month, I was able to struggle my through most of a Monday puzzle, and could usually finish it if I cheated a bit.
I opened today’s Monday puzzle and went to work. Despite my tiredness, less than eight minutes later, the puzzle was completely and perfectly done (well, actually I made two typos in my haste, but I had known and thought I had properly filled in the answers)…
Not only was the puzzle quick and easy, but it was almost laughable how straightforward and literal the clues were. It was like I had taken the weights off of my bat, and was now swinging my way through the crossword with ease. It felt like a completely different puzzle.
It’s been one week and it seems I’ve already completely recalibrated the way my brain perceives the level of crossword difficulty (which I’m quite excited about).
Perhaps, there’s some way I can create the weighted bat version of a Saturday puzzle, allowing me to shift my baseline past what I’ll eventually need for a normal Saturday. I’m not exactly sure how I’ll do this, given that the NYT Saturday is supposed to be the “hardest puzzle around”, but it’s something to look into.
Anyway, this surprise on the Monday puzzle was a nice way to offset my disappointment from my Saturday puzzle regression. Hopefully, I’ll get a good night sleep tonight and my brain will have a more normal day tomorrow.
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