There’s something so satisfying about completing a puzzle, whether it’s sudoku, crosswords, word-searches or something else – it’s always nice to see that your grey cells are still working. As a mindful activity, I’d take a selection of crosswords over an adult colouring book any day. I took a book of puzzles on my long train trip to Budapest in February and loved spending the time racking my brain for random answers. Today was a cold and rainy afternoon – perfect puzzle weather, and absolutely time to try a type I’ve not attempted before.
Picross puzzles, sometimes called Nonograms, originated in Japan in 1987, but soon became a popular feature in puzzle books and newspapers all over the world. My husband has a picross game, but I prefer my puzzles with a pen and paper, so he very kindly copied one out for me to attempt.
The aim of the game is to reveal a hidden picture by either colouring in or leaving blank the squares according to the numbers along the sides. So the one above turned into a rubbish bin. Not exactly a classic first picture!
I went wrong in a couple of places so James kindly made me another one, which I happily spent some time doing. Sat in my armchair, with some music on and a warm cup of tea on a rainy Sunday afternoon was the absolute perfect conditions to try out a picross puzzle for the first time. It gave me such a cosy feeling, I loved it.
We seem to have crash-landed into autumn with a bump, which normally I wouldn’t mind, but looking after a dog means dark walks in cold, wet, weather, knowing you were sat outside having a sunny picnic only a few days earlier. Doing a picross puzzle in such cosy conditions was such a nice way to shift my summer brain into my slower, cosier, autumnal one.
New Day, New Thing 