Most of us work hard and have full and busy days, but as the old cliché reminds us, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy (or Jill a dull girl)." This is not to say that we don't enjoy the work with which we fill our days, but sometimes we need just to take a few minutes and have some fun doing something that isn't work. If we have a couple of hours, this might mean grabbing a fishing pole and heading out to a nearby stream or lake or grabbing our clubs and heading for the local links. It might mean taking some time in the yard to toss a ball or a frisbee with the children, or to take them on a drive in the country or out to Beaverfork Park where they can paddle and splash in the shallows or scramble around on the playground equipment.     

     Sometimes, though, we have only a few minutes and we don't really want to stir from our computers, but we still need a break. The answer is online computer games. Now, before you say, "but lining up colored balls three in a row, or playing online solitaire bores me to tears," let me recommend some sites to you that may well challenge your mind or at the very least exercise it.

     Studies have shown that exercising one's mind by solving puzzles and playing word games can actually help protect you from forms of senile dementia just as brisk walking can help protect you from heart disease. This first site contains several word games that will challenge you. My favorite is Eight Letters, a game in which you are given eight scrambled letters and are supposed to make as many words out of them as you can in a given length of time, or until you reach the required number of points for that round. For each word you are given a score depending on its length, from five points for a three letter word to eighty points for an eight letter word. Each round gets successively harder. The link for this site is:

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/games/

     A recent new craze is Sudoku Puzzles, exercises in logic using the numbers 1 to 9. The best site that I have found for these puzzles is the following. The puzzles are medium hard to solve, but the Check Your Work feature allows you at any point in the solve to see if you have made a mistake. If you have made an error, that error will be highlighted in red. If you are correct to that point, all the numbers you have entered will remain black. (One note: This site when tested on Norton's Safe Web is rated as untested. I have never had a problem with it, but I run Norton Security on my system. Play at your own discretion.) The link is:

http://freesudokupuzzles.biz/online

     I have been putting together jigsaw puzzles since I was a small child when it was a favorite activity of my mother, my sister, and myself. There aren't that many online jigsaw puzzle sites, and most of the ones available aren't very challenging or very satisfying. The one exception that I have found is the link below. JigZone provides a fresh puzzle daily, has a huge archive in several different categories, and provides a choice of puzzle configurations ranging from 6 pieces to 247 pieces in many different shapes. It also has a feature for people who register with the site (registration is free) that allows you to upload your own photos (which the site keeps private only to you and whomever you personally choose to share them) and to use those for jigsaw puzzles. This is one of my favorite websites, and most days it claims about ten minutes of my time.

http://www.jigzone.com/

     Some of us love Mah Jongg games, and this site has several different configurations of the game from which to choose. It also has several other games that one can play such as  Sudoku, Master Mind, and Reversi. The link to the site is:

http://www.mah-jongg.ch/

     Finally, for those of us who just have to have a Solitaire Fix, this site provides 64 different solitaire games from which to choose, some easy peasy and some quite challenging. This site can be found at:

http://www.solitairenetwork.com/

     Have some fun, relax, exercise your brain, and then, go back to work. Until next time, happy rummaging.