I enjoy solving puzzles! I start each morning by doing at least two New York Times puzzles, Wordle, and Connections. My wife and sons and their spouses do the same, although not necessarily as part of their early-morning routine (except on weekends). We have a texting thread where we each report our daily scores, together with some running commentary on how we—or one of the others—performed that day. While we are hundreds of miles apart, these texts keep us in daily contact.

I have some friends with the daily habit of doing the same puzzles, but they do the puzzles together as a team. Unless we solo performers get a perfect score, those who use the team approach almost always score better than we do on Connections. As a team, they can discuss the connections between apparently disparate words, help each other see connections their team member did not see, and reach a consensus opinion about the linkages.

Analytical chemistry

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