2 Crosswords For Seniors For Dummies
Brain health is a hot topic for a couple key reasons:
✓ A growing senior population: It’s no surprise that we have a large — and
expanding — senior population in the United States. As of this writing, more
than 37 million Americans are 65 or older. The U.S. Census Bureau projects
that by the year 2050, that number will grow to more than 86 million!
✓ The prevalence of Alzheimer’s: We also have many cases of Alzheimer’s
disease in our midst. The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that more
than 5 million Americans are living with the disease now and that 10 million
Baby Boomers will develop Alzheimer’s during their lifetime.
If you’re north of 60, chances are you know someone — or several someones —
struggling with the harsh realities of mental deficiency. And chances are you’re
willing to work hard to avoid the same fate. A growing body of research indi-
cates that there are concrete (and often very simple) steps you can take to give
your brain the proper fuel for long-term fitness. Chapter 2 offers lots of ideas
for how to start a mental fitness routine.Conventions Used in This Book
I include a handful of Web site addresses in this book so you can explore additional
resources if you’d like. The Web addresses appear in monofont, which makes them
easier to locate if you want to go back and find them after you’re done reading.
Keep in mind that when this book was printed, some Web addresses may have
needed to break across two lines of text. If that happened, rest assured that we
haven’t put in any extra characters (such as hyphens) to indicate the break. So,
when using one of these Web addresses, just type in exactly what you see in
this book, pretending as though the line break doesn’t exist.Foolish Assumptions
I try not to make any assumptions about how much experience you have with
working the types of puzzles that appear in this book. That’s why Chapter 1
helps you get familiar with crosswords and how to solve them. That’s also
why I include puzzles of varying levels of difficulty in this book. I’ve grouped
puzzles together into four categories: Easy, Tricky, Tough, and Treacherous.
So whether you’re a crossword novice or expert, you’ll find puzzles to give
you the challenge you need.