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BRAIN GAMES

© Randi Field

Who invented the world's first crossword? Give up? In 1913, Arthur Wynne devised a "Word-cross" for the New York World's Christmas 1913 edition and started a worldwide craze. Some time later, Wynne changed the name to crossword. How do you turn more into less with three links? Give up? How about: more, lore, lose, loss, less. This popular puzzle, known as a doublet, was invented by Lewis Carroll.

You can visit the world's first crossword puzzle at Thinks.com and loads of other crosswords, anagrams, doublets, trivia, chess problems, math puzzles and word searches. Create and solve 3D mazes. The Waving Duke Jigsaw comes to life when it's completed. Watch the Rubik's cube come alive in Rubik's Unbound. Click to images and warp the Spice Girls. The entertainment possibilities are mind-boggling and the fractal images are fabulous. My favorite, "Absent Her Light," was created in memory of Princess Diana.

Thinks.com is just one of the many engaging links you'll find on the Brain Games Web Guide. There's board and table games from A-Z, including backgammon, chess, gomuku, monopoly and scrabble. Not to mention scores of puzzles, visual illusions, fractal art and music.

The Puzzle Depot is another fun spot for playful brains. It's loaded with crosswords, trivia testers, IQ tests, jigsaws, word searches, you name it. Go ahead. Challenge your brain!

Where can you meet grammar gorillas, play the piano like Beethoven, score runs with your math skills and write your own wacky stories? Funbrain.com, of course. It's the place where kids get power.

Ready to be shocked? Explore Science is home to the first shocked science lab on the World Wide Web. If you've got Macromedia Shockwave, put down that science text and explore the world of interactive science. You can choose from a wide variety of strange and awesome modules that let you alter mass, velocity, angles, plasma, colors, frequencies, temperature, prisms and black holes.

What do Bill Nye the Science Guy, Dr. Universe and Girl Tech have in common? They're just a few of the links you'll find when you visit the The Invention Dimension.

"I've got rhythm..." If you thought that was from a Broadway show, think again. Those are cells with rhythm. That's right. Pumping myoctyes rhythmically pulsating away at Cells Alive! Wait, there's more. Learn the anatomy of a splinter. Find out the real truth about bed bugs. What happens when macrophages "talk" to lymphocytes? Inquiring minds want to know.

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