BURGER SCOOT

I am horrible at solving puzzles; my remedial mind has a hard time with puzzle games like Sudoku, the NYT’s Wordle, and Connections.

When I was a kid and liked to watch Batman with Adam West, I used to get lost when The Riddler (played by Frank Gorshin) would riddle the Caped Crusader, and our hero’s ability to solve The Riddler’s deadly brain teaser meant the difference between life and death for the good people of Gotham City.

Many of those good people would have died if I had been the masked man, and Commissioner Gordon would have unplugged the spotlight until a smarter uber mensch came along.

I enjoy chess but am horrible at it, and chess puzzles (or chess problems, to use the pastime’s parlance) can be challenging: the advanced ones are tough and remind me why I am such a patzer.

But unlike the difficult variants of Sudoku, I continue to try to solve any chess puzzles, even if it only reinforces the self-fulfilling prophecy of my self-worth; more on that in an upcoming post.

If nothing else, my love for chess puzzles has confirmed two things: I’m into a less physically harmful form of self-flagellation, and puzzles are one more reason I could never cut it as my favorite superhero.