I. PART 1 

1. Did you do puzzles in your childhood?

Yeah, I did puzzles when I was little, like when I was a primary school student. I remember it was a kind of word search. My English teacher just liked to give us a kind of homework, trying to help us to memorize the new vocabulary. It was fun to circle the required words, so I really enjoyed the whole process.

2. When do you do puzzles, during your trip or when you feel bored?

I do puzzles at any time. You know, when I’m on the train, like traveling to another place, I love to do the crossword to kill time. It’s good to relax. And when I feel bored, I also do the same thing because it’s like a stimulus to my brain.

3. Do you like doing word puzzles or number puzzles? Which is more difficult for you?

I definitely prefer word puzzles because they are my strong suit, and they just give me a great sense of achievement. But number puzzles are killing me, which is like a tough job for me to do. It’s probably because I’m bad at numbers and learning maths is just like the most traumatic experience in my life.

4. Do you think it is good for old people to do puzzles?

Yeah, I definitely agree that doing puzzles does a lot of good to senior citizens. Technically speaking, they are just designed to train the brain, which helps to delay the brain’s aging process. And some of them, like the jigsaw puzzle, are good for hand-eye coordination, which is beneficial to the elderly.

Part 2: Describe a (jigsaw, crossword, etc.) puzzle you have played

You should say:  

• what it is like  

• how easy or difficult it is  

• how long it takes you to solve 

• And how you feel about it

I’m going to talk about the first time that I played a puzzle called Sudoku in a newspaper. I was 10 or 11 years old at that time and I had an assignment from class to read a newspaper. I had asked my dad to buy me a printed copy “Tuổi Trẻ” newspaper which was one of the most popular and respected news source in Vietnam. Well, it is still popular today but I now read it online.

I remember I was flipping through the pages when I encountered the “puzzle page”. On that page, there was a picture of a big square and it was divided evenly into 81 square boxes so each side of the square has 9 boxes. Some of those boxes had a random number from 1 to 9 in each of them, while some others were blank.

I became interested and I read the instructions. The only rule of this puzzle is to write a number from 1 to 9 in each of the blank boxes until all of them are filled and you must calculate so that in any vertical, horizontal and diagonal line there must not be repeated numbers. 

First, I thought solving it was easy and I began jotting down my answer but there was always a flaw somewhere in my game so I ended up spending a whole day solving that piece of puzzle. Eventually, I finished and I was on cloud nine for a moment but then I remembered that I hadn’t finished my newspaper report. That night, I pulled an all-nighter. 

Part 3

1. Why do parents let their children play puzzles? 

Well I guess that has to do with the children’s intellectual development. Parents hope that by giving their children puzzles to solve at a young age, the children can learn to think and analyse the problems they are given.  Maybe this gets them into the habit of looking for helpful cues and using them to come up with solutions. This is way better than letting your child watch Youtube videos all day.

2. What kinds of puzzles improve people’s intelligence?  

I’m not 100 percent sure but I think the rubik cube is one of the most useful puzzles out there. It could be used to enhance one’s mental capacity. It has a rule that you must follow in order to solve the cube but the cube is different every time so you must come up with different answers each time. It’s very stimulating. 

3. Why are detective stories attractive to people?

I think, generally, we are fascinated by mysteries and we love solving puzzles. Detective stories are puzzles in story form. So when we read or listen about these stories, we try to come to our own conclusions with the information we are presented with. The process is entertaining and when the answers are revealed, it could be extremely satisfying if we get the right ones.

4. Which do you think is better? A detective movie or its original novel?

Oh, this is hard but I have to give it to original written works. While movies can be visually appealing, they aren’t as thrilling as reading a book. In the book, you can have the feelings that you are the main character trying to solve a case. On the other hand, watching a movie is like watching someone else working on a puzzle. It is less captivating to me.

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