I gave my daughter a puzzle a number of years ago. The solution was easy, once you knew how it was done, but figuring it out was the hard part, and the challenging part.

I had spent some time with it before giving it to her, and managed to find the solution.

Every so often when we visited she would bring the puzzle out and she would try it again. She would try, then I would have her turn around and not look as I solved it in just a few seconds to prove it could been done.

 It was fun and difficult to come up with the solution, but wouldn’t let me show her how. She wanted to figure it out herself.

Once she had some friends over and the subject of the puzzle came up. She brought out the puzzle and everyone took their turn trying to do it with everyone giving advice on what to try, to no avail.  

As we were enjoying the mind game, the young boy took his phone and Googled the puzzle name and said, “Here is how it’s done.” And proceeded to show us all how to solve the puzzle without having to think.

Of course my daughter has not brought out the puzzle again, as there is no longer a challenge.

Another example

Like many people I like to work out the Wordle challenge every day.

One day as I was trying to remember a particular word from a couple of days earlier, I went to the internet. Sure enough they have a list of previously used words.

However, to my surprise there were sites that told how to get ALL the words Wordle used in the game. Still searching even more surprising there are sites that say, “This is the word today,” and proceeded to give the word for that day.

Really? A game that you do by yourself that is supposed to be fun and challenging and all people want is to know the word so they can have a perfect record whether they figured it out themselves or just copied it.

People no longer use their imagination, except figuring how to look up the answers.

Sad

Roy's Ramblings