Maybe you’ve noticed it too. Everyone seems to have become fixated on puzzle games. In the morning, over coffee, I play Word Wheel on the Guardian app. Over lunch, colleagues compare notes on Tradle, the game where you guess a country from its exports. Which place exports about 45% fish and 50% crustaceans? Greenland. Another friend can’t fall asleep without her nightly Sudoku ritual.

The online puzzle craze took off during the Covid pandemic, and it shows no sign of slowing down. New York Times subscribers now spend more time playing puzzles on the app than reading the news. Sales of quiz books hit a record last year, up 24% from 2024.

Puzzle games aren’t new, nor are puzzle crazes. The first use of the steam-powered printing press in 1814 made newspapers a mass phenomenon, and editors quickly discovered that puzzles were a sure-fire way to keep readers hooked. By 1925, the Chicago Department of Health reported that the US was in the grip of “crossworditis” thanks to the puzzles’ irresistible “mental kick”.

Modern neuroscience agrees: completing a puzzle releases positive neurotransmitters in the brain, most notably dopamine.

But if games are booming today, there may be more to the phenomenon than the pleasure of a series of small eureka moments. Perhaps they are fulfilling a more profound need, and the more the world puzzles us, the more we long to solve puzzles.

At a moment when our attention feels constantly under siege, these circuit breakers allow for a moment of peace of mind.

Social media raises anxiety levels and........

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