The three mornings a week I don't exercise are as valuable as the four I do

This guy is a good example of how happy I am in the morning
on my "off" days.

As a creature of habit, I follow essentially the same morning schedule most of the time,

Two days a week, I go for a brisk 2.3-mile walk.

Two other days a week, I strength train in our home gym (upper body one day, lower body the other).

The remaining three days are "rest days," at least as far as intense physical activity goes. Those are the days when instead I exercise my mind.

And I so look forward to them.

I enjoy sitting at the kitchen table doing my New York Times puzzles, playing games on my phone, and catching up on the news. It's a fun way to spend those first couple hours of the day, and it gets me mentally ready for work or whatever else I have to do.

It also allows my body to recover from the relative pounding it takes walking on hard asphalt and slinging around heavy (heavy for me, anyway) weights in the basement.

Going to bed the previous night knowing that in 7 or 8 hours I'll be trying to figure out the Wordle or playing solitaire on my phone, rather than sweating through my shirt, is a good feeling.

Don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't want to exercise.

It's just that, much as even the most satisfied employee welcomes the weekend, recovery days are a good way to break up the demands of physical activity. They are always well received.

Because I tend to like order and routine, those off days are still somewhat regimented. After I feed the cats, get them fresh water, and scoop out their litter boxes, I make myself a cup of coffee, sit down at the kitchen table, and do the following things in the following order on my phone:

• Play Wordle (I do OK)
• Play Connections (usually perfect, but not always)
• Play Strands (my strongest puzzle)
• Play Mini (my weakest puzzle)
• Play solitaire until I "beat" the game
• Play Yahtzee until I score a combined 750 points over three successive games (this can sometimes take a while)
• Read my news digest emails, including the 1440 (highly recommended), the Cleveland Plain Dealer's "Wakeup", and my customized Google News update

Only after all of those things are completed do I make myself some breakfast, eat, wash my dishes, and head to the shower to get ready for the day.

As I type this, tomorrow is one of these off days. In just 12 hours I'll be awake and Wordl-ing away.

I can't tell you how excited I am.

My daughters beat me so badly in The Mini crossword puzzle that I have to believe I'm deteriorating mentally

A few months ago I wrote about the fact that I do four New York Times puzzles every morning (Wordle, Connections, Strands, and The Mini.)

My performance varies from day to day, but generally speaking, I'm OK at Wordle, pretty good with Connections, very good at Strands, and not so good with The Mini.

The Mini is a small crossword puzzle that can usually be completed in about a minute. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

I thought I was pretty decent at The Mini until I accepted my daughter Chloe's invitation to create a leaderboard for the game whereby you can compare your performance with other people. We have since added Elissa and Jack to that daily leaderboard.

I quickly realized that either Chloe and Elissa are geniuses at this puzzle, or I'm slow to the point of potential brain dysfunction.

As an example, here was a typical five-day stretch in mid-February comparing how quickly Chloe and I completed The Mini each day:

February 11: Chloe 33 seconds, me 1:07

February 12: Chloe 27 seconds, me 54 seconds

February 13: Chloe 1:05, me 1:29

February 14: Chloe 59 seconds, me 2:29

February 15: Chloe 1:12, me 2:12

In the several weeks since we created our leaderboard, I think I have been faster than my daughters maybe twice each, and those involved lucky guesses on my part.

I know Chloe and Elissa, at 28 and 31, respectively, are in their mental prime, while I (at 55) clearly am not. But still...when you think of yourself as a "Word Guy" and your kids – along with probably nearly everyone else who regularly completes The Mini – leave you in the dust, it's time to question whether you're losing it for good this time.

My only recourse is to assume my kids are somehow cheating. They're highly intelligent, sure, but I can't accept this level of defeat at face value.

I have become one of those New York Times puzzle people

Do you sometimes log onto Facebook and see friends posting little graphics that look something like the image above? And do you ever wonder exactly what they are?

Or do you know what they are but you don't care and instead keep on scrolling while grumbling about people clogging up your feed?

Whichever may be true for you, I understand both ends of this equation. For a long time I would see Facebook pals posting about how long it took them to figure out the Wordle, or how frustrating that day's Connections was, and I would just scroll right past without giving it a second – or sometimes even a first – thought.

Until one day a couple of months ago when I downloaded the NYT Games app and became one of...Them.

Rarely does a day go by now when I don't play (in this order) the New York Times' Wordle, Connections, Strands and Mini games.

You can also do the full NYT Crossword on the app, along with games like Spelling Bee, Sudoku, Letter Boxed and Tiles, but I stick to my core four.

This is mostly because I don't have the time to play every game the paper offers, but also because, after mentally working my way through those four, I have little patience and even less mental energy left to devote to the others.

There is something to be said, as you get a little bit older, for stretching your brain through these types of puzzle games. And Lord knows my brain could use a little stretching, given all the things I either forget or fail to notice on a daily basis.

But ultimately, I just find them fun. And there's a sense of accomplishment when, for example, I get the Wordle in 2-3 guesses or figure out the four Connections categories without a single mistake.

I'm not one to post my results on Facebook, but I'm grateful for friends who do because I like getting tips from them or commiserating over a particularly devilish offering from the Times folks.

I encourage you to join our little cult community of puzzle people. It's fun. Really.

Believe me, no one is going to force you to start sharing your performance on Facebook.

You'll do that on your own with no prompting from any of us.