Puzzles

Place numbers into the grid so that every row, every column and every 3x3 box contains each of the digits 1 to 9. No guessing is needed.

1. Noah's vessel 4. Portico 8. Court 11. Lively dance 12. Lamb 13. Sweet potatoes 14. Shoemaker 16. Wall painting 17. Rotational speed 18. Bullfighter 19. He lived in a whale 22. Distance downwards 23. Wrongfully assist 24. Elegance 25. Be indebted 28. Outfit 29. Rot 30. U-turn (Colloq) 31. Meadow 32. Large trees 33. Russian emperor 34. Chores 36. White poplar tree 37. Lives 39. Two 40. Timid 41. Membranous 45. Fat 46. Cosy corner 47. Sum 48. Printer's measures 49. Monster 50. Obese

1. Australian Jockey Club (Abbr) 2. - de Janeiro 3. Russian secret police 4. Graceful woman 5. Abound 6. Paddle 7. Prefix meaning without 8. Storage building 9. - Khayyam 10. Capital of Norway 13. Mongol tent 15. Impudent child 16. Glum 18. U.S. State. Capital Austin 19. Medieval Scandinavian chieftain 20. Off-Broadway theater award 21. Reverse image photos 22. Eiders 24. Loses water 26. Welt 27. Australian explorer 29. Administered medicine to 33. Type of automatic gear selector (1-3) 35. Entrance 36. Woke up 37. Church recess 38. Children's book author 39. Norse god of thunder 41. Gear wheel 42. Clumsy person 43. Highest mountain in Crete 44. Once common, now banned, insecticide 46. Negative vote

Ladderword puzzles are like crosswords but with a twist. The words in the middle column are anagrams of the words of the first column. The words in the last column are anagrams of the middle column plus one additional letter. The anchor words (the down clues) are related by a common theme.

1. Mountain ridge 3. Beating device 5. Discounted 6. Shop 7. Tourist spot 8. Fraudulent manipulators of the system 9. Standards 10. Kidnap demand 11. Rower 12. Skin disease of animals 13. Puzzle 14. Envisage 15. Incursions 16. Arabian currency 17. Entrails

2. Centre of intelligence 4. Sap

those suspicions. Microsoft conducted a study analyzing attention spans between 2000 (when the mobile technology era began) and 2015. The study found, on average, our attention spans have shrunk by 4 seconds, from 12 to 8 seconds. This diminishing attentiveness can be directly attributed to technology that offers constant stimulation, and the need for visual engagement, particularly among millennials who have grown up in the mobile-tech world.

In fact, humans living in technology-advanced societies now have shorter attention spans than goldfish, who can concentrate for up to 9 seconds.

But while we can blame a lot on millennials, we can’t blame it all. On average, an office worker will check their email inbox 30 times an hour and the average user of a smart phone will pick it up more than 1,500 times per week. And studies have shown the average webpage visit lasts no more than 20 seconds.

There is an argument within scientific circles on the validity of measuring attention spans. Dr. Gemma Briggs, a psychology professor at Open University in England, believes attention spans are “task-dependent” and it’s impossible to create an average because of too many variables.

“How much attention we apply to a task will vary depending on what the task demand is,” she says in an online article on bbc.com. “We’ve got a wealth of information in our heads about what normally happens in given situations, what we can expect. And those expectations and our experience directly mold what we see and how we process information in any given time.”

It doesn’t take a scientific study or psychologist, however, to recognize that human interaction has been altered by mobile technologies. One would be hard pressed to find someone who has not experienced a distracted listener— scrolling through their smart watch, checking the text ping on their phone or having their computer open for some online shopping during a meeting.

The inherent rudeness of these actions aside, they are all rooted in a lack of presence. All of us have an ability to change these behaviors but, as with all habits, it will take effort.

Experts say the first thing you can do to help get your attention span above the goldfish is practice “whole body listening,” where you make a conscious effort to keep your body language still and your eyes focused on the speaker. Basically, just listen. Exercises that can help with this are listening to music or a podcast for a half-hour without any other form of technology within reach and meditation.

Or you can go the way of the late journalist Herb Caen: “I sometimes worry about my short attention span, but not for long ....” SP

Photo: Kelsey Nelson Photography