Fuck me!” muttered the kid in the Capen library as he slammed his mechanical pencil onto the tabletop. He then picked up a big pink eraser and rubbed out the marks on the sheet of paper in front of him with a fury until there was nothing left on the paper except a pile of eraser debris roughly the size of an NSC lecture hall.

Nearby students might have been wondering what warranted the F-bomb and eraser seizure. They might have expected to see a sheet full of complex mathematical formulas, but a glimpse revealed something else entirely: a Sudoku puzzle.

“What difficulty level is that one?” a girl asked, but the Sudoku fiend disregarded all attempts at communication and focused solely on the task at hand: kicking this puzzle’s ass. He’s obsessed.

Our mute puzzler’s obsession with Sudoku may not be a bad thing. Recent studies have shown that puzzles like Sudoku can keep your brain functioning up to 14 years younger and can help ward off mental illness and Alzheimer’s. There have been many studies regarding Sudoku in Europe, and researchers in the U.S. have recently begun to pick up on it as well.

Sudoku is an increasingly popular puzzle featuring a nine by nine grid, where the numbers one through nine must be filled up without repeats in each row, column, and three by three box. It’s a simple puzzle that doesn’t involve language skills, but does encompass the basic concepts that give your brain a real workout, such as probability, logic, and math concepts like induction theory, set theory, and Boolean algebra.

The Sudoku craze was immediately recognizable in Capen library, as our profanity-prone puzzle aficionado was not alone. The three other males sharing his table were solving their own Sudoku puzzles, each using their own frustrated words of choice, and each one blocking out the world around them. Sudoku clearly does not hone one’s verbal skills. While our four-man Sudoku club may not ever be witty conversationalists, they could be sharp as a tack 40 or 50 years from now when others can’t remember their first names.

Cognitive psychologists and neuroscientists have found that memory starts to decline as early as your 20s. Meaning that, despite your collegiate environment, many of you are probably already starting to slip. The upside? According to research done at Trinity College in Dublin, mental stimulation over puzzles like crosswords and Sudokus can help ward off decline in brain function.

Their research also shows that these simple brainteasers can slow the onset of Alzheimer’s and improve memory and mental capacity in the young. Michael Mepham stated in his book Total Sudoku, “The young strengthen the core mathematical skills of reasoning and logic, while the old can fight dementia and memory loss.” Elementary schools in London have begun including Sudoku in their classroom activities because of these newfound benefits.

The University of Edinburgh in the UK has done similar research regarding the benefits of puzzles like Sudoku. They have found that Sudoku can trigger “survival genes” in the brain that normally lay dormant. They report, “These survival genes make brain cells live longer and resist disease, strokes, and the effects of drugs.”

Similarly, Oxford University has also been doing Sudoku research. They’ve found that brainteasers like Sudoku can help generate new brain cells, stating, “It used to be thought that the brain only lost brain cells with age, but there is evidence now that you can acquire new cells throughout your life if you continue to stimulate the brain.”

Christopher Streb, a freshman undecided major at UB, verbalizes these positive effects of Sudoku. He says, “I like the challenge that Sudoku offers…I feel that it greatly stimulates my mind, and I always feel a certain rush of excitement when I am doing a Sudoku.” He also notes that his “mind feels like it went though a workout as well.”

Cambridge University has noted other benefits through its Sudoku research. They’ve discovered that these seemingly simple puzzles can “also buffer the consequences of disorders such as Schizophrenia.” Some psychiatrists have even started using Sudoku puzzles as part of their therapy programs for schizophrenics.

Research published by the University of Cambridge’s Department of Psychiatry says that it has been “demonstrated that the symptoms of schizophrenia are less severe and the ability to function in daily living is better for those with a higher IQ.” By engaging the centers of logic and reasoning through Sudoku puzzles, Cambridge researchers believe that nerve connections to the brain can be strengthened, granting schizophrenics the faculties to better cope with psychiatric problems.

Through the research of these three British Universities, and now duplicate research by American universities such as the University of South Florida, one main thing has become clear: you use it or lose it. Engaging your brain in critical thinking has been proven time and time again to help ward off many mental problems that used to be seen as inevitable. But still, some people wouldn’t touch a Sudoku puzzle with a ten-foot pole even if it could cure cancer. Sureja Sundaralingam, a freshman bioinformatics and computational biology major says, “So Sudoku can help fight Alzheimer’s? So can the vitamins in fruit, and I’d rather eat fruit. It’s tastier and I don’t have to use my head as much.” Use it or lose it, right?