Puzzles are the anti-TikTok, the antidote to mind-numbing social media

If you asked me to list the three greatest cartoonists from a century ago, the first two would be easy: No. 1, George Herriman, whose "Krazy Kat" created a surreal world around the love triangle of the titular, gender-fluid feline, her — or, sometimes, his — unrequited love for the brick-throwing Ignatz Mouse, both kept in line by Krazy's secret admirer, Offissa Pupp, all capering across a stark Arizona scrubland conjured up by Herriman's madly creative pen.Then Windsor McKay, whose "Little Nemo in Slumberland" plunged readers into Art Nouveau dreamscape where a little boy peers over pillows while his bed, its legs impossible long, strides down Fifth Avenue.As for the third, I'd be hard-pressed. But Rube Goldberg would certainly qualify. His wildly complicated machines entered the vocabulary, a "Rube Goldberg device" being any overly-engineered contraption which, though perhaps not involving a goat gnawing through a rope releasing a boot to kick a ball through a hoop, uses more steps than necessary. Opinion bug Opinion That said, I would not have noticed, never mind purchased, "The Rube Goldberg Puzzle Book," if it weren't created by my former NU classmate — and ace New Yorker cartoonist — Robert Leighton. Friends buy friends' books — the sales pitch getting harder and harder, year by year. Everyone is so busy.Yeah, busy flipping through Instagram.Which I do too, for 30 minutes at a throw, watching snippets of "Peaky Blinders" and "The West Wing" and whatever other mind-decaying fluff some string of code decides is going to mesmerize me today.But having purchased a puzzle book ($16, not bad for a hardback) there was a complication I hadn't foreseen. I then had to do puzzles, based on Goldberg's drawings. Initially, they were quite simple — a four-panel comic strip is scrambled. "Can you figure out the proper...