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Next week, the Albert Lea Tribune will introduce new puzzle pages in the newspaper on both Wednesday and Saturday.

Puzzles have always been a popular part of the newspaper, and because of that we put a lot of thought into what goes on those pages while managing rising costs from syndicated puzzle companies.

Though you will notice a change from what has been on in the past, we believe the puzzles that will be provided will be enjoyable.

The Wednesday paper will continue to provide crossword puzzles, Crypto Quote and Sudoku. In addition to those, however, will be new games called Letter Logic and another called Scrambled Pun.

With the Letter Logic game, you are given a crossword grid and a list of words that you have to figure out how to fit in the squares. The game provides one letter to give you a start. Scrambled Puns is similar to the Jumble word game from newspapers of the past.

On Saturdays, the crossword puzzle, Str8ts and Sudoku will remain — though the Sudoku games come from new companies — while there will also be a word search and a game called Codewords. With Codewords, numbers are substituted for letters in the crossword grid, and it gives you a few letters to start with.

One day of the Sudoku puzzles, along with the word search and Scrambled Pun game come from a man named Charles Waterford, a retired school teacher for over 30 years, who creates puzzle books with the help of his grandchildren. The family endeavor is known as Purple Rose Puzzles.

Waterford and his family maintain a website that contains a virtual plethora of puzzles that are free of charge to download, as well as puzzle books at a modest price.

We hope you will check these puzzles out.

Not only are the games fun, but research shows that memory and thinking skills may also improve with regular practice.