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Giving up is not a verdict on your character: frustration tolerance in puzzles

Psychology of the game

By Dirk Werner, Dipl.-Psych., Psychologischer Psychotherapeut (licensed in Germany)

Published on · Last updated on

The moment before you quit

Anyone who plays puzzles knows this moment. You have searched the board three times, you cannot find a single free arrow, the clock is running, and you have only one heart left. Somewhere between annoyance and tiredness the thought arises: I can't do this. A few seconds later the game is closed.

That thought feels like an insight. Most of the time, though, it is something else. Frustration arises when the inner model we use to work on a task no longer holds up. We have an idea of how the board works, and that idea is not getting us any further. That is a signal that something about our approach does not fit. It is not proof that something is wrong with us.

What frustration tolerance is, and what it is not

Frustration tolerance describes the ability to bear a situation in which a goal is not reached for the time being, without immediately abandoning the goal or putting yourself down. In everyday life it is often treated like a fixed trait: some people have it, others don't.

That is not quite true. How much frustration we can bear depends heavily on the situation: how important the goal is to us, how tired we are, how much else is going wrong at the moment, and above all, how we explain the failure to ourselves. Frustration tolerance is therefore more a skill than a characteristic. It can be practised, and a game with clear rules and small stakes is a particularly good place to do so.

Keeping performance and self-worth apart

The most important difference lies in how a failed level is read. One reading says: I have failed. The other: this approach did not work here. The first is a verdict on the person, the second a piece of information about the approach.

If you read a level as a verdict on yourself, you have a good reason to stop, because every further attempt risks another negative verdict. If you read it as information, you have a good reason to carry on, because every attempt yields new clues. Clear Arrows makes it easy to practise the second reading: a misclick tells you exactly one thing, namely that this arrow's path was blocked. That is not a punishment for you, but feedback about the board.

Annoyed at the game, annoyed at yourself

After a lost level, annoyance rarely has no direction. Either it goes outwards: the level is unfair, the clock too tight, the trap was impossible to see. Or it goes inwards: I am too slow, I never see things like that. Bernard Weiner (1985) described how the explanation we give ourselves for a failure helps determine which feeling follows and whether we try again. Two of his distinctions are particularly helpful here. The first: does the cause lie within me or outside me? The second: is it stable, that is, still there on the next attempt, or changeable? According to Weiner, whether you keep playing depends above all on the second question, because it determines whether you expect a different result next time.

“I can't do this” is internal and stable. This explanation leaves no reason for another attempt, because the cause comes along next time. “The game is unfair” is external and also stable. It spares your self-esteem, but leads to the same result: why keep playing if the level cannot be done? Lyn Abramson, Martin Seligman and John Teasdale (1978), in their reformulation of the theory of learned helplessness, described how stable explanations make helplessness last and how internal explanations also hit self-esteem.

The helpful explanations are changeable, whether they are internal or external. “I started searching the middle too early” is internal, but changeable: on the next attempt you start at the edge. “The turn came before I had removed the arrows at risk” is an explanation about the board, and it already contains the next plan. Clear Arrows makes such explanations easy, because its rules are unambiguous. A misclick has a reason you can name: the arrow's path was blocked, or, in the levels with coloured arrows, an arrow of an earlier colour was still on the board. And every level starts with the same board on every attempt, so you can deliberately do something differently.

This leads to a simple exercise. When you notice that you are annoyed, first ask yourself what the annoyance is directed at, and then whether the cause would still be there on the next attempt. If the answer is yes, look for an explanation to which that does not apply. Usually there is one, and usually it is also the more accurate one.

Taking a break as a strategy

If you stare at the same board for minutes on end, at some point you only see what you have already seen. Your attention clings to a solution path that does not work and screens out the others. In the psychology of thinking, this is called fixation. Karl Duncker (1935) described one of its best-known forms: if you see an object in its usual use, it is hard to think of a different one.

Distance loosens it. This is one of the oldest observations about creative problem solving: solutions strikingly often come not from grimly pressing on, but after an interruption. This is known as incubation. A meta-analysis by Ut Na Sio and Thomas Ormerod (2009) found a positive effect of such breaks across many studies. For a puzzle, that means in very practical terms: when you are stuck, put your phone down for a few minutes. That is not giving up, it is a technique. Many players know the experience of looking at the board after a break and immediately seeing the free arrow they had overlooked before.

Accepting help

Clear Arrows deliberately offers assists: a Hint that first uses your stock from the Shop and costs a life without stock, a Solution move for coins, a Magic Solve from your stock or for coins, and once per attempt an extra life, also for coins. Some players consistently avoid them, because help feels like an admission.

But taking help is not a defeat; it is a decision about how to use your energy. If you take a Hint at one point, you can solve the rest of the level yourself and often learn more than if you had given up altogether after losing your third life. The ability to ask for support is part of mature frustration tolerance, not its opposite.

When stopping is the right call

Frustration tolerance does not mean always carrying on. There is a difference between giving up out of a feeling of incompetence and stopping deliberately. The one is an escape from an unpleasant feeling, the other a decision: that's enough for today, I'll come back tomorrow.

The other side is just as important. If you can no longer stop even though the game stopped being fun long ago, if you keep playing to get rid of a feeling rather than because you want to play, you are not experiencing high frustration tolerance, but the opposite of freedom. What is healthy is being able to do both: sticking with it when it is worth it, and letting go when it is enough.

What remains

A puzzle is a small, safe setting. Nothing is at stake except the game itself. That is precisely why it is a good place to observe how you deal with the moment of being stuck, and to try reading it differently. What you practise on a small scale is available to you on a large scale too.

How differently people approach the same task is described on the page Plan ahead or just start tapping?

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