Research from a UK charity has found that girls are likely to become less interested in sports as they move into their teenage years.

Women in Sport conducted a poll (调查) of more than 4,000 teenagers and found that 43 percent of girls felt they had been sporty as primary school students, but no longer saw themselves this way.

“Worryingly, girls lose their love of sport and exercise during teenage years, and this presents a significant psychological barrier throughout life,” the report said.

The majority of those who no longer considered themselves sporty said they had become less interested in sports because they didn’t like other people watching them.

The girls also spoke about how anxiety over their appearance led them to be less likely to participate in sports. The boys examined in this study didn’t show any change in their willingness to take part in sports. This points to a relationship between the mental well-being of girls and their willingness to engage in sports.

“It’s an absolute travesty (嘲讽) that teenage girls are being pushed out of sport at such a scale,” said Stephanie Hilborne, the chief executive of Women in Sport. She added that losing sports at this formative stage of their lives was equal to “a loss of joy as well as good lifelong health”.

“It is well documented that taking part in physical activity can have a profound and positive effect on mental well-being as well as provide many important life skills such as resilience (适应力), teamwork and communication,” she added.

The charity is calling on schools and sports clubs to increase the focus on keeping girls interested in sports, which can help them gain confidence when facing pressure from social media and their peers. Sports are crucial to keeping people active and social through puberty (青春期), which can already hit a young person’s self-confidence.

What do you do when you have a few minutes to spare? If you’re like many people, you seize the opportunity to do puzzles on your phone.     12     Usually, they can be divided into certain types and here are four of the most common.

Word puzzles

One of the most popular word puzzles — the crossword — has been around for nearly 110 years. Crosswords can be done with paper and pencil or online. Sometimes word puzzles involve finding new words within a large group of letters. This type of word puzzle is called a word search. Word puzzles usually test your vocabulary.     13    

Mechanical puzzles

Mechanical puzzles have pieces that must be arranged in some way. The world’s best-selling puzzle, the Rubik’s Cube, is a mechanical puzzle. As of 2020, over 450 million Rubik’s Cubes had been sold.

Jigsaw puzzles also fall into this type.     14     Jigsaw puzzles have from two to over 550,000 pieces — the largest one on record.

Logic puzzles

    15     Mine Finder is an example of logic puzzles. In Mine Finder players must think clearly to determine where the mines are hidden in a grid(方格).

Math puzzles

Math puzzles involve numbers, words or objects and the use of math. Surprisingly, the ever–popular Candy Crush is classified as a math puzzle.     16    

There are many other kinds of puzzles. But no matter which you prefer, puzzles are a great way to spend your time.

When I was 13, I climbed my first mountain near my home. I was overweight then and ________ when I reached the top. But I loved the ________.

Two years ago, my friend Mel Olsen and I drove to Oregon to climb 11,240-foot Mount Hood.

As we went higher, the trail (山路) grew ________ and steeper. At around 9 a.m., we reached an ice step. Confident I was safe, I put my full ________ on it. Suddenly, I heard a ________, and the ice broke off the step, right under my foot.

In a second, I fell backward. Soon, I came to a stop on a flat slope. I ________ my whole body, feeling ________ that I was fine, except that I was suffering from a sharp pain in my left ________ and couldn’t move.

I ________ for help, and immediately Mel and other climbers came to assist me and called Mountain Rescue. Then I was loaded into a(n) ________ and taken to a hospital, ________ I stayed for four days. The doctors told me it would be a year before I could ________ again, but I was back on the trails within six months.

The fall has made me more ________. One slip (滑倒) on a mountain can change everything. But the experience also made me ________ as a person. Since the accident, I’ve climbed another 60 mountains. I’m not going to let one fall ________ me from doing my favorite thing.