Chess is competitive. Jigsaw puzzles are mostly solitaire, and can be cooperative or competitive. Fwiw, i gave up chess decades ago because i didn’t like the feeling of being attacked.
I can understand that. My wife and I cheer each other on though. Even when we are playing each other.
We tell each other when we see that they made a good move. We have played thousands of games, we don’t keep track other than ‘did you win last night?’
It’s very odd, while we have moves that we recognize, none of the games have been the same.
My previous boss had team building exercises. One was that you split ~20 people into teams of 2-3 and gave them each a jigsaw puzzle to complete. What he did not tell us was that that the pieces where all distributed across the different teams. All mixed up in other words. We had to figure that part out and then go hunting for our pieces from another team and do a trade. That was interesting and a good exercise. “I think I’ve got part of a sail here, anybody have a sail?” </>
I play other competitive games. But chess is especially brutal. Many competitive games are a race, or a “who can get the most”. Chess is a fight.
But “games in general” is a great idea, if the friend will have company. And there are a lot of online games. Bridgebase.com is good for bridge, https://en.boardgamearena.com/ has more than a thousand “modern board games”, and if you want to play an extremely serious game of hanabi, https://hanab.live/ has a terrific interface and very good players. That last might not be ideal for someone who feels very sick, actually. But all of those are free. The bridge one has annoying ads and i use an ad blocker. I think the other two are actually free, it at least, if they have ads, they stay out of my way.
I don’t play chess or poker, but i assume they can be played online, too.
Chess.com has people you can play from all over the world. It also has puzzles you can play. As in, ‘how do I solve this particular situation - win/get your ass out of trouble’.
Lots of stuff can be downloaded to a phone, or anything. Playing against a computer allows you to pick skill levels.
I might get a bit frustrated by physical puzzles as I have some dexterity problems. Nerve issues (sucks getting old).
How does this affect your darts game?
It’s not in my dominant (throwing) hand. Three fingers in my left hand feel like they’re ‘asleep’ and are quite weak. Some times the hand gets stuck in the Vulcan salute (live well and prosper) position and I need to force the fingers back together. Apparently a pinched nerve of sorts. I had surgery on it, didn’t help.
This does affect assembling things. We just moved and have been buying all kinds of stuff. Of course it needs assembled. Nuts and bolts can be a bit frustrating, as your hands must work together.
Typing is a bit more difficult, but muscle memory helps.
I have a puzzle app on my iPad that is one of those ‘freemium’ games that I didn’t pay a penny for, with ads. There’s probably a way to spend a few bucks and not see the ads, but they’re not too bothersome.
The puzzle game I have is in the form of little rectangular tiles that you slide around to put the image together, though I believe there are games that simulate actual jigsaw-cut puzzles. The game I have has a few levels of complexity-- none is really too difficult, but there’s a nice little dopamine hit I get when I finish putting a puzzle together. So yeah, I think there are any number of video-based puzzles that would entertain someone recovering from knee surgery.
If the OP’s friend just prefers real, physical jigsaw puzzles, as my wife also does, she took a large corrugated cardboard box and cut it down to just the bottom and an inch or so of the sides that she keeps her current puzzle in. She can play it in her lap sitting on the couch watching TV, so that sort of setup could work for the OP’s friend in bed as well, I’d think.
Thanks again for the suggestion about the sticker book. It was a big hit. She enjoyed the one I gave her, and she’s bought more for herself and for gifts.
My wife is a fan of crazy4jigsaws.com