Cinquains are a form of poetry that are like small puzzles. Writing chinquapins is a good way to warm up to writing other things.
I consider writing fiction a form of advanced puzzle solving involving creating characters who because of their nature experience conflict and work their way through it in the manner of the plot. This is not the only consideration I put into creating stories and I have written at length elsewhere on this blog about my ideas on creating stories.
To warm up to written word play and problem solving, I like to write poetry. I work on having more words convey more, have more muscle, by seeing what works in poetry. Sometimes I write haiku, other times sonnets or sestinas. Another form to just exercise verbal dexterity is the cinquain.
A cinquain is a short poem consisting of five, usually unrhymed lines containing, respectively, two, four, six, eight, and two syllables.
Here are a couple of my attempts at playing with cinquains:
Saturn
Crystals,
of ice, playing
Ring-around-the-rosie,
Enslaved to the giant planet.
Shining.
Mars
Red dust
blowing over
canal etched arid plains
pocked by cold, dark impact craters.
Water.