Alcohol can focus the mind on tasks, with participants in a study who drank two pints of beer performing better than sober counterparts, U.S. researchers say.

Psychologists at the University of Illinois had 40 healthy young men solve puzzles such as choosing a word that linked three test words.

For example, given the words coins, quick and spoon, a linking word could be silver.

While half the test participants drank the equivalent of two pints of beer before the tests, the other half faced the puzzle challenge sober.

The imbibing group solved nearly 40 per cent more problems than the sober group, researchers said, and took an average of 12 seconds compared to the 15.5 seconds needed by sober subjects.

Study author Jennifer Wiley said the research was the first to demonstrate alcohol's effect on creative problem solving.

"We tested what happens when people are slightly merry, not when people drink to extreme," she told The Daily Telegraph.

"The bottom line is that we think being too focused can blind you to novel possibilities, and a broader, more flexible state of attention is needed for creative solutions to emerge," she said. (c) UPI