Flash Crash Report

I use Mac OS 10.6.8 with Safari 5.1.10.  For the past year or so, I have been playing a browser game for at least a few minutes almost every day.  On the day I updated my Flash from version 22 to version 23, the browser game became immediately inoperable — crashing my computer so hard (several times) that it needed a cold reboot.  In other words, everything locked up to tight that the only option was to press the power switch.

When I try to play the game, as soon as I select an object — or even scroll over an object — the highlighting (normally temporary, as one scrolls over, is frozen.  The whole screen freezes too.  Sometimes, instead, the whole screen flashes repeatedly — until I shut the computer off.

Is that supposed to be why it's called "Flash"?