Brain Games for Fun & (Mental) Fitness
Mind games (the good kind).
Your brain has phoned and it would like you to remember that it, too, needs to play. After over a year spent mostly in fight-or-flight mode, it would like to take a load off, please & thanks. You don’t have to tell it that the upside of letting it play some brainy games is actually better cognitive fitness—why spoil the fun? The best activities for your brain hit on four areas: language, visual-spatial, problem-solving, and memory and concentration. Not sure how to go about giving your noggin some recess? We got you.
The swiss army knife.
We’re not surprised that The New York Times Games Subscription is one of its fastest-growing sources of revenue. Besides its hallmark crossword, here you’ll find games like Spelling Bee (language), Tiles (memory) and Sudoku (problem-solving)—and so much more.
The spatial race.
We hate to pound the table once more for that pandemic darling, the jigsaw puzzle, but it is still true that they give your brain that visual-spatial play it needs. Luckily, Jiggy has introduced a monthly membership which makes it a no-brainer (see what we did there?).
99 Problems and a game ain’t one.
Luminosity, an app built specifically for training your brain, has a host of problem-solving games on offer. You’ll find us planting imaginary seeds in their game Organic Order (and enjoying the real fruits of our labor).
Memories, light the corners of our minds.
This slightly sleeker edition of Trivial Pursuit will be sure to work your memory—not only for inane factoids, but also the nostalgia associated with playing the OG trivia game. We’ll be over here happily collecting our wedges as we sail through geography, entertainment, history, art and literature, science and nature, and sports and leisure.
Words with friends—IRL.
Is there anything more satisfying than shaking up that word cube and turning over the hourglass? Perhaps the only answer is found in this edition of Big Boggle, which gives participants a 5x5 letter grid to craft words from. Boggling the mind? That’s the entire goal.
