Whether you’ve been bored lately and you’re looking for a way to spend your time more meaningfully, or you’ve become aware of the need to focus on your cognitive health, the right puzzles can be a great way to engage your brain alone. However, not all puzzles are the same. They’re going to have their own benefits, each of which might be worth indulging in for their own reasons.
Here, we’re going to take a look at a host of puzzles and puzzle-like games that can switch your brain on, help you pass time, and even help you with your long-term cognitive health.
What Are The Best Puzzles for Brain Training?
Crosswords
These games involve a grid of squares, which expect you to fill them in with the right words. You have to get the exact right words in response to clues, as the grids only fit so many letters. Crosswords are not just a great way to slow down and enjoy some relaxation time, but they’re also great for improving your critical thinking, as well as your ability to recall information.
The clues typically take a host of different approaches, forcing you to make mental connections where there might not have been some, before. What’s more, it can be great for your vocabulary.
Jigsaws
If you’re mostly familiar with jigsaws through your children, then you might not be aware of just how challenging they can get. There are bigger and more complex jigsaws for puzzlers of every age, and there’s no one who doesn’t benefit from them. We all have a visual-spatial reasoning part of the brain that might not be getting worked out enough.
Jigsaws are also great at enhancing your hand-eye coordination and motor skills, which can begin to stagnate if you don’t do enough with your hands during the day. On top of that, jigsaws require focus and patience, which can be valuable skills for any parent.
Sudoku
Much like crosswords, Sudoku puzzles typically involve a grid of squares. Rather than finding the right letters and words, however, you have to put the right numbers in place. Typically, Sudoku involves a 9×9 grid, and you have to put the numbers 1 to 9 in each of the spaces, making sure that numbers don’t repeat in either rows, columns, or squares.
This challenges your sequential thinking skills, making your brain recall where you’ve placed numbers while teaching it to recognize patterns and solve problems.
Wordle
One of the more modern puzzles and games in the list, Wordle has become massively popular over the past few years, with thousands of people logging in to try and guess the right word to fit the spaces. There are no logical clues here, just pure recall and vocabulary expansion, as you have to choose letters to fit the spaces, gaining information on which letters are and aren’t in the word, and whether or not they’re in the right position.
It’s a quick mental exercise that’s great for giving the brain a jolt of energy, especially in the morning, and can foster some linguistic skill improvements.
Chess
While not really a puzzle in the same sense as the others here, chess is a game that has many puzzle-like mechanics, as you can only move the pieces in very specific ways, in an effort to strategize and out-think the other player. Chess can be tricky to learn at first, with a significant learning curve, but it’s one of the best games out there for teaching advanced analytical thinking.
There are plenty of online chess games that will pit you with players of a similar skill level to yourself, so you don’t necessarily have to jump into the deep end right away, too.
Scrabble
A game that was designed to help improve vocabulary and spelling skills, Scrabble is all about placing down word tiles to form words, with the more complex words using rarer letters scoring higher. It combines language skills with spatial recognition, as you have to be able to build words based on those built by the opponent, taking into account how many squares you have access to on the board a give time.
There are online versions of Scrabble, or games like it, that can allow you to play no matter where you are.
With the tips above, hopefully, you’ve got an idea of the games or puzzles you might like to play, and how they can help you better take care of yourself. A puzzle a day can help you keep cognitive decline away, and can also help you find a fun new hobby.
