Oct 16, 2007
Brain Teasers and Games for the Brain: Test your Brain
By: Alvaro Fernandez
It is always good to stimulate our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selection of the 50 Brain Teasers that people have enjoyed the most in our blog and speaking engagements.
Fun experiments on how our brains work
1. Do you think you know the colors?: try the Stroop Test.
2. Can you count?: Basketball attention experiment (Interactive).
3. Who is this?: A very important little guy (Interactive).
5. Take the Senses Challenge (Interactive).
6. Are there more brain connections or leaves in the Amazon?.
Attention
7. How are your divided attention skills? check out “Inside and Outside” (Interactive, from MindFit).
8. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try “Two in One” (Interactive, from MindFit)
9. Count the Fs in this sentence.
10. What do you see? can you alternate between 2 views?.
Memory
11. Easy one…draw the face of a penny, please.
12. Proud of your visual short-term memory? Give a try at “Picasso”. (Interactive, from MindFit).
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Pattern recognition and planning
13. Planning is not that easy: Towers of Hanoi (Interactive).
14. What’s the missing number: Pattern Recognition Brain Teaser.
15. Brain Puzzle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beggar.
16. Find the missing number in The Empty Triangle.
17. What about Tipping the Scales.
18. Don’t be misled by this brain workout.
19. Please find the missing number here.
Visual workouts
20. Test the limits of your peripheral vision with this challenge (Interactive).
21. How many…: Train your Frontal and Parietal lobes.
22. Is a circle a circle?: Visual Perception Brain Teaser.
23. Mental Imagery and Spatial Rotation challenge.
24. What piece fits here?.
25. Can you mentally build this box?.
Visual Illusions 
26. The Muller-Lyer Illusion (Interactive).
27. Don’t try this with your partner, or you may fight.
28. How many colors do you see in The Hermann Grid.
29. This is less obvious than it may appear.
30. Is this a circle or what?.
31. The limits of our perception-and perfection.
32. Are these 2 rows parallel?.
33. What do you see.
Logic
34. Who’s the eldest?: Reasoning Skills Brain Teaser.
35. Join this Party For Polyglots.
36. Solve Dr. Nasty’s Giant Cube.
37. Which way is the bus heading?.
With a Corporate angle
38. Collection of Stress Management exercises. 
39. Some Google/ Microsoft Brain Teasers used in interviews.
40. A few guesstimations like the ones I was asked in McKinsey interviews years ago.
41. More guesstimations.
42. Your last Aha! moment?.
43. Can you read these faces.
Math puzzles
44. Choose the right Fork in the Road. 
45. Find the the Really, Really, Really Big Number.
46. Hard: The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 1 of 2.
47. For geniuses: Concentric Shapes or The Unkindest Cut of All, Part 2 of 2.
Tough to categorize
48. Clinically proven Stress Management tip.
49. Enjoy this Sunday Afternoon Quiz.
50. Can you write a haiku describing your experience doing some of the previous teasers? The simple rules: write 3 lines, which don’t need to rhyme, containing 5,7, and 5 syllables. You can leave your haiku as a comment for extra points…
Note: everyone, including feed readers, THANK YOU for helping Digg this story. We made it to Digg’s Home Page, so more people than usual were able to stimulate their brains:-)
[...] Brain Teasers and Games for adults, with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 (SharpBrains): Let’s play! [...]
Hello Mr. Fernandez,
Your ASA Autumn Series presentation on “Teaching Brain
Fitness in Your Community” was really terrific. It
confirmed lots of information I already knew and
taught me a bit as well. Very nicely organized and
clearly explained. Thank you!
Here’s my haiku:
New information
Synthesizing my knowledge
A forward movement
[...] I learned about this game from the SharpBrains blog today. [...]
A genial idea
[...] You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your ownsite. [...]
Painfully easy
Significantly harder
Mental stimulus
[...] http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/10/16/brain-teasers-and-games-for-adults-our-top-50 [...]
This was fun, and no, I don’t intend to haiku. Thanks for posting it.
[...] » Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains (tags: brain teasers games exercise memory logic fun ** puzzles) [...]
[...] » Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains (tags: Brain Games exercise teasers memory logic fun) [...]
[...] Over at Sharp Brains, they have a cool list of 50 brain games aimed at testing a variety of functions. Some are for memory, some for speed, and some for just plain wacky fun. [...]
Haiku:
I thought I did well
Then I reviewed my answers
I am retarded
[...] Brain Teasers and Games for adults, with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 (tags: attention) [...]
[...] How’s this for a good example. They have taken a bunch of related “niche” stuff and put it into a meaningful list. A good practice. This is a bit more art than science because it involves knowing what a group of people need at once. The niche stuff could include a variety of things from many different parts of the web. More often than not I would say these lists are specific to an application area for a specific group. Such as fiction writers (like me*cough*). [...]
[...] » Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains (tags: brain teasers) [...]
[...] » Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains (tags: brain exercise) [...]
Terry, Frank and Mark, great haikus!
Chuck, yours is great too:-)
This was fun, and no,
I don’t intend to haiku.
Thanks for posting it.
Terry: thanks for your kind words. I am emailing some materials to all participants tomorrow.
[...] » Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 « Brain Fitness Revolution at SharpBrains (tags: games health puzzles) [...]
[...] -Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: Our Top 50 It is always good to stimulate our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selection of the 50 Brain Teasers that people have enjoyed the most in our blog and speaking engagements. [...]
[...] If that’s a stumper, you can go to this page of 50 different brain games and find out for yourself. [...]
[...] Check out a selection of brain teasers on attention, memory, logic. The Brain Fitness Blog shares Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50. [...]
[...] Alvaro Fernandez presents Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle: our Top 50 posted at SharpBrains, saying, “A selection of brain teasers on attention, memory, logic…” [...]
finding your teasers
added fun to my morning,
helped wake my brain up
Sarah, thanks for sharing such a nice haiku
hey! your site is really great!
[...] Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games with a neuroscience angle:Â a list of the most popular mind games in our blog. [...]
[...] http://www.sharpbrains.com/blog/2007/10/16/brain-teasers-and-games-for-adults-our-top-50/ [...]
teaching math is fun
when you find great resources
sharp brains is the place
[...] In our Top 50 Brain Teasers post, we concluded with the challenge: #50. Can you write a haiku describing your experience doing some of the previous teasers? The simple rules: write 3 lines, which don’t need to rhyme, containing 5,7, and 5 syllables. You can leave your haiku as a comment for extra points… [...]
Thank you to all who wrote a Haiku
Haiku:
Fun calculations?
I can not believe it’s true.
Calculation’s fun!
General question-does anyone know a good source for plexers? I’ve ordered the two books, “Plexers” and “More Plexers” but would like to find others, or websites with more than one page of them, if possible. Thanks in advance!
I was searching for this kind of a blog for months now. Actually lost the hope of finding one, but here I am
Thanks for the great quizes!
Navtej, thank you for finding us! we need readers
Please keep enjoying it, and let us know any suggestions!
Great site, would like advanced riddles.
stretched the mind
eyes closing tightly
comprehends
Loved this list! Will be tweeting it and saving it
I did terrible at the colors but GREAT at the letter F 
Thanks.