Here you have 4 of the most pop­u­lar brain games in our blog, plus a bonus stress man­age­ment tip.

Brain Teaser 1. In which direc­tion is the bus pic­tured below traveling?

Do you know the answer?

The only pos­si­ble answers are “left” or “right.”

Still don’t know?

When pre-school chil­dren were shown this pic­ture and ques­tion, they all answered “left.” When asked why, they answered “Because you can’t see the door.”

Believe it or not, this sim­ple teaser gen­er­ated a very lively con­tro­versy with over  50 comments…some of my favorites “I’ve been look­ing at the bus for a long time now and it is not mov­ing at all” (Peter), “Fools! It is falling, because there is no ground under it! How’s that for logic? (Richard), and “I would like to reit­er­ate that this draw­ing looks like a UFO, and could, there­fore, be mov­ing in any direc­tion” (todios).

Brain Teaser 2. You think you know the colors?

Quick! say aloud what color you see in every word, NOT the word you read. Not that easy, right? The Stroop test is used in neu­ropsy­cho­log­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to mea­sure men­tal vital­ity and flex­i­bil­ity, since per­form­ing well requires strong inhi­bi­tion capacity.

Brain Teaser 3. Can You Pay Attention?

Please try this fun exper­i­ment. You will watch a brief video clip show­ing two teams, and your chal­lenge is to count the num­ber of passes made by the team in white.

Click Here to view the Bas­ket­ball Exper­i­ment clip.

Brain Teaser 4.  Find the Homographs

Dr. Pas­cale Mich­e­lon cre­ated this one. In the col­umn below you have five pairs of words. Your goal is to find a third word that is con­nected or asso­ci­ated with both of these two words.

The first pair is PIANO and LOCK. The answer is KEY. The word key is con­nected with both the word piano and the word lock: there are KEYS on a piano and you use a KEY to lock doors.

Key is what is called a homo­graph: a word that has more than one mean­ing but is always spelled the same.

Ready to stim­u­late con­nec­tions in your tem­po­ral lobe? Enjoy! (Solu­tions are at the bot­tom of the post. Please don’t check them until you have tried to solve all the pairs!)

1. LOCK — PIANO

2. SHIP -  CARD

3. TREE -  CAR

4. SCHOOL — EYE

5. PILLOW -  COURT

Brain Teaser 5. Have We Stressed You Out?

Here is a very quick test to deter­mine your stress level now. Read the fol­low­ing descrip­tion com­pletely before look­ing at the picture.

The pic­ture below was used in a case study on stress lev­els at St. Mary’s Hos­pi­tal. Look at both dol­phins jump­ing out of the water. The dol­phins are iden­ti­cal. A closely mon­i­tored, sci­en­tific study revealed that, in spite of the fact that the dol­phins are iden­ti­cal, a per­son under stress would find dif­fer­ences between the two dol­phins. The more dif­fer­ences a per­son finds between the dol­phins, the more stress that per­son is experiencing.

Look at the pho­to­graph, and if you find more than one or two dif­fer­ences, you may want to take a vaca­tion or at least get a massage.

Click here to see the pic­ture before read­ing more.

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Solu­tions to Brain Game 4:

1. LOCK -  PIANO > KEY

2. SHIP — CARD > Deck

3. TREE — CAR > Trunk

4. SCHOOL — EYE > Pupil (Exam and Pri­vate are also possible)

5. PILLOW — COURT > Case

If you liked this exer­cise, you can find more pairs of words at Words in your brain.

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I hope you are hav­ing a great week­end! How did you do?