Top 15 Brain Teasers and Games for Mental Exercise

1. Can you count?: Basketball attention experiment (Interactive).

2. Which way is the bus heading?.

3. Words in your brain: do you know where words are "stored" in your brain?.

4. Please Spot the Differences.

5. Do you think you know the colors?: Quick, try the Stroop Test.

6. Clinically proven Stress Management tip.

7. Riddle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beggar.

8. What is going on with these pictures?.

9. Brain Teasers for the Weekend: a few challenges to exercise your attention and working memory.

10. Consider Linda's job prospects: riddle, or obvious?.

11. Count the Fs in this sentence.

12. Please find the missing number here.

13. How many... exercise your Frontal and Parietal lobes.

14. Mental Imagery and Spatial Rotation challenge.

15. Enjoy this Sunday Afternoon Quiz.

As a bonus, you can also try and write some Brainy Haikus. To inspire you, below you have a few haikus written by our readers (given that novelty, variety and challenge are important for our brains, writing haikus equals -for most of us who are not haiku specialists- another form of brain teasers to exercise our brains).

- Amit:

Love, college, career.
A new world of transitions.
Will I survive? Yes.

- Kathy:

My release technique,
Forgive, forget, love all,
Meditate on that!

- Alan:

Through the microscope,
slice of brain stains pink and blue,
the wonder of thought.

- Justin:

Justin the genieus
Must spell check the word genius
to post this Haiku

- GTB, the skeptic, says

Haiku's are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

Enough?

If you want more brain teasers and games, you can always visit our BrainTeasers page.

Below you have the brain games and teasers we have added in 2008 so far. Ready?
- October 2008: Top Brainy Haikus. Yours?.

- September 2008: What is going on with these pictures?.

- September 2008: 7 Brainteasers for Job Interviews.

- August 2008: Can you use mental self rotation to read a map?.

- August 2008: Spot the Differences! how many are there?.

- July 2008: Top 25 Brain and Mind Haikus. Yours?.

- June 2008: Consider Linda's job prospects.

- June 2008: Spot the Difference for a frontal/ occipital/ parietal workout

- May 2008. Word game: stimulate your temporal lobe.

- April 2008. Your Haiku, Please?: please, a haiku in honor of brain research.

- April 2008. Attention Challenge: more than may meet the eye.

- March 2008. Boost your visuospatial skills: ready for some mental rotations?.

- March 2008. Making Ends Meet: what about a quick teaser?.

- February 2008. Words in your brain: do you know where words are "stored" in your brain?.

- January 2008. Monkeys and Brain Games: is your memory better than a chimp's?.

- January 2008. Brain Exercises for the Weekend: a few challenges to train attention and working memory.

(Also, Can you write a haiku describing anything crossing your mind now? Remember 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 below for extra points...)

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Top 10 Brainy Haikus - enjoy!

- Amit:

Love, college, career.
A new world of transitions.
Will I survive? Yes.

- Kathy:

My release technique,
Forgive, forget, love all,
Meditate on that!

- Alan:

Through the microscope,
slice of brain stains pink and blue,
the wonder of thought.

- Justin:

Justin the genieus
Must spell check the word genius
to post this Haiku

- Tim:

writing quick haiku
seems so very difficult
can i pull it off

- Mercury:

Seeking brain fitness.
Am I haiku-focusing,
or just distracted?

- Kalsang:

My fingers tapping,
I chant out five, seven, five.
Is this new music?

- LW:

body aching now,
yoga isn't so easy,
good for you they say?

- Emma:

You think yoga's bad?
Try Aikido my good friend.
Knackers your shoulders.

- CJ:

Rain Stormy Boomer
Sewer Backing To My Door
Is Insurance Paid?

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In case you want to read more, below you have many more haikus contributed during the year:

- Techne, the philosopher, wonders:

Solve the big questions:
How do I know when I know?
Who knows the knower?

- Steve, the environmentalist, requests:

Neuroplastic good.
Plastic, though lasts forever.
Always recycle!

- GTB, the skeptic, says

Haiku's are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

- Millie, spiritual, suggests:

Playing music feeds
my soul while reading music
nurtures my old brain.

- Mark, the optimist, reflects:

I thought I did well
Then I reviewed my answers
I am retard

- jolovli, the boomer, tries again:

improving function
smoked too much weed in college
it's never too late

- Lloyd, the stressed-out, volunteers:

I thought so damn Hard.
My brain built lots of pressure.
I farted out loud.

- Terry says:

New information
Synthesizing my knowledge
A forward movement

- Frank says:

Painfully easy
Significantly harder
Mental stimulus

- Chuck says:

This was fun, and no,
I don't intend to haiku.
Thanks for posting it

- Sarah says:

finding your teasers
added fun to my morning,
helped wake my brain up

- Lorraine says:

teaching math is fun
when you find great resources
sharp brains is the place

- Psalm says

As my mind expands,
it grasps new ideas...oh look
there's something shiny!!

- anon writes

the noon hour portends
a burrito with salsa
brightening my tongue

- Mike says

See I think I see
Here now, not so - really real?
Wounded, mind leaves me

- Lisa

new thoughts activate
frontal lobe work hard, harder
no senility

- Karen

Brain training others
Like watching the Earth open
One thought at a time

- Bruce

My brain stem works hard,
But the tests are much harder,
Need more grey matter

- Alvaro

Can perform better,
Learning, training, and practice
Body, brain and mind

- terri

strokes take speech away
someone should find a quick fix
everyone needs to speak

- qt

Aha, a challenge
for the brain to endeavour
sooner than later

- Stacy

Brain hurts so badly
Working night shift: not so fun
Need to get some sleep

- campercourt

It is morning now
The sun rose very early
Goodmorning to you

- kestrel

first white is purple

or it was red I think

now haiku, what next?

- Stacey

I thought is was fun.
Then it got a lot harder.
Wow i suck at this.

- anon

oh boy I wonder
will my teeny little ears
still hear loud thunder

of course it is true
the aforementioned thunder
came out of the blue

from the blue you say
I think perhaps you are wrong
but it's still okay

- Steve:

Accountant's cull.
Farewell to long-time work-mates.
Too real for haiku!

- Gail:

Old women gather
Seeking change is the power/
Thanks to grandmothers

- Robert:

My brain is just fried.
I used it too much this week.
I need some Spongebob.

- Shelley:

An infinite mind
Expansive, conscious, knowing
Alert and aware

- Jet:

Haiku to you too
Now is forever, now is
Now is now to you

- Jack:

Cool death match: face off
Wernicke's area and
Broca's Region.

Yours, please?

(Remember 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 below for extra points...).

- "Seemingly random questions like these have become commonplace in Silicon Valley and other tech outposts, where companies aren't as interested in the correct answer to a tough question as they are in how a prospective employee might try to solve it. Since businesses today have to be able to react quickly to shifting market dynamics, they want more than engineers with high IQs and good college transcripts. They want people who can think on their feet."

What are technology companies (Google, Microsoft, Amazon) and consulting companies (McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture...) looking for? They want employees with good so-called Executive Functions: problem-solving, cognitive flexibility, planning, working memory, decision-making, even emotional self-regulation (don’t try to solve one of these puzzles while being angry, or stressed out).

Want to try a few? Below you have our Top 7 Guesstimations/ Logic Puzzles for Brain Challenge:

Please try to GUESS the answers to the questions below based on your own logical approach. The goal is not to find out (or Google) the right answer, but to 1) identify the logic approach that will help "guesstimate" an appropriate range, say + or – 30% of the actual answer, and then 2) complete the calculations (ideally mentally, but you can also take notes) to provide an estimate.

Ready. Set. Go!

1) How many times heavier than a mouse is an elephant?.

2) How many firefighters are there in San Francisco?.

3) How many trees are there in NYC's Central Park?.

4) How many shoes have you had in your life?.

5) How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?.

6) In 1999, how were these baby boy names ranked by popularity: Kevin, Jose, Hugh.

7) What is the weight of a large commercial airplane?.

The Answer appear below. Again, the key here is to try, plan the steps towards the solution, and do the mental calculations to find a reasonable range. That's the brain challenge. The goal is not to find the precise correct answer.

Answers:

1) Around 150,000. An average elephant weighs 4,000 kg on average; an average mouse 25 grams.

2) Around 350 firefighters on duty on any given day, out of a pool of 1700 firefighting overall staff.

3) There are over 26,000 trees (of approximately 175 species) in the Park.

4) We don't know (or need to know) how many pairs you have had.

5)  About 500,000, assuming the bus is 50 balls high, 50 balls wide, and 200 balls long.
6) Rankings of baby boy names in 1999, according to Social Security Administration: 1. Jose (#30), 2. Kevin (#32), 3. Hugh (#830).

7) For a Boeing 747:
- Empty: around 400,000 pounds (lbs), or 181 metric tons
- Maximum Takeoff Weight: around 825,000 pounds, or 374 metric tons
- For context, the weight of an empty Hummer is 8,600 pounds.

More Context on Executive Functions:
If you want to learn more about what they are, here are some quotes from my Interview with neuropsychologist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg:

Alvaro Fernandez: Please tell us more about what the Frontal Lobes are.

Elkhonon Goldberg: We researchers typically call them the Executive Brain. The prefrontal cortex is young by evolutionary terms, and is the brain area critical to adapt to new situations, plan for the future, and self-regulate our actions in order to achieve long-term objectives. We could say that that part of the brain, right behind our forehead, acts as the conductor of an orchestra, directing and integrating the work of other parts of the brain.

I provide a good example in The Executive Brain book, where I explain how I was able to organize my escape from Russia into the US. Significantly, the pathways that connect the frontal lobes with the rest of the brain are slow to mature, reaching full operational state between ages 18 and 30, or maybe even later. And, given that they are not as hard-wired as other parts of the brain, they are typically the first areas to decline.

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Ready for that job interview now (on either end of the table)? In case they help, here you have more brain teasers.

How quickly can you provide the correct answer to these 3 questions?

- 1) What is going on in these 2 pictures below?

- 2) what may explain it?

- 3) Is there some element out of place?

Ready. Set. Go!

Please post your answers and time below. If you need to check the answer right now...you can watch this 2-minute video (with sound) Here.

And here you have more brain teasing games:

- Top 50 Brain Teasers and Games

- Latest Games for the Brain

Enjoy!

- Ability involved: egocentric spatial transformations (yes, that is the scientific expression) or mental self rotation.

- Brain areas involved: mostly parietal lobes.

Let’s take an example. Imagine that you plan to go to a new Walgreens’ location. You wonder whether going North on Big Bend Avenue you would have to make a right or a left turn onto Forsyth Blvd to get to Walgreens. You then look at the map that your spouse has laid out on the table. It turns out that the map is upside down so your perspective is not aligned with the one shown on the map (see Figure 1 just below, Box A). How do you get the answer to your question?

--- Figure 1. The map is upside down (A). The red dot represents your car’s position. Your goal is to go to Walgreens (W). You can either perform an object rotation (B), that is imagine the map rotating, or a self rotation (C), that is imagine yourself at the red dot location.

To align your perspective with the one showed on the map you could imagine the map rotating until it is upright. This is shown at the top right corner of Figure 1 above (Box B). This is what psychologists call mental rotation of object. Another solution is to imagine viewing the map from the other side of the table. This is shown at the bottom right corner of Figure 1 above (Box C). Once you have imagined yourself on the other side of the table you can use your body coordinates and determine that you will have to take a left on Forsyth. In that case, the map is not moving but you are moving. This is what psychologists call mental self rotation.

Ready to imagine yourself moving in space?

For each map below count how many left and right turns you have to make to go from the circle to the triangle. Follow the arrows. Do not move your body or your hands, try to do everything mentally.

Solutions

Map 1: 3 left runs and 3 right turns

Map 2: 3 left runs and 3 right turns

Map 3: 6 left runs and 4 right turns

--- This article was written by Pascale Michelon, Ph. D., for SharpBrains.com. Dr. Michelon, Copyright 2008. Dr. Michelon has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology and has worked as a Research Scientist at Washington University in Saint Louis, in the Psychology Department. She conducted several research projects to understand how the brain makes use of visual information and memorizes facts. She is now an Adjunct Faculty at Washington University, and teaches Memory Workshops in numerous retirement communities in the St Louis area.

You may enjoy these other teasers by Dr. Michelon:

- Spot the Difference

- Word game

- Boost your visuospatial skills

- Words in your brain

And our Top 50 Brain Teasers collection.

"1) You have to identify the objects that you see: this involves your occipital lobes (in red).

2) You have to analyzed the spatial relationships between the objects that you see: this involves your occipital and parietal lobes (in green).

3) You have to remember what you see in one picture and compare it to what you see in the other picture, that is you have to use your short-term memory: this involves your frontal (in blue) and parietal lobes.

4) You have to mark down the locations where you see a difference: this involves mostly your frontal lobes (for the movement)".

Ready! Set! Go!: how many differences can you spot, and which ones?

Source of image: Wikipedia

Also, Can you write a haiku describing anything crossing your mind now? Remember 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...

My Favorite 7 Brain and Mind Haikus

- Techne, the philosopher, wonders:

Solve the big questions:
How do I know when I know?
Who knows the knower?

- Steve, the environmentalist, requests:

Neuroplastic good.
Plastic, though lasts forever.
Always recycle!

- GTB, the skeptic, says

Haiku's are easy
But sometimes they don't make sense
Refrigerator

- Millie, the spiritual, suggests:

Playing music feeds
my soul while reading music
nurtures my old brain.

- Mark,  the optimist, reflects:

I thought I did well
Then I reviewed my answers
I am retard

- jolovli, the boomer, tries again:

improving function
smoked too much weed in college
it's never too late

- Lloyd, the stressed-out, volunteers:

I thought so damn Hard.
My brain built lots of pressure.
I farted out loud.

Enjoy the many other good ones: 

- Terry says: 

New information
Synthesizing my knowledge
A forward movement

- Frank says:

Painfully easy
Significantly harder
Mental stimulus

- Chuck says:

This was fun, and no,
I don't intend to haiku.
Thanks for posting it

- Sarah says:

finding your teasers
added fun to my morning,
helped wake my brain up  

- Lorraine says:

teaching math is fun
when you find great resources
sharp brains is the place

- Psalm says

As my mind expands,
it grasps new ideas...oh look
there's something shiny!!

- anon writes

the noon hour portends
a burrito with salsa
brightening my tongue

- Mike says

See I think I see
Here now, not so - really real?
Wounded, mind leaves me

- Lisa

new thoughts activate
frontal lobe work hard, harder
no senility  

- Karen

Brain training others
Like watching the Earth open
One thought at a time

- Bruce

My brain stem works hard,
But the tests are much harder,
Need more grey matter

- Alvaro

Can perform better,
Learning, training, and practice
Body, brain and mind

- terri

strokes take speech away
someone should find a quick fix
everyone needs to speak

- qt

Aha, a challenge
for the brain to endeavour
sooner than later

- Stacy

Brain hurts so badly
Working night shift: not so fun
Need to get some sleep

- campercourt

It is morning now
The sun rose very early
Goodmorning to you

- kestrel

first white is purple

or it was red I think

now haiku, what next?

- Stacey

I thought is was fun.
Then it got a lot harder.
Wow i suck at this.

- anon

oh boy I wonder
will my teeny little ears
still hear loud thunder

of course it is true
the aforementioned thunder
came out of the blue

from the blue you say
I think perhaps you are wrong
but it's still okay 

Yours , please?

What about your brain fitness?

Two recent announcements bring out how the assessment of cognitive abilities, or brain functions, is increasingly being done thanks to new computerized options:

1) Last week, OptumHealth announced an exclusive 3-year agreement (estimated at $18m) with the Australian company Brain Resource. OptumHealth will be embedding the Brain Resource platform into their overall Behavioral Solutions program.

- OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions will work with Brain Resource to provide clinicians with a Web-based assessment that measures general cognition (how people process information) and social cognition (how people manage their emotions). This 40-minute assessment is based on well-known and validated tests of memory, attention, executive function, and response speed, and mood, social skills and emotional resilience.

- When used by trained clinicians as a tool that is part of the total spectrum of health care, this unique information can be helpful in the treatment decision-making process in several ways.

2) A few weeks ago, we read that U.S. Troops To Get Cognitive Screening

- The military will begin giving cognitive tests this summer to troops heading to war, in an effort to get a baseline measure of their reaction time, memory, concentration and other brain functions, which could be referenced in case they are injured.
- Assistant Defense Secretary S. Ward Casscells recently directed military leaders to begin pre-deployment screening of troops by late-July, using a computer-based test known as the Automated Neuropsychological Assessment Metrics, or ANAM, a Department of Defense spokeswoman confirmed in written responses to The Courant.

- The testing, which takes about 15 to 20 minutes, will "allow for greater levels of accuracy when making assessments following injury," said the spokeswoman, Cynthia Smith.
- Smith said the new testing is not intended as a diagnostic tool for mild traumatic brain injury, but instead would enable clinicians "to compare a person to their own 'norms' or baseline scores" in the event of an injury.

I see these instruments as a critical part in the brain fitness puzzle. Neuroimaging techniques such as MRI and fMRI are very important to support clinical and research work, but are not mature/ scalable enough to help measure brain functions in millions of healthy individuals. Neuropsychological testing is still today often done with pen and paper, administered by a trained expert, and very resource-intensive.

Computerized cognitive assessments can start offering value in many contexts that neither neuroimaging nor traditional neuropsychological testing can reach.

The media is starting to take note. We recently reviewed a recent article that explained,

- "Cognitive Drug Research is one a handful of businesses, most of them outside of the U.S., that work with pharmaceutical companies to test how new drugs for everything from nicotine addiction to Alzheimer’s disease affect the mind’s ability to remember things, make decisions, and analyze information."

- "Cognitive tests have been around for a century as examinations taken with paper and pencil. In the 1970s and '80s the tests shifted to computers, Cognitive Drug Research founder Keith Wesnes says.

In fact, one of the key highlights from the market report we released in March was that "Large-scale, fully-automated cognitive assessments are being used in a growing number of clinical trials. This opens the way for the development of inexpensive consumer-facing, baseline cognitive assessments." And we profiled a few leading companies in the space: Brain Resource Company, Cognitive Drug Research, CNS Vital Signs and CogState.

Brain scientists don´t recognize one overall "brain age" or "intelligence". We can view our brain functions or cognitive abilities as a variety of skills, some more perception-related, some more memory-related, some more language-related, some more visual, some more abstract-thinking and planning oriented. There is no general "brain age" that can be measured or trained in a meaningful way.

We explored this in more detail in our market report, saying that

-"A major bottleneck in the use and refinement of cognitive training tools for the appropriate groups today and in the future is the time and economic investment involved in mostly manual neuropsychological assessments.

- "Potentially, these (new, computerized) assessments could be repurposed to help establish a cognitive baseline, assess mental functioning before and after clinical conditions, track the consequences of aging, indentify priorities for cognitive training, and measure progress independent from the training itself"

Now, the use of these new technologies also raises concerns, nd not just about their reliability and validity.

John Moore of Chilmark Research just commented on the Brain Resource-OptumHealth announcement in his post Will a Mental Evaluation be a Part of Your Next HRA?, pointing out that "it is fairly well-known that many chronic diseases have a high comorbidity factor with mental health, OptumHealth’s partnership with Brain Resource, and its success (or lack thereof) will be an interesting one to follow. And while I applaud this effort, it also raises some pretty scary privacy concerns. How will these assessments be used beyond the confines of the clinician’s office?, What access will OptumHealth have to the data? And what about the employers who have OptumHealth’s parent, United Health Group as an insurer for their employees? Will employers have access to this data, particularly if they start embedding it within HealthAtoZ?".

These are excellent questions. Humana, a health insurance company, recently announced that they were discontinuing their agreement with Posit Science under which they had been offering the Posit Science Brain Fitness Program to their Medicare members. Whereas a number of reasons were offered for that decision (ranging from low uptake rates of the promotions given the legal complexities of reaching out to Medicare users, to low utilization of the product), another concern was mentioned to us during a set of interviews with Humana members: they were concerned about whether a program that had been given to them for free by their insurance company would somehow transmit data back on the mental performance of the user.

Furthermore, we can expect clear public policy implications in this area. Art Kramer recently explained that "the NIH is preparing an “NIH Toolbox” to provide valid, reliable instruments to researchers and clinicians, to solve the problem that exists today, namely, the lack of uniformity among many measures used. The initiative was launched in 2006, and it is a 5-year effort, so we’ll need to wait to see results".

As with any new tool, we´ll need the define the rules of the road.

1) First of all, we´ll need to make sure it measures what it is supposed to, and with high degrees of reliability.

2) Second, there need to be clear policies in place as to whom can access which data and for which purpose.

3) Finally, we expect the assessments will lead into actionable personalized recommendations to improve if not help maintain cognitive functions.

We will continue to pay close attention to this emerging, and very promising, field.

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?