Brain Workout

Challenging puzzles to sharpen your mind, improve your memory, and keep your brain fit.

Marcel Danesi Ph.D.

Minimal Pair Puzzles and Word Meaning

Have you ever considered how we differentiate words as meaning-bearing entities? Minimal pair puzzles reveal how we do so, according to a fundamental principle of linguistics.

Why Puzzles Become Popular

Wordle is just the latest puzzle craze, made possible by the internet. But puzzle crazes have always surfaced, especially in times of distress, as a means of escapism.

Wordplay and the Mind: 10 Illustrative Puzzles

We rarely realize what word puzzles imply psychologically. These 10 puzzles will illustrate the link between words and the mind in a ludic way.

Word Sequence Puzzles as Experiments in Associative Thinking

Word sequence puzzles impel us to make connections among words, thus putting on display how the associative mind works.

Charades and Word Awareness

If you have ever wondered what charades are and why we play them, this should explain it all.

How 'Riddlegrams' Shed Light on Human Thinking

Riddles and anagrams reach back to the dawn of history, revealing how the mind interacts with language.

What Is the Eureka Effect?

The sudden insight we get when solving a puzzle is called the Eureka effect. These puzzles will help you experience it directly.

What Is a Logical Paradox?

Paradoxes are fascinating logical conundrums, different from typical problems and puzzles because they have no concrete solution. They challenge linear-logical thinking.

What Is a Logic Puzzle?

Logic helps us understand things in particular ways. But what is logic? Solving logic puzzles is one way to examine this mental faculty.

Two-Way Wordplay for a True Brain Workout

If you are stuck inside and need a brain workout during the pandemic, two-way word puzzles may be what the doctor ordered.

Sideways Logic

Thinking in an unorthodox fashion helps broaden the mind. Lateral thinking puzzles are designed to achieve this.

Who's the Tallest?

Figuring out how things or people can be organized in a given way is an exercise in visual thinking. These 10 puzzles will allow you to engage in this kind of thinking.

Gotcha Puzzles

Puzzle that intentionally tend to deceives us will sharpen our ability to see through deception. These ten puzzles, called gotcha puzzles, show how this might unfold.

The Challenge of Knights and Knaves Puzzles

Puzzles in logical thinking are true head-scratchers. A classic in this area is the Knights and Knaves puzzle, which will challenge everyone's logical skills.

The Puzzle Wizardry of Sam Loyd

Some of the most challenging puzzles ever devised were those of the American engineer Sam Loyd. Five of his puzzles are provided to exemplify his puzzle wizardry.

What Makes a Good Puzzle?

Puzzles are both fun and frustrating. What makes a good puzzle? Try these eight classics to find out.

Dudeney’s Mind-Bending Puzzle Creation

Puzzles involving relatives boggle the mind, allowing us to use logic to disentangle them.

What Is a Riddle?

Riddles are ancient, yet they still intrigue us. Here's why.

The Puzzle Art of Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll was, arguably, the greatest puzzle-maker of all time. Five of his most ingenious puzzles are provided for you to solve.

What Is a Puzzle?

We all know intuitively what a puzzle is. But what is a puzzle actually? This blog will attempt an answer.

Multi-Layered Puzzles

Puzzles that are layered with other puzzles can help expand complex thinking. Multi-layered puzzles are designed to do exactly that.

Ziggurat Puzzles

Ziggurat puzzles are relatively unknown. But they will stimulate the verbal part of the brain in an effective manner.

Acrostics Meet Anagrams

Test your word knowledge with a type of puzzle that combines anagrams and acrostics into a single puzzle format.

Compound Word Puzzles

Compound word puzzles are interesting in themselves but also show how things in the world are essentially combinations of other things.

Alphabet Puzzles

We use alphabets habitually without realizing how they help us make words. These puzzles focus on the word-making feature of alphabets.

10 Classic Word Puzzles to Challenge Your Verbal Brain

Try these ten puzzles that will test your verbal skills, getting you to associate verbal memory with the form of words.

Initial Letter Logic Puzzles

Life is hectic. Doing word puzzles such as the initial letter logic ones may help make your daily hassles more bearable. They are their own reward.

10 Puzzles to Test Your Thinking in Multiple Ways

Arithmetic may be frustrating, but figuring out how numbers form relations is stimulating. These puzzles will activate inferential and reasoning processes in tandem.

10 Word Puzzles With Deeper Meanings

Humans are fascinated by meaning associations between words. These wordplay puzzles shed a little light into the nature of word meaning.

How Well Can You Detect Lies?

Have you ever wondered how the great fictional detectives were able to identify a culprit? These puzzles provide insight into their thought processes.

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