Are you smart enough for this game?

Brainy games, like chess, bridge and even Scrabble have been around so long they don't raise an eyebrow. But what about the games that claim to keep your brain active and healthy? Do they work?

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I like to play the incredibly nasty four deck Spider Solitaire and Scrabble against the computer. This despite the fact that the computer keeps coming up with words like cuif, gox, and valonia. And really how many seven-letter words should you be able to get in one game? Yet I keep playing. Why, I ask myself? is it delayed onset masochism or just the need to hit my head against the wall until my head or the wall breaks? Most of the time, I lose, but when I win....

 

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Chess is undoubtedly the king (or queen) of games but after being beaten five times in a row after three moves, I decided I might need a different kind of brain to conquer this game.

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Bridge, especially duplicate, is not for the faint of heart as you need to learn the basics and keep on learning, learning, learning. Not a bad thing. Many famous and handsome people have played bridge

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so you certainly can too.

Of course, there are the ever popular computer crosswords and the newer Sudoku, which can be played at any level and these can be pretty addicting. Most of us recall when a well-known actor was forced to leave the plane because he was in the middle of Words with Friends and wouldn't stop for take-off.

 

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But back to other so-called brainy games. For research purposes, I tried a few games at the AARP website. Here are the results. By the way, even at the free AARP site, you will have to contend with ads like "Before your colonoscopy" and "Drivers over 50 who switch their car insurance." You can also adopt a manatee.

They have versions of all the classics--poker, backgammon and crosswords. But for the real stuff, go to the site called Brain Games at aarp.org/health/brain-health/brain_games/ and rummage through them. Supposedly, the brain functions they improve are memory, attention, language, executive and visual-spatial. They even show you which part of the brain you are training. Entangled Figures is so hard that if you can do it, you don't need it.

I loved Split Words (these are by happyneuron.com) probably because I could do it. You pick your level of difficulty and when you finish, the computer pats you on the back and makes suggestions about how to improve your game. Shapes and Colors is wickedly challenging.You will have so much fun you won't even notice your brain getting bigger.

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