Brain exercises can improve your reasoning skills and memory just as exercise can strengthen your muscles and bones, according to a study cited by "The Washington Post" in 2006. Wake up with brain exercises and perform a puzzle or two while you drink your morning coffee or tea. Or clear your head later in the day by focusing on a puzzle during your lunch break or after a busy day of work.
Crossword Puzzles
Crossword puzzles require you to recall information and details in a wide variety of categories, and to think of multiple possible answers to cryptic or deceptively simple clues. Many major newspapers and publications print crossword puzzles daily or weekly, including "The New York Times," "USA Today," "Los Angeles Times" and "New York" magazine. The crossword puzzles in "The New York Times" increase in difficulty as the week progresses; Monday brings the easiest puzzles, and Saturday the most difficult ones. Beginning crossword puzzlers can start with the puzzles that appear early in the week and work their way up to the week's most challenging ones. You can also find crossword puzzles online at many publications' websites.
Sudoku
Sudoku puzzles appear in newspapers, magazines and books. These number puzzles require you to fill in a grid so that each number appears once and only once in each row, column and highlighted box. Easier puzzles have more of the grid's boxes filled in to help you begin, and more difficult ones have very few of the boxes filled in. Websudoku.com provides sudoku puzzles that you can solve online or print out. Choose from easy, medium, hard or "evil" puzzles.
Ken Ken
The Ken Ken puzzle adds another layer of difficulty to the Sudoku puzzle concept. Players must fill in the Ken Ken puzzle grid so that each number appears once and only once in each row and column, but also so that the numbers in each highlighted group of boxes add, subtract, multiply or divide to make the right number. Each highlighted group of boxes contains a number and a mathematical function, such as "7+." In a "7+" group of three boxes, the numbers must all add up to 7. In a 4-by-4 grid, then, the numbers could be 4, 2 and 1 or 2, 2 and 3. You can play Ken Ken puzzles with 4-by-4 grids to 9-by-9 grids. "The New York Times" has published Ken Ken puzzles daily since 2009. You can also print the puzzles from Kenken.com.
