Brain Teasers and Games for the Brain: Test your Brain

Frontal LobesIt is always good to stim­u­late our minds and to learn a bit about how our brains work. Here you have a selec­tion of the 50 Brain Teasers that peo­ple have enjoyed the most in our blog and speak­ing engagements.

Fun exper­i­ments on how our brains work

1. Do you think you know the col­ors?: try the Stroop Test.

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

3. Who is this?: A very impor­tant lit­tle guy (Inter­ac­tive).

4. How is this pos­si­ble?.

5. Take the Sens­es Chal­lenge (Inter­ac­tive).

6. Are there more brain con­nec­tions or leaves in the Ama­zon?.

Atten­tionTwo In One Task

7. How are your divid­ed atten­tion skills? check out “Inside and Out­side” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit).

8. Can you walk and chew gum at the same time? try “Two in One” (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit)

9. Count the Fs in this sen­tence.

10. What do you see? can you alter­nate between 2 views?.

Mem­o­ryPicasso Task

11. Easy one…draw the face of a pen­ny, please.

12. Proud of your visu­al short-term mem­o­ry? Give a try at “Picas­so”. (Inter­ac­tive, from Mind­Fit).

Pat­tern recog­ni­tion and planning

13. Plan­ning is not that easy: Tow­ers of Hanoi (Inter­ac­tive).

14. What’s the miss­ing num­ber: Pat­tern Recog­ni­tion Brain Teas­er.

15. Brain Puz­zle for the Whole Brain: The Blind Beg­gar.Sharp Brain

16. Find the miss­ing num­ber in The Emp­ty Tri­an­gle.

17. What about Tip­ping the Scales.

18. Don’t be mis­led by this brain work­out.

19. Please find the miss­ing num­ber here.

Visu­al workouts

20. Test the lim­its of your periph­er­al vision with this chal­lenge (Inter­ac­tive).

21. How many…: Train your Frontal and Pari­etal lobes.

22. Is a cir­cle a cir­cle?: Visu­al Per­cep­tion Brain Teas­er.

23. Men­tal Imagery and Spa­tial Rota­tion challenge.

24. What piece fits here?.

25. Can you men­tal­ly build this box?.

Visu­al Illusions visual illusion of paralel lines

26. The Muller-Lyer Illu­sion (Inter­ac­tive).

27. Don’t try this with your part­ner, or you may fight.

28. How many col­ors do you see in The Her­mann Grid.

29. This is less obvi­ous than it may appear.

30. Is this a cir­cle or what?.

31. The lim­its of our per­cep­tion-and per­fec­tion.

32. Are these 2 rows par­al­lel?.

33. What do you see.

Log­ic

34. Who’s the eldest?: Rea­son­ing Skills Brain Teas­er.

35. Join this Par­ty For Poly­glots.

36. Solve Dr. Nasty’s Giant Cube.

37. Which way is the bus head­ing?.

With a Cor­po­rate angle 

38. Col­lec­tion of Stress Man­age­ment exer­cis­es. Partners

39. Some Google/ Microsoft Brain Teasers used in interviews.

40. A few guessti­ma­tions like the ones I was asked in McK­in­sey inter­views years ago.

41. More guessti­ma­tions.

42. Your last Aha! moment?.

43. Can you read these faces.

Math puz­zles

44. Choose the right Fork in the Road. Cube

45. Find the the Real­ly, Real­ly, Real­ly Big Num­ber.

46. Hard: The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 1 of 2.

47. For genius­es: Con­cen­tric Shapes or The Unkind­est Cut of All, Part 2 of 2.

Tough to categorize

48. Clin­i­cal­ly proven Stress Man­age­ment tip.

49. Enjoy this Sun­day After­noon Quiz.

50. Can you write a haiku describ­ing your expe­ri­ence doing some of the pre­vi­ous teasers? 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…

Note: every­one, includ­ing feed read­ers, THANK YOU for help­ing Digg this sto­ry. We made it to Dig­g’s Home Page, so more peo­ple than usu­al were able to stim­u­late their brains:-)

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18 Comments

  1. Terry on October 16, 2007 at 4:40

    Hel­lo Mr. Fernandez,

    Your ASA Autumn Series pre­sen­ta­tion on “Teach­ing Brain
    Fit­ness in Your Com­mu­ni­ty” was real­ly ter­rif­ic. It
    con­firmed lots of infor­ma­tion I already knew and
    taught me a bit as well. Very nice­ly orga­nized and
    clear­ly explained. Thank you!

    Here’s my haiku:

    New infor­ma­tion

    Syn­the­siz­ing my knowledge

    A for­ward movement



  2. carlos on October 17, 2007 at 12:30

    A genial idea



  3. Frank on October 17, 2007 at 2:08

    Painful­ly easy
    Sig­nif­i­cant­ly harder
    Men­tal stimulus



  4. Chuck McKay on October 17, 2007 at 5:14

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



  5. Mark on October 17, 2007 at 6:07

    Haiku:

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



  6. Alvaro on October 18, 2007 at 7:12

    Ter­ry, Frank and Mark, great haikus!

    Chuck, yours is great too:-)

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

    Ter­ry: thanks for your kind words. I am email­ing some mate­ri­als to all par­tic­i­pants tomorrow.



  7. Sarah Rolph on October 25, 2007 at 4:54

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



  8. Alvaro on October 26, 2007 at 10:09

    Sarah, thanks for shar­ing such a nice haiku :-)



  9. Meryl Lumboy on November 3, 2007 at 4:47

    hey! your site is real­ly great!



  10. Lorraine on November 20, 2007 at 8:38

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



  11. Alvaro on November 25, 2007 at 2:11

    Thank you to all who wrote a Haiku :-)



  12. holmz on December 26, 2007 at 9:31

    Haiku:

    Fun cal­cu­la­tions?

    I can not believe it’s true.

    Cal­cu­la­tion’s fun!



  13. Beatrice on January 31, 2008 at 3:18

    Gen­er­al ques­tion-does any­one know a good source for plex­ers? I’ve ordered the two books, “Plex­ers” and “More Plex­ers” but would like to find oth­ers, or web­sites with more than one page of them, if pos­si­ble. Thanks in advance!



  14. navtej kohli on February 7, 2008 at 4:20

    I was search­ing for this kind of a blog for months now. Actu­al­ly lost the hope of find­ing one, but here I am :) Thanks for the great quizes!



  15. Alvaro on February 7, 2008 at 5:54

    Navtej, thank you for find­ing us! we need readers :-)

    Please keep enjoy­ing it, and let us know any suggestions!



  16. Pieter on June 17, 2008 at 2:58

    Great site, would like advanced riddles.



  17. Renee Blackwell on November 25, 2008 at 8:14

    stretched the mind
    eyes clos­ing tightly
    comprehends



  18. Kaye on March 17, 2009 at 7:07

    Loved this list! Will be tweet­ing it and sav­ing it :) I did ter­ri­ble at the col­ors but GREAT at the let­ter F :) Thanks.



About SharpBrains

SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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