Brain Teasers to Exercise Our Minds: Our Top Five

Here you have 4 of the most pop­u­lar brain games in our blog, plus a bonus stress man­age­ment tip.

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?