#5. Five quick brain teasers for teens and adults to flex two key mental muscles: Attention and Working Memory

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Look­ing for some fun, and free, cog­ni­tive stimulation?

Here you have a few quick brain teasers to exer­cise your atten­tion and your work­ing mem­ory–the abil­ity to keep infor­ma­tion in your mind while manip­u­lat­ing mul­ti­ple units of infor­ma­tion at the same time.

Giv­en them a try … they are not as easy as they may seem 🙂

1. Say the days of the week back­wards, then in alpha­bet­i­cal order. (Speak oth­er lan­guages? Try doing the same in Span­ish, French, Mandarin…)

2. Say the months of the year in alpha­bet­i­cal order. Easy? Well, why don’t you try doing so back­wards, in reverse alpha­bet­i­cal order.

3. Find the sum of your date of birth, mm/dd/yyyy. Want a tougher mind teas­er? Do the same with your spouse’s or best friend’s date of birth (with­out look­ing it up…)

4. Name two objects for every let­ter in your first name. Work up to five objects, try­ing to use dif­fer­ent items each time.

5. Look around you, wher­ev­er you are, and, with­in two min­utes, try to find 5 red things that will fit in your pock­ets, and 5 blue objects that are too big to fit.

 

Next brain teas­er in Sharp­Brains’ top 25 series:

#6. Count the Fs in this sentence