Weekly Brain Challenge: Reading Order Into Chaos

Our daily goal is to make sense out of the world and sometimes that involves finding the meaning in what looks like chaos.  Good thing our brains are amazing cyphers!   Give this a try:

For emaxlpe, it deson’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod aepapr, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer are in the rghit pcale. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit pobelrm.

S1M1L4RLY, Y0UR M1ND 15 R34D1NG 7H15 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17.

Researchers are getting closer to understanding the brain process that leads to individual differences in how brains crack code and allow us to read in cases like those above but no one quite gets the whole picture yet.   New research is focusing on how to use these differences to help people with dyslexia and other reading challenges.  That would be big.

We are celebrating the importance of words today in this 5 difference, Find the Difference puzzle — one of our all time favorites!

Pay attention to how you solve this puzzle.  How easy is it for you to over-ride your brain’s tendency to fill the meaning and over-look the differences?

Webster’s Dictionary was originally called the “American Dictionary of the English Language”. Today, the dictionary includes somewhere around 470,000 entries!

 

Want to Play Some Brain Games? It’s Crunch Time!

Every week we send out a set of brain training puzzles via email.   Each week has a different theme but the focus of the puzzles never changes — pay attention to the details in some photos that might just remind you of your life!

Check out this week’s Crunch Time!  It is all about fun and games!

If you liked this one, sign up to get Crunch Time delivered to you via email every week!

Brain Boosters: Fit a Brain Work Out in Your Life!

We all know that exercising our brains is important.  Use it or lose it, right?  If you challenge yourself to think, problem solve, and create in a variety of ways, your brain will be stronger and better prepared for all that life will throw at you.

No one I know has time to fit anything new, no matter how valuable, into already packed lives.   So…let’s change the question to this:  how do you wrap brain exercises into your everyday life– not add extra things but make those things you already do brain boosters?

One great way to fire up activity and nourish your brain is to mix up your routines.   No falling into any thinking ruts!  Take every day activities, mix them up, and make them new!

Waiting Games

I live in Southern California and getting stuck in traffic is a way of life.   Here are a couple games I play to pass the time, lower my stress, and work out my brain.  Pick a billboard like this one.

Choose a word like “MOO”.   Come up with as many words as you can that use the letters M-O-O.

Or try this.   Pick a sign on a business like this one:

 

Try to find as many 3 letter words as you can while stopped in traffic.

In Line at the Grocery Store?  Here is a quick and easy brain booster.  Pick a magazine like this one and challenge yourself to find the letters for words that describe what you see on the cover.

The top sentence is written in red letters.  Find the letters R-E-D.  The woman’s dress in pink.  Find the letters P-I-N-K- D-R-E-S-S.   Keep it going!

This is the self-checkout at my local grocery store.  These signs all convey a message, right?

An-cay ou-yea anslate-tray ese-thay o-tay ig-Pay atin-Lay?  Or how about using the same words to make new sentences?

At Work Games:

Change your view at your desk.

Turn the items on your desk upside down!

Or change the view on your desktop.

Changing the position of your menu bar will mix things up and not let your brain get too comfortable.

When thinking about how to add brain works to your life, consider these three things:

Is it new (Novelty)?

Is it different (Variety)?

Did it make you think or stretch your thinking (Challenge)?

Roll a brain exercise or two into your daily life!

Do you have 90 seconds?

You have time for rigorous brain exercise.   Try our new Cranium Mini challenges!   There are 3 games you can play on your phone and each takes 90 seconds or less!

 

Wednesday’s Words: International Quality of Life Month

January is International Quality of Life Month and we have been celebrating by bringing attention to brain issues that can decrease quality of life and providing some insight into how to retain dignity in the face of  brain disease.  Today we just want to focus on some simple things that make everyone’s daily life better, richer, and fuller.

In today’s Wednesday’s Words hunt down the words that describe some of the good things in life.   Enjoy!

Click on the puzzle to make it larger on your screen.

Want to play more word games? Check out last week’s Wednesday’s Words. Want to play photo puzzles? Check out our site at www.craniumcrunches.com.

Scavenger Hunt Game

Weekly Brain Challange

This week our Weekly Brain Challenge highlights our game Find It!, a scavenger hunt game in which you search for items hidden within a photo.  Find It! can help you hone your attention, searching, and sorting skills.  In the website version of our game, your memory skills will also be put to the test as the items only appear for a few seconds and then you must try to remember what you are looking for in the image.

Enjoy a few samples of Find It! below.  These pictures were taken by our Game Designer, Luis, on a trip to Tallinn, Estonia.  Search for the items on the right in the image on the left…happy crunching 🙂

Click on the images to make them larger on your screen.

Do you enjoy the weekly brain challenge?  Get it delivered to your e-mail!  Every week, we send out Find the Difference puzzles straight to your inbox so that you can get a little brain workout in whenever you want.  Sign up today!