7 games and drills that actually train your thinking
The rule is simple: an activity trains thinking when it keeps getting harder as you get better. Anything you have mastered is now entertainment.
1. Chess
Planning under constraint, pattern recognition and holding several lines in working memory at once. Its advantage over most apps is that the difficulty scales with your opponent forever.
2. Go
Simple rules, enormous branching. Go leans harder on spatial pattern recognition than chess does, and the handicap system keeps games close as you improve.
3. Dual n-back
The one working-memory drill with a real research literature behind it. Note that the literature is genuinely mixed on how far the gains transfer — but it does load working memory harder than any commercial game.
4. Sudoku and logic grids
Pure constraint propagation: deduce, eliminate, repeat. Useful while you are still moving up difficulty levels; near-worthless once you have a routine that solves everything.
5. Programming
Arguably the strongest item on this list, because you cannot fake it. Decomposing a problem, holding an abstract model in your head and debugging it against reality is exactly the loop that reasoning tests sample.
6. Learning a language
Sustained load on verbal working memory and pattern extraction, with the extra benefit that progress is impossible to fake to yourself.
7. Matrix and sequence puzzles
The most direct preparation for test formats, and the fastest to plateau. Worth doing until nothing surprises you, then move on.
The rule
- If it stopped being hard, it stopped training you.
- Prefer activities with no skill ceiling over apps with a finish line.
- Short daily sessions beat long weekend ones.
- Sleep and exercise still outrank every item on this list.