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Whether solving a crossword, tackling a Sudoku or completing a jigsaw puzzle, engaging with brain teasers allows many to sharpen their minds by challenging them to think critically, solve problems and recognize patterns.
To piece together some cognitive impacts of puzzles, The Daily spoke with the Department of Cognitive Science’s Associate Professor Vera Tobin, whose research interests include social cognition, joint attention and cognitive biases.
Read on to dive deeper into ways puzzles can enhance your mind with Tobin’s insights.
Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Puzzles often give chances to practice different cognitively challenging tasks in different combinations.
The very best thing doing a puzzle trains you for is doing puzzles. But, practicing a specific cognitive skill—like word recall, recognizing spatial patterns or reading quickly in one activity—can transfer over into other activities that use that same skill. The skills you pick up can transfer to other cognitively challenging situations, so long as the underlying tasks are similar enough. And since puzzles are fun, you’re more likely to get more practice in than you would have otherwise.
Doing hard puzzles can make you more comfortable with experiences and behaviors that go along with solving problems and thinking critically in everyday life.
You learn that even when a solution isn’t obvious, there are things you can do with the puzzling information you have and look at it in different ways, eventually leading to an insight. You also develop useful intuitions about what it feels like when you need to step away and come back to a problem with fresh eyes.
Brainteasers can be relaxing and restorative.
Completing patterns and solving problems generally makes people feel good and more grounded. Putting a jigsaw together, for instance, is an activity that most people don’t find over-stimulating. It’s quiet and you can sit quietly while you do it. At the same time, it gives you lots of little satisfying experiences in which your actions contribute to visible progress.
Any puzzle where you need to try different strategies can help you learn to be a more creative thinker.
Puzzles can give you the experience of having a real breakthrough realization, which is one of the best experiences out there. Once you know how exciting insights are, you might find yourself looking more often and creatively for opportunities to find them in other places too.
For memory and focus, you can get a nice little boost from doing a short, lightly challenging puzzle.
[Puzzles] can help perk up your attention by giving you a little novelty and a short task with an immediate payoff. This can really help you regain focus on a task if you are feeling bored and stuck—but only if it doesn’t steal your focus away. A small, self-contained puzzle or set of puzzles works a lot better for that reason.
This article was originally published Jan. 29, 2025.