“Brain games” is a marketing category more than a scientific one, and the paid apps that own the phrase have a poor record of proving their claims. The good news is that the activities with the best evidence for being cognitively engaging are mostly free. Here they are, sorted by what they ask of you and how long a session takes, with Brisk included where it fits.
Under five minutes
| Game | Exercises | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Brisk daily challenge | Arithmetic, vocabulary, pattern finding, speed | briskpuzzles.com, no signup |
| Wordle | Working memory, verbal fluency | NYT Games, free |
| Mini Crossword | Recall, wordplay | NYT Games, free |
| Mental maths trainer | Processing speed, calculation | Brisk tools |
| Worldle | Spatial memory, geography | worldle.teuteuf.fr |
Five to fifteen minutes
| Game | Exercises | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Connections | Categorisation, lateral thinking | NYT Games, free |
| Sudoku | Deduction, sustained attention | Any newspaper site |
| Quordle | Parallel deduction, working memory | Merriam-Webster, free |
| Set (daily puzzle) | Visual pattern recognition | setgame.com |
| Lichess puzzles | Calculation, pattern memory | lichess.org, free and open source |
Longer sittings
- Chess and Go against people. Lichess and OGS are free, ad-free and open. Strategy games against a human opponent are novel every time, which is the quality experts look for in stimulating activity.
- Cryptic crosswords. The Guardian publishes its cryptic free. The learning curve is steep and that is the point.
- Bridge. Bridge Base Online is free. Memory, inference and partnership under time pressure.
- Learning something. A language on a free app, an instrument from free lessons, a coding course. Not games, but the Global Council on Brain Health rates this kind of sustained novel learning above any brain game.
What to expect
Any of these will make you better at itself. Whether that improvement travels anywhere else is the open question, and the honest answer is: a little, mostly to similar tasks. Choose games you enjoy, vary them, and treat them as recreation with a side of engagement rather than as medicine. We set out the evidence in do brain games work? and the bigger picture in how to keep your mind sharp.
Common questions
Do free brain games work as well as paid ones?
The paid apps have not demonstrated benefits that the free options lack. The 2016 review of brain-training evidence and the FTC’s Lumosity settlement both concerned paid products. A free crossword, a daily puzzle and a game of chess exercise the same faculties.
Which brain games are best for memory?
Games that require you to hold and manipulate information: card-matching, n-back style tasks, and any puzzle where you track several constraints. Improvement tends to stay within the game. For everyday memory, the stronger evidence is for sleep, exercise and learning genuinely new material.
Is there a free brain game with no ads or account?
Brisk has no ads and no required account. Wordle needs no account. Most newspaper puzzles need an account for streaks but not for play.