Play
Brain Games
Six puzzle forms — copy a design, carry a pattern, turn a shape, judge a quantity, find the odd one, put it back. For a four-year-old and for a grown-up.
Every other product in this category tells you these make you smarter. We are not going to, and the reason is on the page.
This is a puzzle. Doing it will make you better at this puzzle. There is no good evidence that it makes you better at anything else, and we are not going to tell you otherwise.
In 2016 the Federal Trade Commission brought a case about how brain-training games were advertised — claims that they improve school and work performance and hold off cognitive decline. The FTC's position was that the science did not support the advertising. Read the case
Pick a puzzle
Carry the Pattern
Work out the rule, then say what comes next.
A wrong answer keeps the same puzzle. Being handed a new one after a mistake is how somebody learns nothing from the mistake.
Why Carry the Pattern is here
Finding the rule behind a sequence is the same move as finding the rule behind an argument, which is the one this project cares about most.
What the evidence actually shows
Settled
People get better at the task they practise. This is consistent and not in dispute.
Not settled
Whether that improvement carries over to anything else — school, work, driving, remembering where the keys are. Studies looking for that transfer mostly do not find it, and the ones that do are argued over.
So why play
Do them because they are enjoyable. That is a complete reason for something to exist, and it does not need a health claim underneath it.
Nothing here is scored, saved, sent anywhere, or compared to anybody else. Stop whenever you like.