Thinking outside the box brain games

This is a review of the book “The Little Book of Big Brain Games:  517 Ways to Stretch, Strengthen and Grow Your Brain”
Date:  October 11, 2020
Best place to buy:  Amazon.com
Price:  $9.95

Think outside the box
These 517 Games are designed to stretch your mind, to make you “think outside the box”.

This little book is a pocket-size brain gym. Here are more than 500 full-color puzzles from the original Big Book of Brain Games―the book that Will Shortz praised as “the most wide-ranging, visually appealing, entertaining collection of brainteasers since Sam Lloyd’s Cyclopedia of Puzzles,” and The Washington Post called “an opus . . . mixing math with wonder.”

Here are mental games, visual challenges, logic posers, riddles, and illusions, each designed to stretch neurons and give the brain a workout―all in a format that will fit in your pocket. The puzzles (both original and mind-boggling adaptations of classics) are rated in difficulty from level one to ten, but even the easiest are guaranteed to make the solver feel smart.

This pocket-size brain gym contains mental games, visual conundrums, logic posers, riddles, illusions –  all designed to stretch neurons and shake up your usual way of thinking.  Be creative.  Be challenged.  Push your brain in new directions.  The puzzles are organized by 12 types  with 10 degrees of difficulty, each designed to make you feel more curious, intuitive, engaged, and smarter.

These mental games can change the way people see things.  They allow us to see the world in new ways.

A Few Examples from the Book
Here are a few examples of the mind-stretching exercises you’ll find in this little book:

Halving Seven (can you prove that 7 + 7 = 12?)
Answer:  The Roman numeral for 7 (VII) can be made by cutting the Roman numeral for twelve (XII) in half horizontally.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
Answer:  The egg.  The riddle does not specify that the eggs in question are chicken eggs and, according to paleontologists, reptiles and dinosaurs existed long before birds and chickens.  Fossilized eggs dating back one hundred million years have been uncovered.  Thus it can be said that eggs came before chickens.

How did Fido do it?
DOG TIED:  Fido the dog is tied to a tree with a ten-foot length of rope.  He wants to get to his doggie bowl, which is fifteen feet away.  So Fido trots over and starts eating.  There are no tricks; the rope didn’t break and the tree didn’t bend.  Nothing of that sort.  So how did Fido do it?
Answer:  Since Fido is tied to a tree, he can reach anywhere within a ten-foot radius of the tree.  His bowl is five feet from the tree on the opposite side from where Fido started.

The book’s chapters
The exercises are organized into several chapters according to the ideas they center around:

“Play Thinks” (a special type of exercise, coined by the author, designed to transfer the reader to a special state of mind where play and problem-solving coexists)
Geometry
Points and Lines
Graphs and Networks Curves and Circles
Shapes and Polygons
Patterns
Dissections
Numbers
Logic and Probability
Topology
Science
Bonus Rounds

What Your Goal Should Be

To become more curious, more inventive, more intuitive.

From the Book’s Author
Ivan Moscovich, the book’s author, says:

“Psychologists have long known that children learn about the world through play; now it is clear that adults can also benefit from games.  Even as we age, our brains continue to form neurons and make new connections. In order to encourage this growth, research has shown that you need to exercise your brain as you would a muscle – constantly challenging it in new and different ways.  As puzzlemaster Nob Yogashicara once said:  “What jogging is to the body, thinking is to the brain.  The more we do it, the better we become at it.”

“We can understand the most abstract and difficult concepts if we allow ourselves the luxury of approaching them not as work, but as fun – and as a form of exploration.”

Moscovich has chosen activities that span many topics and combine entertainment and brain-teasing.

Pros and Cons:

Pros:

The book is portable (can fit inside your pocket or handbag) – so you can take it anywhere with you, as a “Portable Brain Gym”, as it were.

The exercises in this little book pack a big punch:  They certainly force you to think outside the box!

Cons:

None that I can think of.

If you want to purchase this book, click on this link to be taken to the merchant’s  website.  You can purchase it right there.

As an Amazon Associate I may earn a small fee from qualifying purchases.  You will not pay more when buying through this site.

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Other brain games can be found under the heading “See Our Blogs”, by clicking any of the published blogs on the pages for the following categories:

“Brain Games For Children”

“Brain Games For Adults”

“Brain Games For Seniors”

“Advanced Brain Training”

“Optimal Brain Health”