Amazingly enough, there are activities and games that exercise your brain and help to keep it fit. These games can improve memory and cognition, sharpening critical thinking skills that many of us do not use as much in retirement as we did when we were working full time. Here are a few of those games that you may want to play.

Chess

Chess is an excellent game for critical thinking. To play well, you need to consider all the possible moves you could make and your partner can make and their ramifications. Another related critical thinking game is Go, an Asian game that can be played in person or online.

Card Games

Hundreds of card games are available. There are ones you can play alone (Solitaire), two-handed (Gin), four-handed (Bridge and Canasta), and other card games. Being a good card player requires remembering what you hold in your hand, what can surmise is held by the hands of other players, and what is left in the deck.

Card games can be played with strangers online and competitively.

Sudoku

Sudoku is that logic numbers game where some numbers are given and you fill in the blanks for the numbers that are missing. Each game has nine squares of nine squares or 81 spaces for numbers. Each line contains the numbers one through nine with each number appearing only once. Also each square containing nine little squares also contains the same nine numbers, one through nine.

Sudoku can be found for free online and in many daily newspapers. There are many levels of difficulty.

Word Games

Aside from crossword, there are other word games such as Spelling Bee that is published daily in The New York Times. (You can play for free.) This is a game where you make as many words as you can from a given list of letters. There are also games you can play with others such as Scrabble.

Crosswords

Crosswords are easy to find online and in newspapers. There are all levels to choose from, and you can even play competitively. Doing crosswords is a learned skill. The more you do them, the easier they are to do.

Exactly how much these games help the brain is currently being researched. However, games are fun to play, and there is no downside to playing them. One of the key components to benefit is novelty. If you get bored with one game, then by all means switch to something new and stimulating or move to a harder level. The idea here is to exercise your brain in new ways all the time.